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The importance of drive-thru order accuracy and how to improve this key metric

March 2, 2023

Katie McCann

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Drive-thru order accuracy is arguably one of the most important metrics to track for a quick-service restaurant (QSR).

With drive-thru making up 70% of business for QSRs, this metric can be a leading indicator for the success of the largest part of your revenue. After all, there’s no more surefire way to disappoint your customers than for them to drive away from your drive-thru only to discover the wrong meal in their food bag. 

However, things move fast in a QSR (hence the name). Improving drive-thru order accuracy is not something that can be done without effort. Each small step you take to improve can lead to big results — and a bigger bottom line by keeping your customers happy. 

Let’s go over the importance of drive-thru order accuracy and what you can implement today to improve this key metric. 

Drive-Thru Order Accuracy Ensures Diners Keep Coming Back

Over the last two years, drive-thru’s boomed in popularity. This was largely fueled by the pandemic, as dining rooms were shuttered for months — in some instances, many locations around the world were closed for one to two years. 

With drive-thru making up nearly ¾ of the revenue stream for QSRs, the importance of ensuring your drive-thru is running in the best possible way is extremely important. It keeps that revenue stream optimized and working seamlessly.

Simply put, poor drive-thru order accuracy can deteriorate that highly important revenue stream. Think about the fact that up to 70% of QSR revenue comes from the drive-thru and that 20% of customers won’t return somewhere they got the wrong meal.

Valuable customers are on the line with every order. If your drive-thru order accuracy isn’t up to par, you need to ensure you’re doing everything in your power to keep accuracy as high as possible.

5 Ways to Improve Your Drive-Thru Accuracy

Mistakes will happen — it’s never going to be possible to have 100% drive-thru order accuracy. But there are technologies and team training that you can implement at your QSR to keep your accuracy as high as possible.

Here are 5 of the best ways. 

Improve Communication

Almost anyone who has ordered through a drive-thru has found themselves struggling to hear what is being said through the speaker box at least once. And guess what? The employee taking your order is probably having just as hard a time hearing what you have to say in their headset. Not to mention what seems like they’re being yelled at by an angry customer. These types of issues lead to frustration from the customer – feeling like they have to yell their order, and for the person taking their order as the impatience grows. 

If your main means of communication in the drive-thru isn’t clear, it’s going to make maintaining a high level of order accuracy unnecessarily harder. 

Check It Twice

Even the clearest communication can be miscommunicated. Ann easy way to improve drive-thru order accuracy is to have an employee working the drive-thru confirm the order with the customer. 

This can be as simple as your drive-thru worker saying, “to confirm, you’ll have a number two and a number four?” A question like this gives the person ordering the opportunity to confirm or correct if an order is wrong. 

You can also use technology to help check it twice (which we will dive into even more at the next point). The right technology can even take over checking it twice for you! Drive-thru systems that pair with your POS can put the order right over the visual of the car. This means you take the order then glance at your technology — it does the double checking for you! It’s easier to get orders right when you have a visual showing you which order pairs with each car.

Leverage Technology

Technology is your best friend when it comes to improving your drive-thru order accuracy, whether you’re a one-lane or multi-lane drive-thru operation. The right technology can help measure time spent in the drive-thru by each car, track voided orders to show when more order issues are happening, and track employee engagement on a rolling basis. All of this can completely transform your efforts.

For example, DTiQ customers saw increases in order accuracy of over 20% when leveraging technology to improve their drive-thru order accuracy! The accuracy went from 75% to 98%. This difference is huge when it comes to your business’ bottom line. 

Proper Team Training

Without training, even the best technology or communication won’t make everything perfect. Make sure to take the time for proper training when implementing any new methods in your QSR. Without proper training, any new methods may have the opposite impact.  Using an auditing tool can help create customized programs that can measure and manage various areas of concern for clients, including enhanced loss prevention, customer interaction, employee effectiveness, operational compliance, and more.

Reward Success

When you use technology, you can measure more success metrics. Use these measurements to reward drive-thru employees that are improving well or when seeing improvements. 

This is also a fantastic way to boost employee engagement. These reports are great for pointing out opportunities for improvement but can also be used to reward employees for good Speed of Service and exemplary customer service. If your team members know there’s a chance of being rewarded, they’ll put their best foot forward!

Final Thoughts 

Drive-thrus will only continue to grow in popularity — and therefore a need to provide a near-flawless drive-thru experience. Ensuring you’re going to everything to keep your drive-thru order accuracy as high as possible is going to be critical in delivering a positive customer experience. Fail to do so, and your bottom line may pay the price. 

If you’re looking to level up your drive-thru technology, you can learn more about how DTiQ can help. Contact us or book a demo to see how our technology can improve your drive-thru order accuracy.

The importance of drive-thru order accuracy and how to improve this key metric

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