McDonald's Making Major Change To The Customer Experience With This Innovation

McDonald's has entered a strategic partnership with IBM to develop and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) technology that will help the fast-food giant automate its drive-thru lanes. According to the companies' joint statement about the partnership, the agreement will see IBM acquire McD Tech Labs which was created to advance employee and customer-facing innovations following McDonald's 2019 acquisition of Apprente. The IBM/McDonald's partnership will "accelerate McDonald's efforts to provide an even more convenient and unique customer and crew experience."

The current technology was tested this summer at a handful of McDonald's locations in Chicago and according to the chain saw "substantial benefits" for both customers and staff, though with a roughly 85 percent accuracy does require some refinement. According to McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski, IBM's AI expertise thus makes them the "ideal partner" for the fast-food chain.

"In my mind, IBM is the ideal partner for McDonald's given their expertise in building AI-powered customer care solutions and voice recognition," Kempcinzki said during an earnings call last week (via CNBC).

At this point, a timeline for these AI-powered customer care solutions isn't known, though the acquisition of McD Tech Labs by IBM is expected to close in December 2021, subject to regulatory approvals and closing conditions. Additionally, the tests this summer also showed that human employees do have a bit of a learning curve when it comes to working with the AI-powered systems.

"One of the things that we've learned in our 10 restaurants that we've done it is: How do you train a crew to actually not want to jump in as soon as they hear a question or a pause?" Kempczinski told Nation's Restaurant News earlier this year. "We've had to do a little bit of training of 'just keep your hands off the steering wheel, let the computer do its work.'"

As for concerns that automation could go further than the drive-thru, that's something that Kempczinski addressed earlier this year as well, explaining that those levels of commitment would be cost-prohibitive - at least for now.

"Most of those are not ready for prime time, nor will they be ready for prime time over the next five years or so," Kempczinski explained. "The level of investment that would be required, the cost of that equipment, we're nowhere near to what the break-even would need to be from a labor-cost standpoint, to make that a good business decision for franchisees."

What do you think about McDonald's partnership with IBM? Are you excited about the idea of AI-powered drive-thrus? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section!

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