Special Report

Fast Food Chains With the Best (and Worst) Service

Whether you’ll admit it or not, you — like almost everyone else — have probably eaten a meal or grabbed a quick coffee at one of the many fast-food restaurants in the United States. No matter your preference, few fast food customers expect exquisite meals or incredible service. You’ve likely come to accept that the fast food industry is not going out of its way to impress you — at least not in the last year.

According to the 2017 American Customer Service Satisfaction Index (ACSI), fast food, or limited-service, restaurants received the same score as last year. While fast food chains maintained the status quo, full-service restaurants did not, receiving their lowest score in a decade. For the first time ever, fast food chains did better than full-service restaurants.

The ACSI measured customer opinions about staff courtesy and helpfulness, table service speed, order accuracy, restaurant layout and cleanliness, beverage and food quality, as well as website quality between June 8, 2016, and May 12, 2017.

The average ACSI score for all fast food restaurants is 79, and only five out of the 17 chains on this list scored above that number. The remaining 12 restaurants either were equivalent to the average or fell below it.

Read on to find out which chains offer near-excellent service and those that fall behind.

Click here to see the fast food chains with the best (and worst) service.

To identify the fast food chains with the best and worst service, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed 2017 customer satisfaction scores for the 17 limited service (fast food) restaurants considered by the ACSI. We also scores for 2016 from the ACSI. Annual revenue and profit figures came from each company’s most recent financial report. The ACSI Restaurant Report 2017 includes both full-service and limited-service dining chains and is based on interviews with 5,557 customers chosen at random.

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