Shake Shack Ushers in new Data-led Strategy with Qualtrics BrandXM

Qualtrics, the leader and creator of the experience management (XM) category, announced that Shake Shack — one of the most beloved and fastest growing fast casual restaurants in the United States — chose Qualtrics XM for Customer Frontlines and BrandXM to quantitatively evaluate its brand strength against competitors, identify areas of opportunity and growth domestically, and connect more deeply with its core guests.

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It is important to hear what guests say via traditional feedback channels, but it is equally important to monitor what they do. Prior to deploying Qualtrics BrandXM, Shake Shack relied on its leadership’s fine dining background and gut feeling to make decisions about its product, brand, and business, but as it grew, the company noticed a growing need to analyze guest-facing feedback and pressure test its internal direction. Faced with market challenges like the impact of inflation over this last year and the corresponding change in guest behavior, Shake Shack needed new tools to help its marketing organization properly understand and communicate the value of the Shake Shack product in each of its core markets.

Shake Shack combined its Brand Experience (BX) and Customer Experience (CX) programs on the Qualtrics Platform, allowing the company to more precisely understand what its guests value most, both before and after they visit a Shack. With Qualtrics advanced analytics and intelligence built directly into the platform and real-time brand tracking capabilities, Shake Shack is also able to monitor changes from national and regional competitors to determine the strategy that will have the greatest impact on guest perception, visitation, and likelihood to recommend.

“Shake Shack is able to stay one step ahead of their competition by partnering with Qualtrics to generate a holistic, real-time picture of the key drivers of its brand and customer experience on a single platform,” said Fabrice Martin, Chief Product Officer of Qualtrics XM for Customer Frontlines. “With Qualtrics’ end-to-end system for research and analysis, Shake Shack is able to move from data collection to breakthrough insights in seconds, not weeks.”

With insights from Qualtrics BrandXM, Shake Shack found that new guests with a positive first visit to Shake Shack have a 40-60% higher likelihood of returning in the following six months compared to those who had a negative experience. Within that visit, guest awareness of Shake Shack’s brand pillars – high-quality ingredients, making fresh products in-house, and an emphasis on a feel-good experience – triples. Using BrandXM, Shake Shack is able to link these brand metrics to the business KPIs like revenue and loyalty and clearly see the actions it needed to take to grow its brand.

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As Shake Shack continues to rapidly expand, opening nearly seventy new Shacks across the globe last year, it uses Qualtrics to better understand how its product, brand, and guest perception is performing in its non-home markets like Texas and California.  Qualtrics BrandXM allows Shake Shack to capture data from every touchpoint that matters – from communications to customer experiences – and understand which ones have the most impact on its brand’s health. For instance, the company learned that Texans prefer to know that Shake Shack food is 100% angus beef, while Californians want to know that the company does not use antibiotics or hormones in any of its meat. These claims are informed by guest needs, tested for specific markets, and solidified by behavior, sales, and experience metrics in each Shack.

“Both the Qualtrics BrandXM and XM for Customer Frontlines platforms allow for quick, scalable analysis that can be easily shared across our organization to make fast decisions and support the intuition that has underpinned our success to date,” said Charles Frankievich, Director, Consumer Insights & Analytics at Shake Shack. “We can share insights across our ops, finance, culinary and tech teams to more deeply understand what people love about our food and ensure that our guest experience both in stores and over digital channels like our app and website meets and exceeds their expectations.”

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