Subway Earns Top Customer Experience Ratings for Fast Food Chains, According to Survey

Subway took the top spot out of the 24 fast food chains included in this year's Ratings, earning a score of 83% and placing second overall out of 318 companies across 20 industries. Image: Subway Canada, Twitter

WABAN, Mass. -- Subway and Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen deliver the best customer experience in the fast food industry, according to the 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual customer experience benchmark of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.  

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Subway took the top spot out of the 24 fast food chains included in this year's Ratings, earning a score of 83% and placing second overall out of 318 companies across 20 industries. Popeye's came in a close second with a rating of 81% and an overall rank of 12th. Two other fast food chains received "excellent" ratings: Panera Bread and Little Caesar's, both of which received a score of 80% and placed 17th overall.

Overall, the fast food industry averaged a 76% rating in the 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings and came in 2nd place out of 20 industries. The average rating of the industry declined by 0.4 percentage-points between 2017 and 2018, dropping from 76.5% to 76.1%.

The ratings of all fast food chains in the 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings are as follows:

• Subway: 83%
• Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen: 81%
• Panera Bread: 80%
• Little Caesar's: 80%
• Baskin Robbins: 79%
• Pizza Hut: 79%
• Sonic Drive-In: 79%
• Starbucks: 79%
• Dairy Queen: 79%
• Chick-fil-A: 78%
• KFC: 78%
• Taco Bell: 77%
• Dunkin' Donuts: 76%
• Arby's: 75%
• Jack in the Box: 75%
• Wendy's: 75%
• Chipotle Mexican Grill: 75%
• Hardee's: 75%
• Domino's: 74%
• Papa John's: 74%
• Panda Express: 73%
• Burger King: 72%
• IHOP: 72%
• McDonald's: 70%

"The fast food restaurant does a good job with customer experience. It's impressive that the four top chains earned excellent scores," states Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group.

Taco Bell's customer experience score improved the most over the previous year, gaining seven percentage-points. Hardee's score, on the other hand, declined the most, dropping by eight points.

Now in its eighth year of publication, the 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings is the most comprehensive benchmark of customer experience in the industry, evaluating 318 companies across 20 industries: airlines, auto dealers, banks, computer & tablet makers, credit card issuers, fast food chains, health plans, hotels & rooms, insurance carriers, investment firms, parcel delivery services, rental cars & transport, retailers, software firms, streaming media, supermarket chains, TV & appliance makers, TV/Internet service providers, utilities, and wireless carriers.

To generate these ratings, Temkin Group asked 10,000 U.S. consumers to evaluate their recent experiences with a company across three dimensions: success (can you do what you want to do?), effort (how easy is it to work with the company?), and emotion (how do you feel about the interactions?). Temkin Group then averaged these three scores to produce each company's Temkin Experience Rating.

In these ratings, a score of 70% or above is considered "good," and a score of 80% or above is considered "excellent," while a score below 60% is considered "poor."

The 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings, along with other ratings, can be accessed at the Temkin Ratings website, www.TemkinRatings.com.

SOURCE Temkin Group