Chick-Fil-A Reigns Supreme With Its 7th Straight Customer Satisfaction Award Win

The fast food chicken wars have raged on for the past several years, but fast food wars, in general, are nothing new. And Chick-fil-A has certainly been at the center of its fair share of battles (especially since the chicken wars began in 2019). Now, for the seventh year in a row, Chick-fil-A came out on top of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, an annual listing of the customer satisfaction scores earned by restaurants and restaurant chains across the U.S.

The ACSI's results are culled from its annual Customer Satisfaction Survey, which surveys about 180,000 people each year about the products and services they use, per ACSI. The survey covers more than 300 companies in 43 industries and 10 economic sectors. This year's index came out on June 29, with some fantastic news for Chick-fil-A, which topped the entire restaurant industry in terms of customer satisfaction. Now that you know that Chick-fil-A reigns supreme in terms of customer satisfaction, here is what else you should know about ACSI results. 

Chicken wars, vegan burger wars, and signage wars, aside, if there is one particular area with regard to which Chick-fil-A can claim absolute victory, that area is "customer satisfaction."  According to the ACSI's 2021 American Customer Satisfaction Index, Chick-fil-A tops the fast food industry with an ACSI score of 83. The chicken chain also tops every other restaurant in every other restaurant category covered by the survey. And this is in spite of the fact that Chick-fil-A lost a tiny bit of the ground (1%) it held in 2020.

But the news was good not only for Chick-fil-A but also for all fast food restaurants, which, overall, held steady from where they were at in 2020 (the category's overall score was 78 both in 2020 and 2021, and that's saying something because last year, America was kind of obsessed with fast food). Still, a few fast food chains slipped more than 1% (particularly Chipotle, which lost four percentage points, and Arby's and Dunkin, both of which lost three). 

In addition, the full-service category saw some hopeful results, rebounding, as it did, one point in its score since last year. Is the full-service category poised to pull ahead as the pandemic fades from immediate relevance? Not necessarily. "People are slowly starting to enjoy sitting down at restaurants again, but don't discount the value of convenience," David VanAmburg, Managing Director at the ACSI, commented.