Tracking Your Domino’s Pizza

 Maybe it’s because I am a geek at heart (I do have a degree in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and worked for NASA during my college summers – really!).  Maybe it’s because I was hungry.  Either way, I really liked the Domino’s Pizza Tracker tool I used the other day (and my kids liked the pizza, so it all worked out).

It was fairly simple.  I went online to order my pizza (like I have done many times for another pizza company, where I have had mixed results).  Ordering was easy, as it should be.  When I completed paying for my order, the site took me to the screen you saw above and started tracking my pizza order.  Jeff was the lucky guy to prep, make, and bake my pizza.  The site even asked me how Jeff was as my “delivery expert”.  I had a lot of fun watching the progress, which was pretty rapid (and it was a Saturday night, too!).

Questions:

Does someone at Domino’s actually sit there and enter this info, or is is all automated?  Does it assume how long it takes to make a pizza?  Does Jeff hit a “done” button as he completes each phase so it will update?  Inquiring minds want to know, so if any one has an idea of how the technology works, please share.  🙂

Customers Rock! Implications

It is always good to set customer expectations.  The more customers can stay in the loop, the less there will be complaints or criticisms.  For my pizza order, this all worked very nicely, and within 10 minutes of the “your pizza just left the building” update, the doorbell rang (yes, it was the pizza).  I was impressed. 

However, I have read other posts that share frustration that the pizza was very late after it “went out for delivery”. Apparently, Domino’s doesn’t have a good way to track that part of the process.  A flat tire, traffic, or a lot of other pizzas to deliver can mar the experience.  This is not all that different from what FedEx or UPS does with their package tracking.  Once the package is on the truck for delivery, it is anyone’s guess as to when it will arrive.  If this part of the experience can be fixed (can anyone say GPS?), then we would have a real winner!

How can you help set your customers’ expectations?  Are they kept in the dark about their purchase or usage experience?  Talk to your customers, find out which part of your process they find difficult or frustrating, then see what you can do to fix it.  Domino’s did.  I am looking forward to ordering my next pizza from them.

Has anyone else experienced this?  What did you think – cool, or a gimmick?

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Customer Expectations and Loyalty

 I have long been telling clients that they need to look outside of their industry for competitors.  I shared this in a blog post last year:

Do you know who is rocking your customer’s world?  Is your competitor more focused on customers than you are?  Perhaps there isn’t anyone in your industry yet who has a Customers Rock! attitude and strategy.  However, your consumers may be experiencing Nordstrom or Southwest and their great customer service.  Your business clients may be serviced by Pitney Bowes, who have been recognized by Gartner for their excellence in CRM. 

Doug Meacham over at NextUp points out something similar from trendwatching.com’s latest briefing.  In their article on the Expectation Economy, they discuss how the increasing speed of worldwide communication among consumers, along with blogs and other online reviews, is helping to raise the bar on customer expectations in every product or service consumed.  Doug states the following:

“While consumer’s expectations are up and rising, most brands choose to not keep up with the “best of the best”. The result: Informed Consumers are Indifferent or Irritated. The briefing suggests that these states will likely manifest themselves in Fake Loyalty and Postponed Purchases.”

He describes Fake Loyalty as something which is gone as soon as something better (or sometimes cheaper or more convenient) comes along.  Drew McLellan at Drew’s Marketing Minute discussed something similar in his recent post about his dry cleaner.  Drew describes his relationship this way:

“By all impressions — I should be an easy win for another dry cleaners. 

• I am very dissatisfied with my current provider
• What they sell is a commodity
• There is a low cost of entry — doesn’t cost me a lot to switch

Yet, I (so far) am staying put.“

I have also called customers who exhibit this Fake Loyalty by another name: “hostages”.  Hostage customers are those who subscribe to cable because it is the only way to get certain channels they want to watch.  Or they are those customers who sign up for a company’s service plan for their machines because no one else (currently) offers service for them.  Or, as in Drew’s case, they stay with a service because it is convenient – until something more convenient comes along (Drew, what if someone offered a service to pick up and drop off your cleaning at your house, for the same price?).

All of this goes back to understanding customer expectations.  We need to begin benchmarking what is going on in our own industry, but also the other industries where our customers do their purchasing of goods and services.  I may be a business customer by day, but by night I experience Amazon or Lands’ End and their fabulous customer service.  As I stated in my previously-quoted blog post,

Customer expectations are set not just by our organizations but also by all the other organizations our customers touch, whether in their personal or business lives.  Do you want to rock your customer’s world?  First, understand their world and who is rocking it.  Then, meet their needs.  Along the way, exceed their expectations.  You will then have the building blocks for a long-term customer relationship.

Which companies are rocking your customer’s world?  If you have been a reader of my blog for some time, you will think of candidates such as Nordstrom, who focuses on people, Southwest Airlines, who is good at engaging customers via their blog, and even The Busy Bunny, who is good at thanking customers.  They are all Customers Rock! companies in one fashion or another. 

Do your customers do business with these companies, or others like them?  If so, now you know more about your customer’s expectations.  If not, you can still learn from these examples as you create your customer strategy to keep and grow business.

(Photo credit: eraxion)

Thanking Customers

 I read a great example of interaction between a business and its customers – a pizza restaurant!  Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer blogged about HomeMade Pizza in Chicago and the experience of one of his friends there.  In response to filling out the (optional) customer contact card, Ben’s friend received an email from the store manager thanking her for her business.  She sent back a quick reply (that she loved the pizza) and then received another message, this time from a company VP, thanking her for her feedback!  (Be sure to go read Ben’s blog post for the text of the emails – they are very sincere and not at all canned.)

No where in these messages was any selling taking place.  There was simply an air of customer appreciation and open lines of communication.  HomeMade Pizza has started a conversation with their customer, and I predict that a long customer relationship will be a result of this interaction.

Why did this have such an impact on Ben’s friend?  The simple fact is, very few businesses stop and take the time to thank their customers.  When they do, it exceeds our expectations and stands out above other experiences. 

Have you thanked a customer lately?  The best companies don’t do it randomly; they make thanking and interacting with customers a regular part of how they do business.  It is baked into their marketing plans.  It is taught in their customer service training sessions.  It is modeled by managers that thank employees.  It becomes part of a company’s DNA.

What’s in your organization’s DNA?

(Photo credit: karenr)