This case is about one of the largest pizza chains in India. The pizza chain not only offers the pizzas over the counters of its various outlets, but it also offers their free home delivery to the doorsteps of the customers. Over a period of time, this fast food chain has acquired the reputation of being a home delivery specialist capable of delivering pizzas within a stipulated time duration. In case of delayed home delivery (over and above the stipulated time), the pizza is offered free to the customers. However, there is no such commitment (of offering free pizzas in case of delayed delivery) to the customers coming to shop in person over the counters of this food chain. This has probably shifted the focus of this food-chain to mere efficient (on-time) home delivery of pizzas. As such, there is seemingly no strong focus on the customers who prefer in-shop experience.
Now, I’ll briefly narrate about the recent in-shop experience of my friend, Aseem Rastogi. He waited on this food chain’s outlet in queue for about 20 minutes, but none of the staff members bothered to take down his order as they were busy taking the calls for home delivery of Pizzas. In the end, he had to walk-out of the outlet in a huff. It’s a different matter though that the twitter channel of this food-chain was quick to react to the customer feedback when complained and subsequently tried to pacify my friend. Even I had experienced a similar incident sometime back and the very thought which came to my mind was – “This pizza chain cares more about not giving a pizza free than loosing a customer permanently”. Seemingly, this pizza chain doesn’t have a call-center or a dedicated team to take down the pizza orders for home delivery.
In this case, the order management is clearly a bottleneck operation during the peak hours. The staff, as a result, is left with no option but to multi-task particularly in case of peak-hours and work on priorities which are either wrong or conflicting in nature. If the food-chain has to increase or retain its market share in a fiercely competitive marketplace, where the customers have a wide choice to make, it can not afford to work on wrong or conflicting priorities. Not only the priorities need to be right, but these should be managed effectively.
Absolutely Varun… It could very well be a case of one-off negligence or lack of proper training to the reception staff serving on-the-counter.
In either case, it should be the branch manager who should be held responsible for the behaviour of the staff under his purview.
And, if need be, even the organization as a whole should re-check its policy if they are frequently receiving their customers in such unfavourable manner, for a one too many times.
Hi Varun,
Firstly congrats for your first article on APICS forum..
Great Work and all the very best !!
Regards
@ Viral
Since, this problem happened with me also in a different outlet , that means the problem is systemic in nature as it is happening repeatedly across the various outlets of the pizza chain. The whole issue boils down to wrong & conflicting priorities. If the food chain doesn’t have sufficient number of staff members during the peak-hours, they can not choose to neglect the customers coming in-person just because there is no stipulated time-limit to serve them. Either they need to do load-balancing effectively or they should employ more part-time staff members during the peak-hours. There are many solutions which the pizza chain may look at, but it needs to correct its priorities first.
Thanks Abhinav!
Agreed Varun… Putting house at order is of top-most priority. It could as well be by recruiting few extra personnel for handling phone enquiries and orders.
BTW… Forgot to congratulate you on your 1st entry on this elite blog,
Hi Varun,
Must say that you have pinpointed the root cause of the situation very well. It is just “wrong priorities”. Though the company must have introduced the free pizza scheme to attract customers initially, but in the race to cut costs they forgot this very motive.
Thanks Pooja for summarizing the blog post in one statement!
Hi Varun,
You have correctly highlighted the issue. But there is probably another angle to it.
We know companies open up newer channels to serve their customers on the basis of what they perceive the future trend in the market is going to be or on the basis of what they specialize in. On the basis of this they also develop their branding/positioning strategies.
Considering this, it might seem that the priority of this firm is to deliver pizzas to customers in specified time who want to enjoy hot pizza sitting at their home. Consistent with this they also design the space and ambience at their counters i.e. the sitting space that we see these firms has at their pizza centre compared to those who do not commit pizza delivery within specific time limit. I am sure they would have defined their compensation system/appraisal system in line with this, which is a major contributor to the on job behavior of the employees. Compare this with the appraisal system of the firm that makes no such commitments.
The problem here seems to be with whether a firm understands/wants to satisfy the needs for the entire customer segment or is it just happy with a particular customer segment. This too might be influenced by the demand coming from a particular location.
My personal experience which probably is a solution to the issue you raised: Dominos Pizza counter here has 2 floors. Ground Floor has no sitting space and has good accessibility to road and delivery vehicle.
1st floor is made specially for those who want to sit there and enjoy their pizzas. It has decent ambience: not so attractive flooring and walls. Has a counter of its own.
People eating pizza at Dominos at any point of time is quite less than the number of people eating pizza in Pizza Hut which is exactly opposite to it. No doubt Pizza Hut has pleasing ambience. But the number of delivery vehicles on road of Dominos is at any time greater than that of Pizza Hut.
Here Dominos has set its priority, and is able to cater to entire customer segment. But not all Dominos pizza centers has 2 floors. We know about the one we had in Nashik.
Thanks for the elaborate explanation Ravi. You are right in what you have pointed out. But making the customers wait in a queue for as long as 20 minutes just because of taking orders for home delivery is not something called for. The staff members may have their variable pay in line with number of home delivery orders taken. But the real question is – can the company afford to loose out the customers coming to shop-in personally considering the fact that most of these customers may also order online for home delivery at some later point of time? This way, the company will loose out the customers permamnently even for home delivery.
Varun first of all prioritizing is absolutely important. THe point that you have raised is a valid one but i would like to agree with Ravi that there is a second angle to wat the pizza chain says.
I think the primary customers for Dominos are the ones which asks for home delivery and the secondary customers are the ones which are the walkin customers who sit inside the store and order pizzas. As per Dominos their only strategy is “Khushiyon ki home delivery” they have placed themselves as home delivery specialists.They want the customers to have pizza at their workplace,at their homes with their families or at anyother place like wise McDonalds wants the customers to come to their store and enjoy the food( right now they are also into home delivery).
With home delivery you dont have to worry about the in store customers.Consdier a situation where an outlet has a seating capacity of 50 customers and the orders are 30 ( not all eat pizzas) and if they sit in the store for around 1 to 1.5 hours the sale is 30. On the other hand if you have ten delivery vehicle which can delivey say 5-10 pizza’s at a time in half an hour you can delivery around 50 pizza’s minimum. Thats where the difference lies.
I am quite new to this site and so, am having the chance to look at blogs after a lot of time since the blogs were written.
It’s seriously a very valid discussion going on between Varun, Vineet and Ravi. And the point raised by Ravi that Dominos clearly know what they are doing can be very much valid. In this situation with interwoven scenarios, I believe there is another angle to it that the company should look at. No doubt Dominos is the market leader among pizza joints and ‘home delivery’ has become kind of their high priority. But the reason why I think they should not exercise any sort of levity with their in-store customer orders is that the impression that they would leave on them. If I was Varun’s friend who had an unpleasant experience at Dominos, there are good chances I might carry a grudge about Domino’s. And that grudge can very well translate into me not ordering from Dominos even for a home delivery service.
Though I don’t think such unpleasant experiences would be happening on a very alarming scale for Dominos as of now, but they surely need to fix this right and overhaul their order management. Because as pizza market is increasing day by day, number of people ordering online or through phone are increasing day by day. This is putting more pressure on their order-taking and processing systems. And at the same they would probably have a marginal increase in number of customers walking in to the outlets and having pizzas there. Surely they would not want to disappoint these walk-in customers and leave a bad taste in their minds about the company. Not to forget, these people will also narrate their experience to their friends and peers, just like Varun did