Customer Service Disaster: I just want my pizza!

Tonight is Valentine's Day. My wife and I don't celebrate Hallmark holidays, so instead of going out for dinner, we ordered a pizza from a national chain that shall remain nameless.

We placed our order online at 7:15 PM, with the expectation of 33-46 minutes, a pretty exact timeframe, especially for online ordering. After 45 minutes of no pizza, I called the store and here's the conversation I got:

Phone rings once and someone at the restaurant picks up:
Pizza phone boy: "Hello."
Hungry Customer: "Hi is this [insert chain here]?"
PPB: "Uh huh."
HC: "I ordered a pizza 45 minutes ago. Can you tell me if it's left your store yet?"
PPB: "Uh yeah. What's your name?"
HC: "Gerbyshak. Phil Gerbyshak."
PPB: "Our driver broke down. He's got your pizza."
HC: "So my pizza is in some delivery driver's car? Do you have any idea when I'll get my pizza."
PPB: "Uh, hold on." hands phone to Pizza Restaurant Manager.

Enter Pizza Restaurant Manager

Pizza Restaurant Manager: "Hello."
Hungry, ANNOYED, Customer: "Hi, your phone person says my pizza is out in the cold, and you have no idea when I'll get my pizza. Is that correct?"
PRM: "Uh, no. Your pizza is here in the store."
HAC: "Really? The last guy said it's in the car. Are you planning to deliver my pizza tonight?" PRM: "I'm really sorry sir. I only have 1 driver. The other one has broken down."
[Pause. Uncomfortable silence.]

PRM: "What do you think I should do?"
HAC: "How about you refund my money?"
PRM: "I can't do that. You paid with Visa."
[Pause. Uncomfortable silence.]

HAC: "How about a pizza gift card for next time."
PRM: "I can't do that. Then my till will be short."
[Pause. Uncomfortable silence.]

PRM: "What do you think I should do?"[NOTE: I don't think she knows I do customer service training for corporations. What do you think?]

HAC: "How about I come in and get my pizza. I live right down the street. I'll get my pizza, and how about you give me a credit for next time?"
PRM: "Um, okay."
HAC: "What I would have liked is a call back as soon as you knew you couldn't meet my expectations."
PRM: "Yeah, that's a great idea. You think I should call all of our customers and tell them there will be a delay?"
HAC: "Um yeah. That's a great idea."
PRM: "That's a great idea sir. Thanks so much. We'll have your pizza here, and we'll have a free one for you next time.

That's not the end of the story

Oh no, I wish that were it, and I could tell you I went to get my pizza and all went well. But you'll notice it's now 9:00 PM. I ordered my pizza at 7:15 PM.

IT GETS WORSE

I went to the pizza place, which is no longer nameless and is called Papa John's. I showed up for my pizza, and the driver had taken my pizza to deliver it!

UNREAL! My wife and I are both STARVED, and I've got no pizza. Thankfully, the Pizza Restaurant Manager called the delivery driver (3 times before she reached him), let him know over the phone while I'm waiting that he screwed up, and asks me if there's anyone home at my house, because the driver is about to leave my house.

Phil to manager: "Please leave the pizza on my porch. I want my pizza."
Manager to Phil: "Uh, okay."

So after 1 hour and 48 minutes, I've got an ice cold Papa John's pizza that I paid $21 for a large 2 topping with cinnamon dessert thingie.

Cold Papa John's pizza on my porch is GREAT! 

And I'm gonna go eat it now.

If you're a customer service expert, please share your guidance in the comments on how this could have been done better. I'm going to mail this to the district manager in the morning. We'll see what happens.

I'll share how I would have better handled it after you have a crack at this debacle.

[Phil Gerbyshak has managed a Pizza Hut in the past, and delivered pizza for Pizza Shuttle while he was in college. This is not the service Phil delivered, and is not the way he expects to be treated by Papa John's.]

Comments

[Christine Kane]

My idea is that all companies should go to Nordstrom University and learn from the pros.

(Sushi is better than pizza, by the way!)

[Christine Kane]

and admit that you got at least the tiniest speck of joy thinking to yourself, "I am SO gonna blog about you, dude..."

[Becky Carroll]

I have had numerous experiences with Papa John's, and I think I have one or two posts-worth of stories to tell, too. They include coupons given to me on my pizza box with no promotion code to order with online (their claim to fame), so I have to call it in - and of course, they struggle doing it over the phone. Another one was the same issue you had - telling them we'd pick it up, and they put it out for delivery (luckily, one person was home while the other went out to get it). Another one is no ability to do anything out of the ordinary online (and pizza orders are always customized, huh?).

What would I recommend they do to make it great/recover? A few things.

- Put their employees through customer service training (anything).
- Have the PRM give you money for the pizza, out of his pocket if need be, to keep you happy (I hate it when they offer you something "for next time", because if it is bad enough, there may not be a next time!).
- Get some help with operations, so the left hand and the right hand are talking.
- Have a list of "things to do when things go wrong" available, and use it when something happens!

I am sure there are more ideas out there, and I can't wait to hear yours, Phil!

I may end up blogging about Papa John's one of these days - I'll let you know.

Becky

[Meikah Delid]

Phil, this is total DISASTER. Papa John's scored negative on this one. No establishment has the right to make a customer run around in circles. The best that they could do was to give you another pizza when you went down to get one. Forget the pizza that was supposed to be delivered.

[Service Untitled - Douglas]

These guys definitely dropped the ball. I'll make a post about it this week or next week. :)

[simplerich]

I would SO get in touch with their corporate hq on this one. I recommend a phone call over e-mail as my two e-mail complaints about unsanitary conditions (not minor ones) at a local fast food chain were left unanswered other than by a form letter but phone calls resulted in actual results.

There's got to be someone to clamor to. They've GOT to want to fix it. If nothing else... if they fix it right they could earn a paragraph in your next book as the right way to fix a mistake... if of course they fix it wrong well... there's always examples of how NOT to do things as well lol.

The pen is mightier than the pepperoni!

[Matt]

Wow, guess maybe they were all bummed because they had to work on a national holiday lol.

What a terrible way to treat customers, and from a national chain, really surprising.

You can write to the corp headquarters if you want, but I doubt very much anything will come of it.

I once had an issue with a Oil change place, that is also a national chain, and pretty much cost me a lot of money, and I had to take them to small claims to get anything. After spending considerable amount of time trying to work things out with the Corp.

Of course, small claims for a Pizza, probably not an option, unless it was a REALLY good pizza. ;)

[Mary Schmidt]

Personally, I'd write to the CEO from the start - at both his office and home address (Registered return receipt). Letters to the office almost never actually make to the CEO. And, he is in the "home delivery" business, isn't he?

I've never eaten a Papa John pizza because - years ago - a friend of mine said the sauce is way too sweet and not to bother. So, all their flyers go right into the trash. Yet another example of how friends and WOM are more powerful than any commercial or direct mail promo.

[Glenn (Customer Service Experience) Ross]

Hello Pizza Restaurant Manager: Let the till come up short. Refund Phil's Pizza now. Give him a credit for next time. Have your boss or owner follow up with a phone call tomorrow apologizing (and meaning it.)
Go to Lowe's and buy a roll of the yellow "Caution" tape. The next time you're holding a pizza and you don't want the driver to take it, use the tape.

[Tom Vander Well]

Perhaps the pizza joints should get RSS feeds that would alert customers when there's a delay - and why couldn't the manager have credited your VISA card once you were in the store...perhaps she didn't know how to run her credit card machine any better than she knew how to manager a pizza joint! :)

[Pete Prodoehl]

I talked to a pizza delivery chain manager last year, and he made it clear to me that the #1 priority is making the customer happy. No matter what. If that means letting the customer tell you that you did it all wrong, even when you *know* the customer is wrong, do it. With a smile.

He said that pizza delivery was a cut-throat business, and making sure to follow the "customer is always right" rule is what allowed them to survive.

Of course I just make my own pizzas...

[Rocky]

I will have to be a little partisan on this one. John Schnatter(PaPa John) He lives in Louisville and the coporate offices are here as well. I know that he would not settle for that kind of treatment of his customers. He is very customer friendly and is very respected in business and in the community. We all have our restaraunt snafus and I had a very bad experience with Pizza Hut recently. When I made a report to the manager in the store it was handled very badly. I reported to their home office and it was handled in a slow manner, but when it was addressed it wwas very much to my satisfaction. In fact, the restaraunt that we had the problem with made some drastic changes the next we stopped in. I believe you will get satisfaction and place you patonized will make changes if you push it up the line.

[GP]

Meikah's upstaged me in what they should do :) I think that the first order of business is be able to refund, regardless of how paid (Visa, whatever)... I think that would have nipped alot of it in the bud. I know the thought of we cant refund AND no pizza would have set my crankmeter going in a NY minute :)

Nordstrom school would be great as well. That's a top shop.

[Timothy Johnson]

Phil - go to their website - share your blog post. I've had unfortunate incidents with Papa John's in the past. I let them know in my complaint email that the average dissatisfied customer shares his experience with 20 other people. Unless I received a satisfactory service recovery, I would share it with a much broader audience. I received coupons for five free large pizzas and a profuse apology from the regional director. I still get rude service from Papa John's, but I consider the source.

[Lynn]

They could be proud of their better ingredients and all, but it looks like their service is just deplorable. It's kind of funny that the restaurant manager had to take a quick lesson from you on how to handle the situation.

[Michael]

I have the "two strikes and you're out" rule for restaurants. If restaurants can't get it together over two visits, then in my mind I've closed the door to ever returning. I've had two HORRIBLE experiences at Papa John's and each were followed by letters sent to the "home office". No response from the corporate office proves that they really don't care about their customers. Why would I want to support a company that could care less about customer satisfaction? Vote with your feet and stay away from restaurants/businesses that can't/won't make changes to please their customers.

[Small Business Consulting]

Unbelievable! First off, why do you care if the till comes up short? You don't--you want your pizza, and I'm assuming you'd like it hot. Secondly, you don't care that they only have one driver at that particular time. It's the manager's job to make sure the store is staffed properly. Strike two. Third, the simplest way to fix this problem would have been to make that night's order free and to offer you another free coupon for the next order. If you balked at that, the manager should have then asked you what it would take to make you happy above the original offer. If it wasn't unreasonable, it should have been accommodated with little dispute.

It's so easy to right these wrongs by using good old common sense, but the pea brained managers of these stores focus far too much on the nearest term metric (the till being short) that they believe the corporate office will get upset about. They don't think on their feet very well and definitely don't think like a customer when trying to address problems such as this.

Common sense just isn’t that common anymore is it?