One of the selling points of pizza shops is the convenience they offer. Just about anyone who loves pizza mentions that it’s definitely a selling point that they can enter the pizza shop, select a pizza or pizza slice and have a delicious meal or snack ready almost immediately. Yet the convenience of pizza also extends to pizza delivery.
When the weather is bad or you simply don’t have the desire to cook, pizza is an easy choice. All you have to do is pick up the phone or go online to place your order, and in under 30 minutes you have a tasty pie delivered right to your door. No wonder that pizza night is a favourite for everyone in the family, especially for the adults!
Pizza aficionados can wax on about what makes a perfect pizza and tend to have a couple of shops that they prefer. The end result is that they frequently order delivery from those shops and get to know the various delivery guys.
Delivery guys are a special breed. They’re dedicated to delivering your pizza on time and the truly great ones get to know you, your family and your preferences. In fact, great delivery guys are like the postman- they’re dedicated to the delivery of your pizza within the specified time frame regardless of any impediments they encounter along the way, such as the elements or a delay in getting your pizza in the oven.
For this reason, great pizza shops are prone to hiring great delivery guys. These shops understand that delivery is a critical service and that reliable, personable delivery is paramount. Delivery guys are selected based on their ability to get your pizza to you efficiently, as well as based on their people skills.
People skills are important in any business, but particularly important in the restaurant/food service business. After all, which would you prefer – getting served by someone who seems bored and detached or someone who gives you service with a smile and who appears interested in making sure that you get exactly the items you want? The same translates to your pizza delivery guy: do you want to open your door to a sullen delivery guy who just hands you your pizza (and waits for payment, if you selected cash on delivery) or someone who offers a smile as they give you your pie?
Most of us like to feel that our pizza shop and their delivery guys care about providing personable, efficient service. And we’ll back up that preference with our loyalty and our dollars. If you know that your favourite shop offers excellent pizza quickly and with a personal touch, then you’ll tend to order from them time after time.
For shops that stress delivery, this loyalty has a cyclical effect: customers rely on the shop to deliver their pizza in a fast, friendly manner, and the shop doesn’t want to disappoint customers or compromise that service, so they focus even more effort on delivery. Customers then see how seriously the shop regards delivery and rewards the shop with their continued patronage.
Every restaurant understands that treating customers well, especially repeat customers, is necessary for success. It’s the small things that make customers feel like their patronage counts, be it having the restaurant recognise us and know our standard order or be it giving us the table we want without a fuss our first time there. With delivery, it’s also knowing our names (and the names of our family members, even our pets) and our address so that they know the fastest route to our home.
When our delivery guy not only knows our names and our address, but remembers the latest details like how things are at work or which family milestone we just celebrated, it enhances the customer experience. In the end, reliable, engaging delivery breeds repeat business. And that experience benefits everyone.
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