What’s your average delivery time ?
When the customer asks, do you over or understate an expected time ?
How important are delivery times ?
If you’re late, do you offer some compensation, e.g, Free order, discount ?
Thanks in advance.
When it comes to this, the people answering the phones are really important, because they are the ones quoting times. You really need to make sure they are aware of whats going on. We usually quote a range, like 35 to 45 minutes. This depends on what time of the day and whas going on of course. If there are no deliveries and its lunch we usually quote 30 minutes and the driver just takes it as soon as its ready. You also need to look at how big your delivery area is. I also worked at a place where 30 minutes was the standard time because the majority of the deliveries were very close to the store. Hope this helps.
It does help, thanks.
I ask the questions because my Partner is of the opinion that “good food is worth waiting for” and delivery times aren’t that important. I disgaree with him.
It’s interesting to get other people’s take on the subject.
our ave. delivery time is around 24 minutes and yes quick delivery is very important.
Sure from time to time you can’t get them all there so equally important is quoting accurate expected delivery times. People don;t mind waiting an hour if they are aware up front that there is an hour wait. People will be VERY unhappy (and bugging you on the phone) if they wait 50 minutes when they were told 30 minutes.
We’ve had this discussion numerous times about ‘this and that’ being important or not. If someone needs to feed the kids and the kids are hungry NOW then who will get the business someone with good pizza and consistent under 30 minutes delivery time or someone with a delivery time of 45 mins + ?
I have been doing customer surveys for the last few months for this very reason. What is most important to the customer? I have always considered our delivery times as being to long. Our average company wide delivery time is 38 minutes. When we are slow the delivery time will be better (30 minutes) and when we are busy the delivery time can a get up to an hour. We tell our customers 45 to 60 minutes. One of the survey questions is “Rate us on our speed of service” The ratings are “exceptional” “good” “average” and “poor”. Out of the 300 surveys than have came in 95% have came in “exceptional” and only 1 survey .33% has came back as “poor”.
This has come as a huge shock to me. All these years I though the customers considered us in the average to poor range.
So the goal now is to just maintain our 38 minute delivery times and improve our quality and service.
David
I think your comments show that where acurate/longer times are quoted and you hit them then the customer feels this is good.
As an owner I hate those nights were delivery hits an hour and normally on those I end up part of the night driving. I ALWAYS apologise for the lateness but the typical response is along the lines of ‘well its only 40 minutes and you told us it could be longer than that so that’s brilliant’.
I’m still convinced that focussing on getting it to the customer quicker (safely of course) is better in terms of product quality and service and as said before if its a choice between a 24 minute and a 34 minute similar cost/product which one will you choose?
An important part of consideration is whether or not you consider your store quick service or high end quality which takes time to prepare properly. Your customers should know the difference and it should be noted when comparing numbers here.
Papa John’s is of course quick service. My stores policy is that if we know an order will be delivered past the quoted delivery time, the driver brings along a free 2 liter coke. At the door I greet the customer “I’m so sorry your order took longer than expected, so here is a free coke to make up for it. Here is your order, hot and fresh from the oven. Your total is $xx.xx.”
Since you open the conversation admitting the problem and already giving them something for the inconvenience, 99% of the time there is nothing but smiles from them. Managers appreciate this approach also because it eliminates most of those “Manager! Line two” calls with unhappy customers wanting a discount or free order in the middle of the rush. This is only appropriate when the order is up to15-20 minutes past the promise time. If we totally blow it and an order is really late, it goes out the door free.
We did something similar to this not too far back less formally, but we surveyed both “our” customers and “general pizza” customers. My feelings about our speed were the same as David but the results of the survey were much more favorable than I had expected. On the other hand pizza consumers in general did not rate us as high. Basically what they said was our pizza was really good but “fill in the blank” is “fine” and they are faster. Surveying “other” customers paints a completely different picture. “Our” customers may be willing to wait a bit longer for exceptional pizza but how many “other” sales are we losing because of speed?
I’m high end in my market place (on both price and quality) AND quicker than the lower end players so I’m not sure I agree with that statement. If you go into a fine dining restaurant you don’t expect to wait longer than a normal service restaurant do you?
I really don’t think that making a gourmet pie takes significantly longer than making a cheap $10 pizza. There’s no more steps involved are there? slap, sauce, cheese, toppings, oven, cut, box, dispatch? In fact the cook time in high end wood fired ovens is normally much less than a 6 min conveyor I believe!
When we come unstuck and end up on 45 min delivery its normally simply down to enough drivers or in-store staff (for the plethora of reasons why that happens) nothing else.
good point. Its not your customer who you want to ask as they are obviously prepared to wait otherwise they wouldn’t be customers. That’s like asking your best customer if they like your food - of course they do!!!
Maybe you should check the lapsed customer that would give you a better call.
I’m not saying people won’t wait for something better than something else but what if its not better but just the same? In that case maybe quicker service would make the difference.
You’re planning on taking your partner out for a meal tonight. You’ve a choice of two local restaurants both 5 miles from your house, both with similar food, price, quality, ambience, parking etc. One always takes your order and serves you promptly, the other, well sometimes you sit at your table and wait and wait and the food take a while to cook - which one do you choose tonight?
We did something similar to this not too far back less formally, but we surveyed both “our” customers and “general pizza” customers. My feelings about our speed were the same as David but the results of the survey were much more favorable than I had expected. On the other hand pizza consumers in general did not rate us as high. Basically what they said was our pizza was really good but “fill in the blank” is “fine” and they are faster. Surveying “other” customers paints a completely different picture. “Our” customers may be willing to wait a bit longer for exceptional pizza but how many “other” sales are we losing because of speed?[
How did you go about surveying “general pizza customers”?
Our delivery times range from 30 - 45 minutes on quiet nights depending on what delivery zone it is - close or far away - and how many orders we have in at that particular time. Far out delivery areas will be quoted 45 - 50 minutes as we always try to add another order where possible to make the deliveries more cost effective to us, but if there are no others within 15 minutes then this one goes in the oven by itself.
On busy nights we quote a minimum of 45 - 55 minutes but often they will get it in less time. The far out areas are quoted a minimum of 60 minutes. In most cases deliveries are made within the time frame but sometimes we get a run of deliveries that come in 1 for north and one for south and one another direction where we are unable to multiple deliver and this blows times out as the driver are doing heaps of singles.
We have a chart near the phones with the 3 zones and the suburbs with normal nights and busy nights times listed so the staff work off that. We make a call from the bench if we start seeing anomallies like lots of different direction orders backing up, or a lot of deliveries coming in at the same time and call a new time until the backlog is cleared. If delivery orders qare abnormally heavy, or there is inclement weather or something else that may be causing delays (roadworks, festivals etc) we quote the time but add that due to the “reason” we cannot guarantee this time but will try our hardest to meet it.
We get the odd person phone and say they ordered over an hour ago and delivery still hasn’t arrived and in 95% of cases it is still well under the quoted time. And then you get the person who complains because they got it in 30 minutes when they were told 45.
As far as compensation goes we don’t offer anything unless the customer asks and if we do give anything it is a free 1.25lt drink. Some ask for the order free and it is a NO!! Some ask for the delivery fee to be taken off and it is a NO!! (ask them “do you, or would you work for nothing”). We have on our menu under delivery " delivery times quoted are estimated only but during peak trade times, or due to other circumstances beyond our control, delays may unfortunately occur. If your urge for our mouth watering pizzas is greater than the delivery time quoted, we recommend you drop in for pick up … it’s always quicker"
I think if you tell them a time then you should try as hard as possible to meet it but any time quoted be it 25 minutes or 1 hour the customer has the option of accepting or not.
Dave
I no longer deliver, but, in these days of everyone has a cel phone, I would suggest that your drivers always call the next delivery, as they finish the last one. This would notify each customer that their delivery is (10?) minutes away.
In practice it is great but half my drivers don’t have any credit on their phones :oops:
I tell them all the time to take the store mobile phone but they never do. I have suggested that they call the next customer as they leave their last delivery (and see how their tips increases but they never).
I think in our case as the drivers only do a few days and some only one day they don’t take the job as indepth as someone who does it fulltime for a living. They just want to get the delivery done and get back for the next one.
The only time they use the mobile phone is when they go to one particular tricky apartment block and call the customer who normally comes down to meet them at the main entrance.
Dave
Portions of food and different ovens will lead to longer times. We bake a thick-crusted, heavily topped pizza in a deck oven that takes up to 13 and 14 minutes per pie. It does take longer to put more toppings than are typical and certain “gourmet” items such as “raw sausage” take significantly longer to top as well.
Takes up “more” time and half the time no one ever answers the phone anyway.
Well, like I said it, it was nothing formal. For a period of about three months we had a “socially gifted” person go out and visit all the local businesses. Other than some people saying we were too expensive to frequent that often, the only other consistent “negative” comment was just that some others were faster. Most of our employees have separate jobs, some in local warehouses. I prodded them daily for feedback which produced the same responses.