Domino’s helped me survive college.
My school had a deal with the local Domino’s franchise where you could use your meal plan to order a pizza. The meal plan even covered the delivery driver’s tip.
It was way too convenient for a student who was strapped for cash.
To say I ordered a lot of Domino’s was an understatement. I ordered A LOT of pizza. And when I wasn’t ordering Domino’s, my friends were. Or my classmates when we were working on a project.
By the time I graduated, I needed a break.
Recently, I ordered Domino’s for old time sake. It appeared on my doorstep like a long-lost friend and we spent some time getting reacquainted.
A lot had happened over the years.
The following is an excerpt from The Guaranteed Customer Experience: How to Win Customers by Keeping Your Promises. The book launched on March 23 and is available on Amazon and BookPal.
Business looked bleak for Domino's in early 2009.
The 2008 fiscal year had been tough for the chain of pizza restaurants. Revenue was down 2.6 percent from the prior year. The company relies heavily on franchise operators, yet it had a net decrease of 108 franchises in the United States. An audit revealed that 12 percent of the company's 1,200 franchise locations worldwide were chronically underperforming.
The company's problems continued to grow as the year went on. In April 2009, a video of two franchise employees defiling customer orders went viral. Among other disgusting acts, one employee was filmed putting cheese in his nose before putting it on a sandwich. The video led to the employees' arrests and a lot of grossed-out customers.
Customers were already widely dissatisfied with the quality of Domino's pizza. In a 2009 consumer survey conducted by research firm Brand Keys, the company tied Chuck E. Cheese for worst-tasting pizza among the major pizza chains in the United States.
The company's problems can be traced to a string of broken promises. Think about what you expect when you order a pizza for delivery: the pizza will arrive on time, taste good, and look like the pizza you ordered.
Domino's initially built its reputation around fast delivery. Until 1993, the company had offered a "30 minutes or less guarantee" on deliveries. The original guarantee promised customers a free pizza if it wasn't delivered within 30 minutes of placing their order. The guarantee was later changed to give customers $3 off their total.
The guarantee had many critics, as delivery drivers were accused of driving recklessly in order to meet the 30-minute promise. Domino's finally eliminated it in 1993 after facing two high-profile lawsuits when one delivery driver killed a motorist in a crash, and a second delivery driver severely injured another in a separate incident.
Fifteen years later, the company discovered an innovative way to set delivery expectations. In early 2008, Domino's rolled out the Pizza Tracker™, an online tool allowing customers to track their pizza from the time it was ordered until it was delivered to their door. The tool also included a way for customers to submit feedback about their order—feedback that went straight to the store manager.
The Pizza Tracker™ might have helped Domino's do a better job of keeping its delivery promises, but the company still failed to keep its basic promise of serving high-quality pizza. Domino's CEO, Patrick Doyle, admitted some years later, "When we did consumer tests, if they knew the pizza was Domino’s, they actually liked it less than if they just thought it was a random unbranded pizza."
In late 2009, the company offered a mea culpa in a new advertising campaign. One video produced by the company shared blunt feedback from customer focus groups and surveys. "Where's the love?" asked one customer featured in the video. "There doesn't feel like there's much love in Domino's pizza." Another customer said, "Domino's pizza crust, to me, is like cardboard."
Doyle directly addressed the feedback in that same video. "You can either use negative comments to get you down, or you can use them to excite you and energize your process of making a better pizza. We did the latter."
That video, and other Domino's commercials released during the ad campaign, offered customers a new promise. The company had listened to customer feedback and extensively reworked its recipes. Domino's promised its pizza was actually good again!
The promise of better-tasting pizza was real, and customers took notice. Domino's attracted positive publicity for its better-tasting pizza, and customers were increasingly willing to give it another try. Same-store sales rose 14 percent in the first three months of 2010.
There was one more broken promise that Domino's took aim at fixing. The pizzas shown in commercials and other advertising were not how a pizza really looked when it showed up at your doorstep.
A video released by Domino's in July 2010 showed a behind-the-scenes look at how pizza commercials were filmed. People dubbed "food stylists" used an array of tricks to make the pizza look better on camera. Pepperoni slices were hand-cut and painstakingly arranged to make the slices look evenly distributed. Torches crisped the edge of the crust and heated the cheese to make it stringier. Hidden screws secured the pizza to a board, so the rest of the pizza would stay in place when a hand model pulled out a slice.
The company announced it would begin using photos of real pizzas in its advertising. It launched a "Show Us Your Pizza" campaign, inviting customers to submit their own photos of Domino's pizzas.
CEO Patrick Doyle addressed one poor-looking photo in a commercial. A customer submitted a picture of a Domino's pizza with its toppings stuck to the underside of the box lid, as if the pizza had been squished inside the box. "This is not acceptable," said Doyle. "You shouldn't have to get this from Domino's. We're better than this."
Doyle then reiterated the company's commitment to keeping promises. "I'm Patrick Doyle. I'm the CEO of this company. We're not gonna fail. We're not gonna deliver pizzas like this. I guarantee it."
All these changes aimed at keeping promises paid off. By the end of 2010, revenue had increased 12 percent after two straight years of declines. The company continued to grow. And in 2018, Domino's finally surpassed its longtime rival, Pizza Hut, in total sales in the United States.
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