This past weekend the kids and I ordered pizza for dinner. I wanted Papa John’s, but the kids insisted on Domino’s because of their thin crust. This was the first time I had ordered pizza since I moved to my new house, so other than my general preference for PJ, it really didn’t matter to me. I didn’t know where either store was located, but I figured I would order online and it didn’t really matter.
I have never ordered Domino’s online so it was my first experience with the above pictured pizza tracker. As soon as I placed my order, the pizza tracker told me my pizza was being prepped. Two minutes later, it was in the oven. I was so intrigued by this system, I began tweeting about it. It happened to be a pizza-eating kind of night and lots of people were tweeting about pizza.
Others began to respond to my pizza-tweets (pweetzas?) asking about the social networking component. Since my tracker was not sharable, or social, I posted a link to a flickr photo. This was the only way I could share the progress of my pie. It made me think that Domino’s could create a social network around pizza where you could not only talk about your favorite toppings, but it would have a feed of your orders and real-time tracking. Might work better as a Facebook app where you could share the same data within Facebook. There are a few apps already, but they only address virtual pizza, not real pizza.
After about 7 minutes, my pizza was out of the oven, boxed and out the door by my delivery expert, Bryan. The term delivery expert got a chuckle from some twitter followers. The best response to me was from @fmedlin: just got a tweet from domino’s that @dgtlpapercuts had a third slice.
The breakdown of the pizza tracker happens once the order leaves the store. The driver does not have GPS in his car, which as a former delivery expert, I can understand. The last section of the tracker just shows me that my pizza is on the way. There is no way to update anything beyond that it left the store and it’s on the way.
There is a real missed opportunity for customer feedback. Since they know I ordered this pizza online, and I am probably watching the tracker, why don’t they provide me incentive to update the tracker once the pizza arrives. The driver, er, delivery expert can say something like, “It would be a big help to us if you can mark the pizza delivered on our website. You will get a coupon to use on a future order.” This can add a missing piece of data to the delivery metrics, and can better track the delivery experts.
So, in the end, the pizza tracker is cool for the customer, is not social or sharable, and does not capture a critical piece of data for Domino’s.
And, just in case you were wondering, we ordered a medium with black olives and bacon for my kids and a medium sausage and mushroom for me.
