Dominos – 30 minutes delivery time, but what about the customers who prefer the in – shop experience?

Dominos is one of the most popular fast food chains across the world with outlets in more than 60 International markets and 50 US States. It is famous for the 30 minute guarantee. That is why we see it synonymous with ads like “Hungry Kya” and “Agar 30 minutes mein delivery nahi hui toh pizza free”. So at some level initially they concentrated a lot on delivery. But with time, the in house dining experience also started being given great importance.

Without wasting any time, I would like to talk about an incident which has made me write this blog. I am not a very frequent visitor of Dominos. I neither like dominos nor hate it. Over the last 5 years I have been to it just about 8-10 times only in Bangalore and Coimbatore. On 25th June 2010 (8:05pm), Friday I went to the Dominos outlet at the Senapati Bapat Road, Pune. The reason I went there was that it was close to the place I had to catch a bus for Lavale. This outlet is relatively smaller than other ones and looks to concentrate more on seating in open air.

But the biggest shock awaited me inside. At the ordering counter, there were three Dominos staff. But shockingly all of them were on phone taking the menus for delivery. Yes Guys! I waited there for 20 minutes but no one (YES NO ONE) bothered to ask me what I wanted. There was one lady in the center and two men on the side. The men didnt leave the phone at all while the lady did keep the phone. But each time she kept, it rang after a minute again to the disappointment of two men who were ahead of me for ordering. Those poor guys had a big order and even after 20 minutes they hadnt managed to finish the order because of the phone calls. In the end they could just say “Because of your phone calls, we forgot our own order”. Seeing all this, I just walked out in a huff.

I am sure the staff must have seen me leaving. Dominos would surely not lose much from one customer. But my basic point is how can you stand at the ordering desk and talk on phone? Dont they have a call center to take the deliveries? I am sure any Burger King, Mcdonalds, Hamburger Nation etc across the world have a call center. Not bothering about a customer for 20 long minutes even when you have seen that he is sure of buying is the worst possible mistake any organization can commit.

From this blog post, I would just like to make others aware that one cannot just run a business by concentrating on delivery alone. The in – shop experience also should be as good if not better. Hope Dominos make a note of this post!