Service Faceoff: Donatos vs. American Express (UPDATE)

(UPDATE: Donatos just lost me as a customer for life.  Despite the great review below, I had an incredibly disappointing experience today.  After a long Monday, we decided to order pizza for dinner.  After about 45 minutes of waiting we got a call from Donatos.  The store worker said that they no longer deliver to our neighborhood so our order was canceled.  My stunned wife asked why, and he said they can no longer service our street in proper time.  Amazing.  Why not tell us this upfront and allow us to make other plans?  Obviously they discovered the error later - but then why not just deliver the darn pizza and tell us at the door that it was the last one?  Stupid, complete lack of common sense for a service business.

Here's the original post, for what it's worth now...)

It's mandatory for bloggers to periodically use their space to whine about customer service from some big, well-known company.  Today it's my turn.  But true to challenge dividend form, I don't want to just complain about American Express, I want to challenge the company to match the service level of my favorite local pizza chain, Donatos.  Bear with me here...

I've been an American Express member for a long time.  In my previous job at P&G I was mandated to have a company-sponsored Amex and charged well into the tens of thousands of dollars in my six years of business travel while at the firm.  I then got a Delta co-branded American Express card when I took my new job four years ago. 

I have been fairly happy with Amex except for one thing: When I closed my P&G-related account I had a $150 credit.  I don't know why, I think I must have double-paid a charge on at some point along the way.  Anyway, ever since I left American Express sends me a monthly statement telling me that I have this credit.  When I called to get a check, they said that their contract rules that I must go to P&G with a history of proof (like old statements, expense reports and receipts) that I overpaid in order to get approval for a credit.  Naturally I don't have the time or interest in calling my old employer and negotiating for $150.  Yet American Express continues to send the same monthly statement nearly 48 months in a row. 

My wife and I enjoy a small laugh every time the statement comes.  This weekend I suggested that American Express should be able to see that this account has the same name, address, social security number and mother's maiden name as the Delta card that I'm racking up a couple thousand bucks a month on.  I suggested that Amex could have a real-live person call me just once per year and ask, "Hey, Bob, how are we doing?  Anything we can help you with?"  And, of course, I'd mention the P&G card issue - and the real-life person might give me a final credit to my account.  I'd even be happy if they gave the money back to P&G and stopped sending the stupid monthly statement.

But, alas, no such phone call has ever taken place.  Literally a day after our conversation, however, another company did call our home.  I looked at the caller ID and saw "Donatos" name come up, it's a regional chain of pizza joints that we order with about once per month.  Puzzled and intrigued, I answered the phone.  To my shock, a real-life person introduced herself and asked how we enjoyed the pizza that we ordered with them last week.  I shared with her how I liked the new flat-bread pizza, but also mentioned that my wife was a little annoyed that the person who answered the phone couldn't tell us what was on the new pizza.  She looked up the order, saw that "Angie the new girl must not have known about the new items", and she said she would put a $4 credit on our account!

So, American Express, one of the largest financial services companies in the world, which has made a few thousand bucks off of me in the past few years has worse service than the small, but national, chain of pizza joints.  Wow.

Why do you, dear reader, think this is the case?  Personally, I think the local pizza place has more challenge than the faceless American Express.  Donatos has a real-life business franchise owner trying to keep her job, so she makes the effort to use her weekend to follow up on recent orders.  She has a small, manageable customer base.  But to Amex, an individual's satisfaction is truly meaningless - no real challenge begets no real improvement.  Better for American Express to play with big levers like huge TV commercial campaigns and special miles offers with Delta.

What do you think?  It's real easy to contribute, and you can even be anonymous...

Comments

[Gerard McLean]

Hey Bob.. found your post helpful in making a point on my blog for soccer tournament directors, Tournament Review
http://www.tourneycentral.com/treview/2008/05/18/how-a-small-soccer-tournament-can-compete-against-the-giants/

Just a head's up and thank you!

G.

[Bob G]

Very cool, Gerard! I love it when people understand this concept and start using it in a diverse range of situations. That's my goal! Good luck,

Bob

[Bob G]

Very cool, Gerard! I love it when people understand this concept and start using it in a diverse range of situations. That's my goal! Good luck,

Bob

[raman]

i think it fundamentally boils down to "big business" VS "small business"

moving the needle at a multi billion-dollar corporation is going to take a LOT of wrangling thru bureaucracy. not saying it's right. it just is what it is.

to be fair though, SOME large companies (present company exlcuded :) are doing a better job than others...

[Raquel Hirsch]

Hey Bob, thanks for a great post; it got me inspired. Check this out: http://www.widerfunnel.com/blog/

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Excellent point, well made.

I've run into the same thing in perhaps the obverse way: asked to brainstorm with a couple of Chinese policy-makers on housing for the next generation, a subject about which I in fact know a good deal, my ideas again and again came up against the same objection: "How do you make it work for 900 million people?"

(Nine hundred million is not the population of China; "The Nine Hundred" are the two thirds of the people who are left out of the economic miracle so far.)

I tried, and tried, and tried, and failed to explain to them that an initiative does not have to work for hundreds of thousands of villages, hundreds of millions of people, all at once. It just has to prove itself locally, and then it will spread.

Little think often works. Big think is often poisonous.

[Bob G]

Great story, David. If I had a dollar for every time someone killed an idea in a meeting because it didn't hit 100 million people....well I might have $100 million.

Why not start small, get in the market, and figure out how to scale up with increasing profits as your driver?

[Patty]

This site is like a calsosrom, except I don't hate it. lol