Keeping the Customer Satisfied

[rowyn]

Lut has remarked the last several times he's ordered pizza on the speediness of the delivery: he'll get an estimate of 30 or 40 minutes, and then the pizza will arrive in less than 20. Last night, when the pizza showed up in 18 minutes, we got a clue as to why: "You were supposed to be my third delivery, but when I saw that tip, I decided to make you the first."

Apparently, tipping actually can make a difference in service quality. Who knew? :) Although I do feel a bit guilty about bumping other customers down the list, if that's what's happening. I prefer to root for "encouraging efficiency and productivity". =D

Comments

[octantis.livejournal.com]

Haha, don't feel guilty, the delivery guys don't always feel appreciated so they are just showing you their appreciation in return. :)

I have a friend back in CA that the pizza guys came to know tipped like a third to a half the price of the pizza itself. Whenever he ordered they practically teleported to his house with the cheese on the pizza still bubbling.

[rowyn]

Hee! That's a pretty good-sized tip! :) Although if you're only ordering for yourself, tipping a large percentage makes more sense. The percentage thing is silly anyway -- it's not like the work for the driver is proportional to how many pizzas you order. :/

[octantis.livejournal.com]

Well, him and his wife, or maybe he ordered for guests. Either way he didn't care about it as an actual percentage, he just gave them a pretty fat tip because he liked the results. :)

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

And not 'giving in to blackmail'?

I got sick of pizza arriving late and having to shepherd the delivery boy to my apartment every single time (they kept standing by the call box and calling me on their cell phone which meant I couldn't buzz them in, so I'd have to get dressed and go down to the door to pick it up) so I started going and just picking it up myself. Much faster. x.x

Maybe they were being deliberately unhelpful because I was tipping a flat dollar for delivery and not some percentage of the price as if it was a sit-down restaurant or something.

[rowyn]

Nooo, I don't consider it blackmail. :D

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

My baseline on tip is the price of a gallon of gas, and only goes up from there. Most delivery drivers are paid $2.35 an hour because it's expected that their customers will all tip. But not all of them do. In fact, in a struggling economy, most people will stiff on the tip rather than cut back on their eating-out budget. I don't think that's fair; I've never worked for tips but I imagine it must suck even more to be underpaid both by your workplace AND by your customers.
So I tip well. :)

[rowyn]

I think you've got the average wage for drivers confused with waiters -- In the 90s, my then-boyfriend worked as a delivery driver, and his base pay was more than minimum wage. ($5 or $6?) He also got paid for mileage (based on the IRS per-mile calculation). Hmm ... this site puts the average base pay between $6.31 - $7.75.

Even so, yeah, it's by no means a well-paying job. And yeah, it's not fair to skimp on tip just because you're poor. It's not like they're rich. :/

[(Anonymous)]

I use a website to order the pizza, pay by credit card and input the tip at the time of the order. So, no guess work on their part, the driver already knows what tip he's getting from me. Which does seem to encourage them, its gotten pretty common to get my pizza in less than 20 minutes from the time I get the confirmation email from the pizza shop.

So, hey, those other customers? If they did the same thing, they might not get bumped.