Always give constructive feedback when requested

Why Papa John’s rocks in the customer service department

I love companies that actively solicit and respond to feedback. This article is based on Papa John’s because they “get it” when it comes to soliciting and acting on feedback.

My earliest memory of them doing this was a few years back when they invited you to snap a photo of your pizza and email it to them. Upon doing so, they replied with a coupon for $5 off your next order. They preach about making perfect pizza and wanted to see it for themselves — and were willing to pay for the privilege.

Recently, when pulling an all-nighter, we found ourselves starving at 9 AM and thought pizza to be a brilliant idea. Apparently, pizza for breakfast is a common occurrence as the local Papa John’s opened at 9:45 AM. I placed an online order for delivery at 9:46 AM. With the store being just a few blocks away, the driver was knocking before 10:10 AM.

Something was off with this order. This particular store always makes perfect pizza. The most you can ever expect them to get wrong is a regular cut when you requested square. This may be something that others get upset about, but I just shrug it off.

These pizzas tasted terribly undercooked. They looked cooked, but weren’t. The best way to describe it is that it tasted like the high school cafeteria pizza we loved as kids, but would make us cringe as adults. We ended up trashing them after a few bites.

I had completely forgotten about the experience until I went to order again. It was then that I remembered that they have a fairly sophisticated online feedback system. I sent along a message about how something went terribly wrong with our last order. Not wanting the store manager to get in trouble, I included that they are always perfect and came to the conclusion that we were probably the first order of the day and the ovens were not as hot as usual.

A week later I receive a hand-addressed envelope with an extremely personal and apologetic letter from the South Florida Operations Director. She included coupons for free pizzas and her email address and direct phone number should we have any concerns in the future.

It blew me away because of the size of the company. I expect bigger companies to shrug me off. I have been waiting for a phone call from a particular McDonald’s store manager for years.

While they rocked at delivering personal attention to my concerns — and making up for it with free pies, they did not do so well when it came to me trying to praise them on social media.

I sent these two tweets — one to corporate and one supposedly to Mr. Papa John himself — and neither received any sort of acknowledgement.

Oh well, can’t win them all and I am still ecstatic with the service we received. We just finished off the free pizzas tonight.

Papa, if you are reading this, give Torri a raise. Hopefully you read Medium more frequently than your Twitter feed.