by Luong Thi Thu Ha, Principal, Mekong Capital
05 November 2019

One day, in July 2019 , the internal training about Pizza 4P’s core values was about to finish. Pizza 4p’s staff were required to complete a test. One of the questions was:
“A family came to our restaurants, table for four. They sat down and started to look at the menus. The wife called a floor staff. She asked for a small towel for her baby as she was worried that she could be cold under the aircon. The floor staff took a towel immediately and gave to her. Now as a Pizza 4P’s staff, does this represent Pizza 4P’s core value — “Omotenashi”? and Why?
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You would likely think YES. But the correct answer is NO.
“Omotenashi” means Unconditionally Incredible Hospitality. It is about stepping aside from seeing all customers as one, and thinking from the perspective of each unique customer in front of you, about how you can cater to them, and what type of happiness or comfort you can provide.
In this case, the staff should have offered the wife towel or a high chair, etc for her baby before she asked. So every customer in the table and also in the restaurants could have the best dining experience. That’s Omotenashi!
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Since establishment in 2011, “Omotenashi” has always been the breath of Pizza 4P’s. Masuko and Sanae directly served each of their customers, constantly asked for customers feedback and improved their service. They also observed customers dining in the restaurants to see what they could change to serve the customers better.
“Omotenashi” is the core value of the business and as founders, Masuko and Sanae are committed to serving their customers better everyday. Everything was going well in the first 4 years of the business.
As the business scales up, challenges arise.
More and more customers were coming to Pizza 4P’s. New restaurants were opened. New staff were hired. Masuko and Sanae of course cannot observe or talk to customers in store every single time.
One day in 2018, a friend of Masuko and Sanae come complain to them that “I do not see the service quality of Pizza 4P’s is as good as before”. Masuko and Sanae were startle when they realized the “Omotenashi” spirit was slowing down. Immediately, they took all the actions that they could think of to bring it back. But the results were not significant and not consistent across the network.
Thus, when Mekong Capital became partner with Pizza 4P’s, I as the Deal Leader, set high priority to help Pizza 4P’s sustainability expand the restaurant chain with “Omotenashi” spirit to be improved and elevated continuously. Together with Masuko and Sanae, customer satisfaction was our critical focus until 2019.
Our first step was to invite Chris Shayan, our Director of Business Engineering to introduce the concept of Customer Journey to the operation teams. Customer Journey is a powerful tool of visualizing the customer experience by phasing out different touch points with our customers, since they searched our restaurants online to their checkout and parking service. So, restaurant managers could see a bigger picture with systematic view of improving customer experience.
After joining such theoretical training, Masuko and Sanae were not fully convinced but they were open-minded people so they were willing to give it a go.
Then two restaurants were selected to experiment improving customer experience by applying customer journey mapping. Following customer touch points, various initiatives were implemented. Amazingly, after one month, the customer satisfaction scores in both locations had improved significantly. The Saigon Center restaurant score went up from one of the lowest to the highest.
Seeing this result, the new system was rolled out to the new network. Each restaurant launched a daily summary report to capture customer complaints or feedback so the team there could quickly response and take remedy actions accordingly. The reports were also a source of reference so restaurants could learn from each other. With this system, the team were inspired to always deliver “Wow” moments to their customers:
“ For us, customer satisfaction is the most efficient way to spread out happiness and smiles. Thus, Pizza 4P’s always try to concern and take care of every detail of the restaurant.” — said Masuko-san.

As of now, Pizza 4P’s has achieved highest ever customer satisfaction score in the past 2 years. Pizza 4P’s is constantly featured on social media and news for their innovative approach, including Inside Vietnam and Forbes Japan:

It is always about customers, for customers.
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Mekong Capital makes investments in consumer-driven businesses and adds substantial value to those companies based on its proven framework called Vision Driven Investing. Our investee companies are typically among the fastest growing companies in Vietnam’s consumer sector. For more information on Mekong Capital, please visit www.mekongcapital.com.

