Ok, I swore in a post three years ago that we would never eat at Pizza Hut again. But that didn’t last very long. In fact, it lasted maybe a week. It’s just that we have this Pizza Friday tradition and Pizza Hut’s pizza is way better than say Papa Johns or Domino’s and Happy Joe’s and Godfathers are pretty expensive. The kids don’t care that Pizza Hut can’t seem to get orders right. They’re hungry for pizza and they want it now. So we quickly gave in and started ordering pizza from Pizza Hut again.

Our relationship was going well for a while. Faithfully, Lee would call every Friday night. And they would diligently bring us our hot pies and bread sticks. Sometimes they even brought us a bottle of soda [although I never could convince them to stop at the convenience store and pick us up some milk].

That all changed a couple weeks ago.

My dad, brother and sister were in town for our family picnic. I made some festive red, white and blue fruit dishes for dinner and decided we needed somebody to share them with, so I invited them over for dinner. We were planning on grilling, but my sister was craving pizza. They tried to get pizza the night before, but apparently pizza places don’t deliver after 11pm. Who knew?

So we packed up the burgers and instead ordered pizza from Pizza Hut. We usually go with this deal where you get two large pizzas and an order of bread sticks. But we had extra mouths to feed so we added an extra pizza and an extra order of bread sticks to that order. We decided to upgrade the bread sticks to cheesy sticks so Lee informed them we would pay the extra to upgrade and then add a second order. All was good.

Then the pizza’s arrived. We opened up the boxes and began to devour the pies. We were half way through dinner when we opened the second box of bread sticks. What did we find? Regular bread sticks. Not cheesy sticks.

No big deal. We’ll just cal them to let them know they screwed up. All will be fine.

So Lee called, asked for the manager and said, “I ordered two orders of cheesy sticks, but I got one order of cheesy and one regular.”

The manager responded, “Ok. What do you want me to do about it?” And he said it like he so didn’t care and he couldn’t believe we even had the call to complain about something like that. Good customer service. And as you know, we been having some issues with bad customer service these days.

Lee was pissed. It’s not our job to tell the manager what we want him to do about it. He should already know. He should be apologizing and either offering to run out a hot box of cheesy sticks immediately or asking to credit our account for next time. It doesn’t say Pizza Hut on my paychecks. That’s not my job.

So Lee said, “Well I’d like you to fix it. Why would I pay extra to upgrade to cheesy sticks in the deal and then order a side order of regular bread sticks? Does that even make sense to you?”

The manager offered to bring us some new cheesy sticks, “but it will take about 45 minutes.” Dude, how long have you been in this management position? Where were you the day they told you when you screw up bend over backwards to make it right because angry customers are not repeat customers?

Lee replied, “Why would I expect anything less?” in his best “you’re a complete jackass” voice.

So about 45 minutes later, when we were completely done with our meal, a driver brought us new cheesy sticks which I’m sure they also spit on or dropped on the floor and stomped on. Yum!

Lee was livid. He scoured the internet for the name of the Pizza Hut CEO. Emails to CEOs have worked for us in the past. I don’t know what he found, but he sent off a scathing email. He felt better and we promptly forgot about it.

Then last week we got a form letter in the mail. It was nice as far as form letters go. It said,

Thank you for taking your time to inform Pizza Hut of your experience. Rest assured Pizza Hut is dedicated to providing exceptional service and great food. It always concerns us when we do not live up to our customer’s expectations.

As a token of our appreciation, please accept the enclosed coupon for use at a Pizza Hut location of your choice. Again, we greatly appreciate your concerns and will make every effort to rectify the situation.

So we got a coupon for a free pizza. Which is nice, but we can’t use with any other coupon so it’s not like a rock solid apology. But I applaud the effort.

But then, a couple days later, we got another letter in the mail. This also was a form letter. But there was also a handwritten note at the bottom. From the Area General Manager. This letter included her phone number so we could call if we had any further complaints. This handwritten part read,

I agree - utterly ridiculous! Please let me apologize for their rudeness! Have 2 free pizza on me!

And then I fell in love with Pizza Hut again [because I'm easy like that].

It’s not about the two free pizzas [although we love the two free pizzas with no strings attached]. It’s about the handwritten note. It was about the real apology. It was about the feeling that somebody actually felt our frustration and wanted to make it better. That’s what real customer service is all about. And I really appreciate it. We’re now eating at Pizza Hut again.

If only Best Buy would get a clue.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 6:57 pm and is filed under A day in our life. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.