Once in a while, you need a nudge, a gentle reminder or a shocking experience to tell you in your face that God is in charge. Having said that, today I experienced a bizarre pizza hut experience. As weekends allow me to have breakfast slightly later, today, I had mine at about "brunch time". And so, running errands encroaching into "lunch time" did not really bother me. It was at about 2.45 pm when I decided that lunch, or "makan at Colleg tea time" would be pizza, the dependable 30-min delivery folks. As I approached the Subang toll, I made a phone call to the Pizza Hut hotline (1515hrs) and made the order of A Large Pan Beef Pepperoni Pizza with Extra Cheese, A Regular Pan Assam Laksa Pizza with Extra Cheese, 2 orders of Cheesestix and 1 large Pepsi.
You see, munchies would not let you feel hungry. So it was only at about 1630 hrs that we bothered to deal with the fact that the order has not arrived, 1 hr and 15 mins and clocl still ticking late. I called pizza hut again, and they promised that the Manager from the local branch aka Shah Alam Tesco Branch would call me to advise on the issue. Nope, nobody called, and at 1700 hrs, I called in again, this time to cancel the order. The tele-service personnel told me that the Manager would call me - which I said was not necessary, since I was only cancelling my order. But of course, when you did not need a call, a call would come. Murphy? The Manager was trying to explain that the delivery did come but nobody answered the bell. Which I told him that it is OK, there is no need to conjure up stories. Their branch is new. Previously, I have been served more than 30 times, and all orders came in the nick of time - 29 mins, like that. And I was not affected at all by the lack of lunch. Anyway, cold pizzas are no good, so they tell us.
At about 1900 hrs, after doing some errands, I decided to stop and, this time, buy pizza directly. Paid for the lot and went around to do some window shopping. The next bizarre thing happened. The assam laksa pizza, which I ordered, fell onto the floor as it was being packed. So, again it was delayed.
By the time I got home, and ate the assam laksa pizza, the family agreed that the assam laksa pizza does not taste good anymore. Maybe Pizza Hut changed the supplier for the assam paste. It is not like the first time I ate it with some Europeans during a business meeting. Even the Latinos liked it then. So Pizza Hut, get it right, please.
The long part of it is of course customer service yada yada yada is what we must put effort into. The short, God knows - it was only pizza.
Re: The Bizarre Pizza Experience
The last three times I've been to Pizza Hut, and they are all at different branches, I did not like the experiences I had there. The customer service is slow and unfriendly. I don't feel that the waiters were being trained to smile and greet their customers. They also don't seem to know very well what's on their menu or if all the items are available. I wouldn't mind if it was at a gerai, but this is a global franchise.
I hope the top management would buckle up and invest a bit more in staff trainings.
Re: The Bizarre Pizza Experience
Since my last posting, the pizza experience has been better. In particular Shah Alam pizza team was quite neat in their service. They punctually adhere to their 14 minute service standard.
MD