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How Pieology Scores a Four-Star Service Rating

James Hilovsky is Vice President of Operations for MK Investments LLC, which owns 11 Pieology stores in California, Minnesota and Texas.

Pizza is a universal crowd pleaser. But even the most beloved pizza restaurants get the occasional bad review. In a perfect world, a frustrated or dissatisfied customer will let the server or manager know about a problem so it can be remedied in real-time.  

Sometimes, though, customers don’t voice complaints while in the restaurant and instead choose to air issues on public forums. While some review sites allow business owners to reach out to disgruntled customers and attempt to smooth things over, it can take days or weeks for this kind of communication to take place. In the meantime, potential customers see the negative review and might choose to take their business elsewhere.

 Managing our businesses’ reputation is always top of mind for MK Investments, which operates 11 Pieology franchises throughout California, Minnesota and Texas. And we also needed to be able to collect customer contacts for email campaigns. My team had cooked up some great promos, but customers didn’t know about them unless they were receiving our marketing emails. 

We  tried using a loyalty app linked to a Wi-Fi platform, but the app wasn’t built for collecting emails, and the email marketing functionality was hard to use. So, we set out to find a single product that could handle reputation management, content collection and email marketing. Having one tool to rule them all would make it easier for marketing and reputation management across all locations.

We knew we needed to find a platform that would perform equally well in every location and give staff real-time feedback that would allow them to correct customer service issues on the spot.

Zenreach offered everything we were looking for and more. We can send out special offers and keep detailed track of redemptions. 

About the Author

What was your first job? 

A waiter at a fine-dining restaurant.

Who inspires you?

Any coach but especially John Wooden.

What are your hobbies? 

Traveling to watch my kids play sports. My daughter plays water polo at Indiana University and my son plays lacrosse.

What are the technologies you can’t live without? 

My phone and email.

What is one other job that you would like to try? 

I would love to be a recruiter.

If you could invite any 3 people to lunch, who would it be?  

Jesus, John Wooden and Don Shula.

RESULTS, DELIVERED 

Switching Wi-Fi marketing platforms was simple and didn’t disrupt operations. 

Now my team is able to stay more connected to customers’ experiences.  We’re able to invite feedback from customers, which means the team can remedy any missteps before they become negative reviews. At the same time, positive experiences can be channeled to influential review sites. In less than a year, Pieology received 288 total reviews within Zenreach, earning the equivalent of a 4.6 rating. We’ve also been able to intercept 51 potential negative reviews with ratings between one and three stars. More than 13,000 contacts were added in the first 10 months of using Zenreach. 

The “2 for $12” Tuesday promotion has also seen a sharp increase in interest. The redemption rate has been as high as 71%, and our Tuesday sales are up 35 to 40% over prior years. Another great result is a 73% walk-through rate on customer emails. This stat measures when someone receives an email and visits the restaurants within seven days. It’s one of the best ways to connect in-store results with digital marketing. 

 

 

Photo by Kristina Bratko on Unsplash

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