Imagine you arrive at your hotel after a long day of travel. You took a 6am flight to make a 10am meeting several states over. You’re immediately “on” as soon as you touch down. That meeting concludes, and you’re off to make a lunch meeting, where you do more talking and less eating—trying to land a potential client. You have a few calls to make before a 3 pm meeting and drinks with a current client you’re hoping will increase the fee for next year’s scope of work. And once you finally get to your hotel room around 6 pm, you’re exhausted.
You’re done smiling for the day. Done making small talk. Done being “on.” You just want to order some delivery and call it a night. So, you go to the app of your “go-to” online food delivery service, find your favorite restaurant in town, and place your order. The delivery fee is absurd, but you know what? It’s been a long day, and you deserve to treat yourself. So, you do. After the 35-minute wait, for what was supposed to be only 20 minutes, your food arrives, and part of your order is missing. WTF.
I can hardly count how many times I’ve experienced this. Missing soda. Wrong order. No utensils. You name it. But this most recent incident got me wondering: why would a brand outsource its experience like this?
I mean, when my order is incomplete, I don’t get upset with the delivery service; the locus of my frustration is typically aimed at the restaurant. I might be annoyed with fill-in-the-blank mobile app, but my disappointment is reserved for the restaurant. It’s who I ordered from, after all. The app is just the middleman. So, naturally, it’s only fitting that the restaurant would get the brunt of my fury. Save for the egregious experiences like the time when a Grubhub driver stole my food. And when I reported it to customer service, their initial response was to insinuate that I was lying. Thankfully, I had security cameras to provide evidence, which I had to submit to GrubHub to get my $35 refunded, despite how often we’ve ordered takeout on the app over the last 15 years. I mean, really, GrubHub? Did it really have to come to this? Really?! But I digress.
Much of our angst when things go wrong with our delivery experience is directed at the restaurant, not at the app. What makes matters worse is that no matter how specialized the food preparation is or how much care was put into making it, the experience is parity once the order is transferred over to the carrier. Just think of it this way: would you want the experience of buying a Rolex to feel the same as buying a Timex? Of course, not. Now, that’s no shade to Timex. I wear a Timex practically every day. Instead, however, it’s an illustration of what we know intuitively – premium products require a distinctive experience. Likewise, however, the manner in which a Wendy’s combo meal is being delivered is the same manner in which your brand’s $17 artisanal salad makes its way to my doorstep. People are having the EXACT same experience. That doesn’t make sense, but yet here we are.
Would you ever style an artisanal salad joint in the experiential aesthetic of a traditional QSR? No, never. Any marketer worth their weight in salt would tell you so. That’s why all the touch points in the salad shop are so meticulously curated. We want the environment to signal quality, so that those cognitions are then transferred over to the brand and its food. Nevertheless, we still opt for a ubiquitous delivery mechanism whose experience is undifferentiated. Why? Because it’s more cost-effective? More efficient? Sure, but at what cost?
Here’s a thought. What if there were a “white gloved” delivery service? Something like an Uber Black card that happens on the backend, not the frontend. Something that the restaurants opt into based on the experience they want to provide their customers. One that won’t forget the soda. One that won’t forget parts of your order. One that will not only bring the utensils but perhaps even bring you a special gift as a token of appreciation, considering you’ve ordered from this place so often. That would be something, right? The technology already exists to do it. The data is already available to make it happen. We already pay ridiculous service fees. The only thing that’s missing is the will to do it.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author, Marcus Collins – best-selling author of For The Culture and clinical professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan – and do not necessarily reflect the views of Brand Innovators.
