Appetizing Communication: Improving the Food Delivery Experience

Over the past 2 years, food delivery services have become more popular than ever and are now a mainstay in the dining experience. Everywhere you look now, there’s an app built specifically to deliver food straight to the customer’s door.

Food delivery is perfect for a lot of reasons.

Perhaps you don’t want to leave the house or the office to eat. Or there are those who dislike the gathered atmosphere, surrounded by crowds they don’t know (especially during a pandemic). What better opportunity than to just order in and have breakfast, lunch, or dinner wherever you’re located?

In a recent survey, roughly 90% of people reported using food delivery in the past 90 days.

While food delivery is prospering, the customer experience is suffering largely due to miscommunication. Establishing better communication for both parties is needed to improve the food industry experience altogether.

There’s Not an App For That …

Mobile apps are convenient, and most food delivery services use an app to keep consumers up to date on their delivery, who’s driving, and what time to expect their food. But apps have their limitations.

What happens when there’s an issue with an order? Just one slip-up, and it creates a negative experience for the customer. Nearly 79% of people reported needing customer service over a delivery issue.

Some of the reasons people required customer service:

• Delivery was late
• Poor food quality
• Incorrect order
• Food never arrived
• Driver needed help

To get the best experience, customers need improved, direct communication from their restaurant or delivery service.

Sending a message through the mobile app can get missed or the customer may be unresponsive.

Regardless of who’s at fault, there are more immediate, more effective forms of communication.

Ring the Dinner Bell

Phone calls get the job done.

A lot rides on a call; how fresh the food is, for example! It’s the difference between a tasty meal and an empty stomach.

It’s no surprise, the quickest and most urgent solution is the phone call, with 93% of people wanting a call with an order issue, or when the driver needed assistance (59%).

Food For Thought

It can be difficult to provide customers with the best experience when bad communication comes to play. More than 3 in 5 people said they missed a call from their driver because it wasn’t identified properly.

One customer’s experience:

“I forgot to change the delivery address after I moved. The driver called me several times, but I didn’t answer since there are too many scam calls every day. Then the driver contacted me from his delivery platform customer service. I told the customer my new address, so the delivery took much longer than I expected.”

One bad delivery experience can cost a service their customers. Over two-thirds of consumers would switch to a service that properly identified themselves on outbound calls.

Delivering a Solution

Nobody wants to be hangry, so how can you prevent it? To ensure an answer from customers, food delivery services can brand their calls.

With First Orion’s Branded Communication solutions, your business can properly identify itself, letting customers know who’s on the line, and giving people a reason to answer their phones again.

Food Delivery Report

See what else customers are saying (and the driver’s perspective) in our 2022 Food Delivery Report.

First Orion creates mobile communication solutions that enable businesses or agencies to identify who they are and why they’re calling on your incoming call screen. Our INFORM branded text display features a customizable 32-character message. ENGAGE is a graphics-based, content-rich display, allowing companies to deliver name, numbers, logo, and colors right to their audience.