Yesterday, I wrote about the customer service issue that Cammi Pham experienced with  Canadian pizza retailer Pizza Pizza. Here’s Pizza Pizza’s response:

Good Afternoon Ron,
We’ve read your blog in regards to the social media driven, customer service issue. This customer’s complaint was handled immediately, complying several hours in advance of our 24 hour response guarantee.  At this point, we are not able to release any further information with regards to this, as we take customer confidentiality very seriously. If there are any other issues directly pertaining to yourself that you would like to discuss we are open to chatting live. Thank you .

Pizza Pizza didn’t just fail to deliver a pizza to a hungry customer. They failed (and continue to fail) with their social media efforts, especially when compared to their competition. Here’s why:

No one wants to speak to a corporation.
Pizza Nova’s Twitter account is @PizzaNovaGuy. Whether it’s one person actually managing the stream or not, it certainly feels like it is. Pizza Pizza, on the other hand, tweets from the account @PizzaPizzaLtd. Yech. People like connecting with people. With corporations? Not so much. And the numbers prove it. Pizza Pizza has 587 more locations than Pizza Nova but close to 500 fewer followers.

Deals! Offers! Let’s talk about us!
One of the most common mistakes big brands make is using social media as a one-way bugle that provides a never-ending and piercing stream of infomercial-like offers, deals and promotions. On both Twitter and Facebook, Pizza Pizza excels at this. SM isn’t a commercial. It’s an operational service that listens, responds and keeps people interested and engaged. I’m getting tired of hearing it and saying it but clearly, this critical point still needs to be communicated.

We’ll deliver a response in 24 hours… or it’s free.
As noted above, Pizza Pizza gives themselves 24 hours to respond to a customer complaint. So, they can prepare, cook and deliver a pizza in under an hour but can’t respond to a complaint in less than 24? In the fast pace world of SM, that can be too long. I imagine (but can’t confirm) that Pizza Pizza’s community is managed by someone at their head office even though the bulk of their sales come after 6pm. If they serve their customers after normal work hours, they should respond to them then, too.

Focus
PIzza Nova doesn’t seem to maintain a Facebook presence at all. That’s a good thing. Facebook has proven be an unbelievable platform  for brands but only when they have the resources to manage it. I’d rather a brand choose a platform that works for them and focus their time and energy into doing a good job there. To quote Steam Whistle, “Do one thing really, really well.”

Personality.
Let’s face it, pizza is a fun, easy and fast food. We don’t tuck linen napkins into our shirts when enjoying it and most of us want communications that are consistent with this. Take a look at this tweet from @PizzaNovaGuy:

Almost 25% of Pizza Pizza’s July tweets were template responses that seemed to be written by their legal department. And knowing what I know about large organizations, they probably were.

Clearly, people love the Pizza Nova brand. Of their 36 Tweets in the month of July, 29 were actually unprompted positive comments retweeted from other users. It’s amazing how easy social media can be when other people do the work for you.

Judging by the numerous complaints to @PizzaPizzaLtd, the passion for Pizza Pizza isn’t as strong. I think their social media process has a lot to do with that.

But it’s not the only thing.

As a huge organization, Pizza Pizza has a more difficult job. They have more drivers to keep in line, more locations to quality control and a ton more pizzas to deliver. They’re bound to make more mistakes. They have to dedicate more resources, provide more training and instill a culture of service from top to bottom.

Clearly, they have potential and hopefully, they can turn it around. They’re a successful organization, they have a great mobile app, and they do a lot of good for the communities they work in. They do have over 80,000 Facebook fans (which I guess is impressive) but as we all know, that doesn’t really indicate true engagement.

Get with it, Pizza Pizza. You’re an institution. I’d just prefer you didn’t act like one.

UPDATE: Here’s another Pizza fail.