Food eXperience Failure (FXF)

Last night, my family felt like having Chipotle, and who am I to complain? I'm (normally) a big fan.

Unfortunately, the iOS app refused to work, despite repeated attempts. Perhaps I should’ve taken that as a sign.

I switched to the web ordering system instead, and saw a promo ad indicating that delivery was free.

Well, I’m always curious to see how different customer experiences play out, so why not give it a whirl?

While waiting for the food to arrive I watch their Domino’s Pizza-like progress tracker. It indicates it’s “searching for a driver.” Hmm. Does Chipotle not have their own drivers? Ah, looks like Francis is headed to the restaurant.

Turning to Google… I see that Chipotle partners with “Uber for food” companies, like DoorDash, in order to deliver. Is this just a prototype, or the final iteration for delivery from Chipotle?

The food arrives, about 7 minutes earlier than predicted. Score!

Sidenote: Chipotle has some nice animation details for the status icons, and the playful personality they're known for. A shame that the core delivery experience has some issues.

But, poof, the “Dasher” vanishes after a quick handoff and 30 seconds later, we realize there should be another bag of food. More than half of what we’d ordered isn’t in our hands.

(sigh)

Tracking the Untracked

I call the local Chipotle, and after explaining what happened, they realize the Dasher didn’t pick up two bags, just one.

I could either call DoorDash to have them swing back to get the 2nd bag and deliver it, which is the responsibility of DoorDash in this relationship, and the way the businesses have agreed to do business. Hmm.

Or (to be clear, this was my idea, not Chipotle’s) I could just jump in my car and get it myself. I didn’t want to tempt the gods of fast casual delivery twice this night, so I opted to pick it up myself.

The Scene of the Crime

As a process/experience guy, I was curious what I’d find at the Chipotle location.

Like Panera, Chipotle has gone to providing labeled shelving where pickups are stored, separate from the in-store order line.

There are roughly seven bags. All seven bags, except one, with labels. Tiny font. Thermally printed, sketchy readability. I don’t see my name on any of them, so it must be the lucky unlabeled bag. I open up all of the items to confirm they are what I was expecting and leave.

Food eXperience Failure (FXF)

Many failure points here, none of them requiring a lot of effort to fix.

Who’s responsible for the end-to-end experience? I’d say it’s Chipotle.

If the hand-off had been smooth, I wouldn’t care. Unfortunately, the hand-off was bungled, and put me in the position of having to figure out which of the two partners were responsible.

I’d be willing to bet the DoorDasher would’ve picked up both bags if they were:

1. Tied to each other
2. Both clearly labeled as being 1 of 2 and 2 of 2, with the same name
3. Had better labeling generally

I have no knowledge of what information the Dasher is given in advance, but I suspect they weren’t told there were two bags.

Normally, Chipotle scribbles a name on every bowl for take-out, which is another chance at quality check on their end, and very convenient as the customer, making it easier to dole out the meals appropriately. Only one out of our five meals was labeled. Four were exactly the same, so perhaps they thought it didn’t matter, but to me, great experiences are consistent. And any surprises for customers should be pleasant surprises. The “personalization” of your name is a nice touch, and lost opportunity when it isn’t done.

So Many Questions

• How do both companies know that this failure occurred? Feedback loops are the foundation of maintaining a quality customer experience, and clearly, in improving it.
• Who works to smooth out these hand-offs? Is it even possible, if they aren’t capturing that there have been failures?
• For DoorDash, Dashers aren’t employees. How do they systematically spread the word to watch out for issues like this? They probably don’t, due to the hands-off nature of the relationship of the Dashers and Chipotle.
• Now that a third party for delivery has been introduced to the process of take out, you can’t expect them to guess what food should be delivered. Chipotle’s existing process hasn’t factored that in. If you’ve ordered and are picking up your own food, you would naturally double-check your order before you left the building, avoiding this problem. It still has the potential of being a problem, but is more likely to be avoided.

As much as the predictability, reliability and convenience of online ordering has improved tremendously, ironing out the complete customer experience can still be hit or miss.

If you were Chipotle or DoorDash in this example, how would you adjust the customer experience?