If you deliver pizza, I’m sure you’d like to increase your net income. To do this, you need to do one of three things: increase tips, reduce your expenses, or improve your efficiency. This post will show you five simple ways to increase tips. Start using them on your next shift and see results immediately.
1. Call the customer before leaving the store. On the phone, confirm their order and give them an ETA. If you’re not sure exactly of the location of their house, you can find this out here. Customers appreciate this because they know when you’ll arrive and that their order will be correct. This will also save you time as you won’t have to scan addresses.
2. Establish good rapport with the customer. Use their names, comment about their house, car, whatever. If they want to talk, allow them talk and be a good listener. If they don’t want to chat, get down to business. If they have kids, joke around with the kids, ask them about their favorite kinds of pizza. Pet the dog (and assure the customer you wash your hands).
The previous two tips focus on delivering excellent customer service. In almost all cases, good service is fastest way to increase tips. However, sometimes more subtle methods are appropriate to increase tips. For example…
3. Keep coin change in your car…not in your pocket. Most customers rarely ask for coins back, and the ones who do would usually rather eat than wait on you to ‘dig the coins’ out of your car. (Dig implies their change is buried in the nether regions of your seats).
4. Return change in one dollar bills. If a customer is due just over $5 in change, always give the change back in ones. For customers,ones are easy to part with, especially when you have a lot of them. If you do have any fives, keep these hidden on the inside of your bankroll. For example, when the change is $5.45 and you give them a $5 bill rather than 5 $1s, you’ve put the customer in the awkward situation of either giving you a $5 tip or no tip at all (well, $0.45).
Violate this rule and you’ll get the tip you deserve (hint: it isn’t a fiver)
5. For credit card receipts, indicate all fields with a yellow highlighter: tip, total, and signature. At the door, ask the customer to ‘fill out the form’ rather than just sign it. Many customers are oblivious or willfully ignorant that they can add a tip to their credit card order. Using a highlighter makes this pretty obvious.
These are just a few of the simple techniques you’ll learn in Pizza Confidential. If you’d like to learn more techniques that will turn you into a pizza delivery ninja, click here.