5 Things to Consider When Providing Delivery Service

As in every business, the main goal in food and beverage businesses is to maintain their operations. The continuation of businesses' operations is achieved through customer satisfaction. Businesses can achieve continuity to the extent that they provide customer satisfaction. In the food and beverage sector, it can be quite difficult to provide this satisfaction compared to other sectors due to many reasons. Customers may make complaints as a result of the dissatisfaction they have experienced. The coronavirus has negatively affected food and beverage businesses just like other businesses. The measures taken to prevent the spread of the pandemic caused the sector to experience a major crisis.

As of March 21, 2020, Turkey banned consumers from sitting at establishments to protect citizens from Covid-19 and requested food and beverage businesses to continue their operations by providing take-away and delivery service. As a result, individuals who wanted to meet their need to eat out preferred delivery service. During this process, customers who were not satisfied with the service they received expressed their complaints both verbally and online. It is very important for both the customer and the business that food and beverage businesses respond quickly to these complaints and resolve them. If food and beverage businesses are more careful and attentive about customer complaints, they can create a loyal customer profile and increase their customer potential. Therefore, they need to pay attention to some points when providing delivery service.

• Customer satisfaction
• Businesses providing delivery service
• Delivery service features

Delivery Services

Delivery service term was first used in 1962. Delivery service is recorded as the division of labor in the internet network that communicates between seller and buyer through smart communication tools in the online environment with internet e-intermediaries or internet intermediaries of food and beverage businesses' information and menus. Businesses can also provide delivery service to their customers by phone. Turkey's first and largest delivery portal is yemeksepeti, which was founded in 2001 and has a 99% market share. Food and beverage businesses offer delivery service to customers in order to increase their sales. In addition, factors such as promoting and advertising the business, responding to customer expectations and demands, gaining new customers, being able to exist in a competitive environment, strengthening the business image, and keeping up with technological developments are also among the reasons for businesses to provide delivery service.

Advantages of Delivery Service

There are advantages of delivery service. These can be listed as follows:

• Delivery service provides more access to customers. Without being limited to the restaurant's physical location, it can serve customers in different areas nearby. In this way, it expands the customer base and increases the chance of attracting potential customers.
• Delivery service offers the potential to increase the business's revenue. The restaurant can reach more customers by sending food to homes, workplaces, or events through delivery service, not just to customers eating inside. In this way, it increases sales and offers an effective way to increase revenue.
• Offering delivery service increases customer satisfaction. Customers can easily order food at their homes or preferred locations instead of eating out. This saves them time and effort. By providing fast and reliable delivery service to customers, it meets their expectations and provides them with a positive experience.
• Businesses offering delivery service gain an advantage in competition. Customers may prefer the option of ordering food at home or office. Therefore, businesses offering delivery service differentiate themselves from their competitors by responding to customer demands and increase the likelihood of being preferred.
• Delivery service increases the business's brand awareness. Brand promotion can be done by adding the business's logo or information to order packages. This helps customers remember the brand and increases the likelihood of ordering again or recommending it to others.

As a result, delivery service provides many advantages for businesses. Factors such as a wide customer base, revenue increase, customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, and brand awareness are the important advantages that delivery service provides to the business. Businesses can benefit from these advantages by implementing their delivery service strategies correctly.

Things to Consider When Providing Delivery Service

Businesses providing delivery service are businesses that offer services for customers to easily pick up and receive food, beverages, or other products. Examples of these businesses include restaurants, cafes, markets, or private courier companies. Delivery service businesses enable customers to order the products they want by phone or over the internet. After the order is received, business personnel prepare the products and package them in special packages. Then, couriers are assigned to deliver them to the customer quickly and safely. Delivery service businesses are also very important for the food industry. Restaurants can reach a wider customer base by offering delivery service. On the other hand, delivery service can also play an important role in extraordinary situations such as pandemics because customers are encouraged to stay at home instead of eating out.

So, what are the things to consider when providing delivery service? Restaurant operators want to increase their profits by implementing delivery services in this competitive environment. Therefore, businesses should not ignore the issues that need to be considered when providing delivery service. There are some important tips for delivery service. First, businesses should answer the following questions:

• Is there a balance between table, delivery, and take-away customers?
• What is the price expectation of the customer being served at the table?
• What are the marketing channels?
• Have you done competitor and area research?
• Can the return on investment be measured?

The issues to be considered when providing delivery service are as follows:

1. Quality and Fast Service: An order arriving wrong and incomplete or food arriving cold are among the most unwanted situations by customers regarding delivery service. If you want to ensure customer satisfaction, you need to pay close attention to this. Especially, the most important way to solve this problem that restaurants far from their areas experience is not to accept orders from far away from your area.
2. Friendly Attitude and Trust: Another way to ensure customer satisfaction when providing delivery service is to present the service nicely. That is, your delivery person needs to act in a friendly and sincere manner. A wrong or cold attitude can cause you to lose customers. Therefore, attention needs to be paid to these behaviors. On the other hand, your delivery person being constantly in traffic and ensuring their safety is also very important. Service provided without a helmet or without following traffic rules completely eliminates the feeling of trust.
3. Packaging and Wrapping: Another situation that customers complain about is the poor packaging of delivery service. Crushed and hard-to-open packages are small but important factors that affect customer satisfaction. Therefore, when packaging and wrapping, proper, hygienic, and easy-to-open service methods should be preferred.
4. Importance of Campaigns: You can offer small but effective campaigns to your customers to not lose them. Thus, you can ensure that your customers don't give up on you with campaigns. Customer satisfaction built in delivery service allows businesses to gain loyal customers. For example, you have a kebab restaurant. While offering this to your customers, you can increase your customer satisfaction by adding ezme, drinks, and other small products alongside the kebab. On the other hand, don't forget to update your restaurant's website. Your contact information should always be correct and customers should be able to reach you easily. In addition to your website and social media accounts, you can prepare brochures and refrigerator magnets. Within your advertising budget, you can also place ads in digital or print/visual media.

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