Domino's turned complaints into $11B

Read time: 4 minutes

Hey there 👋 - it's Brian.

In today's issue, we'll explain how you can act on customer feedback to transform your business to be the best solution for your customer's problems.

In 2008, Domino's was losing sales every year until they listened to customer complaints and made a radical change into the largest pizza chain in the world.

Let's dive in:

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Domino's tastes like cardboard

It’s 2008 and Michigan local, Patrick Doyle, is asked to be CEO of Dominos. He quickly realizes they’re in trouble. For the past 2.5 years, sales have been rapidly declining. Customers are complaining, “the pizza tastes like cardboard.”

Then as if things aren’t bad enough…

A video leaks of 2 Dominos employees sneezing on food. Customers are outraged. Patrick needs to do something drastic or risk embarrassing himself as a failed CEO.

He needs help to turn around the customer experience.

Patrick decides to bring in a new Chief Marketing Officer for help, Russell Weiner - former VP of Marketing at Pepsi.

They realize two things need to change:1) Make the pizza taste good.2) Communicate the change so customers love the new pizza

They embraced the complaints

To do this, Russell decides to embrace the complaints. They run a campaign nicknamed “Our pizza sucks.” They read off horrible customer reviews.

Then, they let customers know - the old Dominos is dead:

“We changed everything. And now it tastes good.”

Customers love their honesty and their new pizza. Sales skyrocket.

Since Dominos made the change, their sales grew by $5 billion and they've added 25% more stores.

Dominos is now worth $11.8B... 5x the size of their rival, Papa John's.

Here are 2 lessons from Domino's epic comeback that you can take with you to transform your customer experience:

Lesson #1: Use Customer Complaints to Win

Most places ignore complaints, but Dominos used complaints to win.

The faster you can get customer feedback and iterate the better your solution will be at solving customer problems.

You have several options to customer feedback:

Online survey toolsExample: Typeform (link here)Send customers a survey to fill out to explain problems with their experience.

Customer Interviews

Reach out to your customers and offer a reward for hopping on the phone.

Rewards can be:• Gift cards (example: SendGiftCards.io)• Temporary free access to your solution• Credits

Make sure the customer sample is representative across your different customer segments (e.g., small, medium, and large businesses).

Social Media

Tesla is the largest car company in the world. Bigger than BMW, Ford, and Toyota COMBINED.

Yet, Elon Musk still addresses individual customer complaints on Twitter and fixes their problem.

If the CEO of the largest car company in the world can improve customer experience from Twitter complaints, you can too.

Customers love him for it.

Here's an example where Elon replied to a customer complaint and resolved the issue in 6 days:

Lesson #2: Customers love honest communication.

Customers will reward you for being honest.

Sales skyrocketed when Domino's told customers “our pizza is bad, so we’re changing it.”

Customers will love when you're being honest too.

Let customers know you hear their complaints and tell them how you’ll fix their experience.

Clickworthy Resources

• Newsletter: Get 1 simple framework and finance concept every Thursday (click here)• Tweet: The interview guide to better understand customer problems (click here)• Video: Domino's employees doing disgusting things to food (click here)• Video: Domino's "our pizza sucks" campaign video (click here)

Ready to act on what you learned?

Great! Get ready to transform your customer experience.

If you want help, reply to this email with "I'd love help with my growth" and I'll point you to resources. I read every email and will answer your questions in future content.

If you enjoyed it, please forward this email to friends looking to grow their business.

See ya next week,

Brian