PizzaExpress and HGEM

Their Story

PizzaExpress is an iconic casual dining company with over 360 sites across the UK (operating under the Milano brand in Ireland). PizzaExpress may feel like a modern brand, but the business has a rich and exciting history, dating back to 1965 when founder Peter Boizot threw open the doors of the first PizzaExpress on Wardour Street, Soho. With it, he revolutionised the UK restaurant scene forever, bringing casual dining to the high street.

Challenges

• PizzaExpress had a customer experience programme in place before HGEM, but it was inflexible and there was very little engagement with it from the managing teams
• The volume of feedback they were getting from the previous supplier wasn't high enough to allow for meaningful analysis
• Responding to reviews wasn't part of the culture and PizzaExpress wanted to change that

• Review Management - allowing managers to see reviews across multiple platforms in one place and to respond quickly with customisable review response templates
• Customer Complaints - integration with Zendesk was set up to trigger an alert to the customer service team when a negative feedback came through

In order to ensure manager buy-in and engagement with the new programme, we created a comprehensive internal launch and training plan, introducing the new programme gradually across several months.

The Outcome

Six months after launching with HGEM, PizzaExpress have seen their goal of transforming the culture come to life.

• Managers and operations teams are highly engaged as they can see the value having access to the data is bringing to individual sites and areas
• Feedback volume has increased by 200%
• Venues are getting 57% more reviews
• The average Google rating across sites has increased by 0.25
• The review response rate has increased from 1% to 84%

Learn more about the changes PizzaExpress implemented to drive positive change

See how you could get similar results for your business.