Online ordering for food is a great thing and it’s been a lifesaver during this pandemic. Most of the time you can pick when you’d like to pick up your food, with the earliest time being 15 minutes away. Recently, however, during the dinner rush, I’ve run into the problem that the order isn’t ready for 30 or 40 min after it was promised and I’ve ended up just standing around with a bunch of other frustrated people waiting for our orders.
The problem here isn’t the waiting, we wait for things all the time and we’re fine with it. The problem is that the expectation that was set wasn’t met. They gave me the option to ask for the order to be ready in 15 minutes and I accepted it. I expected it to be ready and it wasn’t.
Letting the earliest ask time be 15 minutes without taking into consideration how many other customers are placing online orders as well as how many people are ordering in person is the issue. Whenever I’ve had to wait, it’s been obvious that there was no possible way the food could have been ready in time, especially if everyone is expecting their order in 15 minutes.
A better way would be to adjust for the orders that have already been placed and make the earliest ask time a time in which the restaurant can have the order ready. Sure, some people would decide to go somewhere else if they don’t want to wait, but it’d be a better experience overall. It’s better to set the right expectations and meet them than over promise and under deliver.
So here’s to setting the right expectations, especially with the promises we make. It’s better to be known as someone who meets expectations rather than makes promises that are never kept.