Domino's looks to the future of digital innovations
At the Company’s inaugural Tech Series Event Abacus in Sydney, Domino's revealed its digital innovations for the next couple of months aiming to offer customers never before seen tech convenience.
With a number of innovations set to be released in the coming months and being cooked up behind the scenes, Group CEO and Managing Director Don Meij and Group Chief Digital Officer Michael Gillespie shared the journey, the challenges and the customer benefits of technology currently being developed by the nation's pizza and technology company.
See below a summary of the ten innovations shared by Domino’s at the Abacus Tech Series:
On Time Cooking – With Domino’s On-Time Cooking, customers will now be able to opt-in to the service to ensure their local store starts making their order only when they are close to their store. Only when the customer shares their location and travel method with Domino’s, will the store use Geo-Location technology, alongside in store data, to commence making an order when a customer has entered the Cook Zone. The Cook Zone is a dynamically updated virtual zone around the store that represents the current store lead time. Domino’s On-Time Cooking means that regardless of being held up or stuck in traffic, pick up customers receive hotter, fresher pizza right out of the oven, every time.
Domino’s New Live Pizza Tracker - In 2006 Domino’s brought the world the first ever Live Pizza Tracker, allowing customers to track every stage of their pizza order in real time. Over time the Domino’s Live Pizza Tracker has been refined and had elements added, such as GPS Driver Tracker, all set to enhance the customer experience and give them back their time.
Estimated Delivery Time - The latest addition to the Pizza Tracker experience is Estimated Delivery time. Estimated Delivery Time provides customers with a clear and accurate estimated time for their delivery. This is made possible due to a combination of GPS Driver Tracker and store operation data. These two elements allow Domino’s to provide customers a new level of insight, more visibility and more convenience around their order never before seen.
Zero Click - Recently Domino’s has brought to market a range of platforms that make ordering faster and more convenient than ever before and set new benchmarks for the industry. Now in as little as four clicks on a screen, an SMS or a tap on an Apple Watch you can place a Domino’s Order. With the launch of Zero Click in the coming months, Domino’s is taking this one step further. Zero Click Ordering is set to be the easiest way to order pizza in Australia and allows customers to simply open the app and the order is complete.
Project 3/10 – GPS Driver Tracker started as a driver safety initiative but the insights it has provided Domino’s extends further than just the delivery side of the business. It began the Company’s new philosophy of, ‘Slow Where It Matters, Fast Where It Counts.’ The core idea behind the philosophy is to ensure that staff are slow in taking the time to make the pizza correctly, spending time with the customers and providing excellent service but fast in the improved hustle and service times and streamline operational procedures to crunch seconds off the clock, made possible due to Domino’s time crunching technology developments.
Domino’s Data – For over 10 years, the Company has offered online ordering and over that time has carefully refined what data is captured with an end goal of improving the customer’s overall experience. Due to a new targeting system created in house by Domino’s, the Company is now focused on delivering more personal and relevant content to customers to ensure its tailoring customer orders like never before.
One Digital & the Domino’s Global Market - The digital systems developed here in Australia are now in five other Domino’s markets, soon to be seven. As an Australian company Domino’s is extremely proud to be developing customer-facing digital technology solutions in Belgium, France, New Zealand, The Netherlands and soon Japan and Germany. The ability to export technology and innovation globally means global learnings are applied to future developments as technology is tested and implemented across its seven markets. The benefit to the customer means the development is accelerated – bigger, better and faster.
Europe Tracker – When developing technology for global markets, Domino’s faces different challenges and needs to find ways of transferring innovative ideas to comply with regulation. A good example of this is GPS Driver Tracker in Europe. Regulations prevent the Company from showing exactly where the driver is and their name. This provided a challenge on how Domino’s can retain the core benefit of being able to track their order from the store to the door but also comply with the law. The solution, to build a visual experience that shows a delivery driver leaving a store and arriving at a house. The customer will be able to see when the driver has stopped and also how close the driver is to their house. Some Domino’s innovations change regulation, others help inform and others need problem solving around regulations already in place.
Domino’s Robotic Unit (DRU) – Since the launch of the world’s first autonomous delivery vehicle (DRU) in March, Domino’s has been busy doing customer trials with DRU, giving him better vision and working closely with the relevant regulators in this space.
The future of AI at Domino’s - The development of DRU has only just started for Domino’s with him set to embody a bigger, more holistic Artificial Intelligence (AI) role in the Company. All AI interaction Domino’s customers are set to experience with Domino’s will be with DRU as he takes up residence at the pizza headquarters. In fact, most people’s first experience with DRU will not be via the delivery unit, it will be through Online Ordering as we work to add voice AI to online ordering platforms to help customers place an order.
