Good pizza, better service: Why Benoni’s Charlie’s Pizzeria won me back

Charlie’s manager Jude Hogg knows how to give customer service. Picture: Hein Kaiser Customer service is not dead. It sometimes feels that way when complaints disappear into call centres, automated responses or delivery apps.

But every now and then a business does something relatively simple that reminds you what service is supposed to look like. In this case it was Charlie’s Pizzeria in Benoni, where a badly delayed order, an apology and two replacement pizzas turned what could have been a poor first impression into a reason to go back. It started on a very cold Friday night when we decided to try somewhere new rather than ordering from one of the familiar pizza franchises.Charlie’sPizzaand Coffee Shopcame up on one of the delivery services, the menu looked interesting and we placed an order.

Then we waited. And waited. After about an hour and a half, with no food in sight, I found the restaurant’s number and called them directly to find out what had happened.

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They were extremely busy that evening, I was told and after checking the order they confirmed that the pizzas were finally going into the oven. It was not the answer I particularly wanted after waiting that long, but at least there was an answer. Eventually, close to two hours after ordering, the pizzas arrived.

The pizzas were very good. Under normal circumstances that would have been the end of it. The food was late, we eventually ate it and the next time we wanted pizza we might have gone somewhere else.

But shortly afterwards I received a WhatsApp message from Charlie’s Pizzeria apologising for the delay and offering us two pizzas on the house to make up for the experience. I was sceptical, because after all, businesses often make generous-sounding promises in the immediate aftermath of a complaint, but following through is another matter. So I left it for two days before sending a message back and asking whether the offer still stood.

The answer was yes. We could choose what we wanted from the menu, tell them when we wanted it and they would make the pizzas for us. It was less the value of two pizzas that impressed me than the fact that there was no argument about it.

There were no conditions suddenly attached to the offer, no excuse us canned explanation about why the delay. They had said they would make good on the poor experience and, two days later, that remained the case.

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