How Slice encourages customer reorders with Twilio SendGrid and Twilo Segment

With traditional recipes hand-made with care, pizza just tastes better from your mom and pop shop. Part of the charm, but not always great for business—many local pizzerias still take orders with a landline and paper. Often, they don’t have the same resources as large chains like Domino’s, where 75% of orders are made online.

When customers have the option to order a pizza in just a few clicks, convenience often outweighs tradition. Witnessing this conundrum first hand among family pizza shops in New York City, Slice was born. Slice believes that anyone should be able to turn their passion into a profitable business—regardless of resources. This is why the pizza marketplace app provides more than 16,000 independent pizzerias with the digital tools they need to thrive in their communities.

Through its accessible marketplace, Slice links millions of consumers to nearby shops. The platform makes online ordering simple and engaging for end-customers, ultimately driving revenue for its partners so they can compete with large enterprises.

Transforming customer experience

“You can think of us as a reverse franchise for pizza shops,” said Cara, Slice’s Director of Content Marketing. “They’re in business for themselves, but not by themselves. We give them the digital tools they need to get business they would potentially miss out on without online ordering.”

Once customers place an order through Slice, the platform must dispatch timely order confirmations to keep them up to speed. When Slice first launched, its customer support team manually called in every order to pizza shops. Slice needed to automate its order confirmation at scale, Boban Ljubinoski, Sr. Product Manager at Slice, explained. “Before Twilio, we were the customer support machine. It just wasn’t scalable,” he said.

Slice chose Twilio Programmable Voice to build a channel for customers to click-to-call in orders on its website and app, and Twilio Programmable Messaging and SendGrid Email API to immediately notify customers with order confirmations via text and email.

With Twilio Programmable Messaging, Slice reaches customers directly with one-to-one communication. Automated texts trigger to alert customers about delays, and Slice’s support agents use two-way texting to troubleshoot any issues that arise for restaurants, customers, and drivers. Slice can also easily send text message promotion text promotions at scale to help customers take advantage of pizza deals. Adding a texting channel has enabled Slice to achieve its highest customer satisfaction levels yet.

Using Twilio SendGrid Email API, Slice sends email digests that recap how much money customers have saved ordering through the platform. Customers see first-hand how their dollars have supported local businesses over time.

Operational efficiency is among the strongest impacts of adopting Twilio’s platform, added Ljubinoski. “Twilio has automated our entire workflow, and we can manage way more orders with less people,” he said. “The scalability and reliability of Twilio’s platform has been really great over time.”

Order confirmations are now dispatched to customers within two minutes, a 60% decrease from the 5+ minutes it took customer support to manually place orders. Slice has also achieved a 200% reduction in customer support headcount, all the while its order volume has doubled.

Encouraging customers to order a second slice

Digitally accelerating mom and pop pizza shops