Pizza Hut uses data analytics to optimize delivery during lockdown

Pizza Hut is using advanced analytics to optimise online sales during the lockdown when all its restaurants are closed.

Speaking at last week’s Retail Expo virtual event, Tristan Burns, analytics lead for Pizza Hut Digital Ventures (PHDV), described how the company’s e-commerce arm interrogates data to reduce friction for customers without decreasing the value of their online orders.

The digital ventures arm of the company works across Pizza Hut, which is organised on a national franchise basis.

He cautioned peers not to overdraw lessons from the current coronavirus crisis, and said customer behaviour at present might indicate some trends that might hold validity for the future, but it was too hard to be sure of that.

According to him the current pandemic, from a conversion optimisation perspective, had created an abnormal situation that must be carefully watched. In the UK, the restaurants are closed and customer collection is not available, but pizza delivery is still happening. All transactions are therefore online, and all are distributed by contact-free delivery, not collection.

“It is hard to say, but it is unlikely that things will go back to exactly normal, with the same ratios of collection versus delivery as before or as now,” shared Burns by adding that if you have to optimise in the short term for coronavirus, then do use your current data, but if you are thinking more long term, I would be careful not to look too deeply into the current data about customer behaviours.