Seamless Survived Sandy With Twitter, Long Waits

If any New Yorkers ever experience a miracle this past week (other than the New York Daily News getting printed, or restaurants coming out to grill on the streets, or food trucks offering free food) it must be getting a Seamless delivery during the hurricane.

Fast Company interviewed CEO Jonathan Zabusky about how the food delivery service managed to pull through Sandy while keeping their customers happy. Long story short, they increased wait expectation times, communicated with their customers, and worked through it all.

"We rehearsed a number of scenarios ahead of time so everyone would know what to do," Zabusky told Christina Chaey.

Seamless employees, who were cross-trained in customer service even before Sandy hit, knew what to do when restaurants didn't confirm orders, or when order volumes increased drastically.

They also took some time to experiment, increasing expected delivery times when they saw orders go up, which in turn decreased complaint calls.

"In the case of certain neighborhoods with a lot of closings, we proactively raised the delivery estimates for the restaurants that were still open," Zabusky said.

Finally, they turned to Twitter to interact with customers who weren't getting their orders, prompting multiple declarations of love, even in the form of a love poem. Props all around.