Press Release Details

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Feb 19, 2002 - Domino's Pizza LLC, the recognized world leader in pizza delivery, rocketed up the rankings of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), released today.

The ACSI, conducted by the University of Michigan Business School and the National Quality Research Center, surveys American consumers on a variety of topics related to their experiences with quick service restaurant chains. Topics covered include overall Customer Satisfaction, Customer Expectations, Perceived Quality (product and service), Perceived Value, Customer Complaints, Customer Loyalty and Customer Retention.

Domino's Pizza LLC improved in all categories and show the single greatest year-over-year improvement of all QSR chains studied. Domino's improvement rate from 2000 (5.8%) is more than four times better than the industry, which saw a 1.4% improvement in customer satisfaction overall. Domino's now ranks second of the 10 biggest QSR chains in terms of customer satisfaction.

Domino's Pizza, which ranked sixth in 1999 and 2000, saw its overall score improve 9.0% in the past two years. That improvement level also ranks as the single best improvement since the survey began in 1994.

"We're pleased that this confirms that we've been making progress in improving all areas of our business, especially as they related to having a direct impact on what our customers experience," said Mike Soignet, Domino's Executive Vice President - Maintain High Standards. "In the past few years, we've greatly enhanced our store audit program, focusing on the essential elements that impact the customer, from the pizza we make to the delivery service we provide.

"We've found that stores that consistently make great pizzas and deliver them with exceptional service out-perform stores that don't, in terms of sales, profits and team member retention," Soignet continued. "We don't think that's a coincidence. We worked to establish the right standards for our stores; we created high quality measurement tools; and we've worked to improve our performance against those standards. Seeing that external measures such as the ACSI confirm our internal findings is gratifying, and motivates us to continue to improve."

To create the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan, in partnership with the American Society for Quality and the CFI Group conducts telephone surveys with about 16,000 customers of the companies being surveyed that quarter.

Each year, that amounts to about 65,000 customers of products from about 190 companies and 70 government agencies. Sales of the measured companies constitute 30% to 40% of the U.S. gross domestic product.

Companies are scored on a scale of 0 to 100. Industry indexes are constructed with company indexes, weighted by the sales of each company. The national index is made up of the industry indexes, weighted by their contribution to GDP.

Different sectors are updated each quarter, so the entire index is fully updated each year. Customers are quizzed about their expectations and their perceptions of value and quality in the services they have purchased; for manufactured goods, retail stores and fast-food, quality is broken down into measures of the product and the service accompanying the product. These are translated through computer models into overall customer-satisfaction scores, which are used to predict customer loyalty.

Founded in 1960, Domino's Pizza operates a network of 7,112 Company-owned and franchised stores in more than 60 markets around the world. Domino's Pizza in 2001 selected the Make-A-Wish Foundation, based in Phoenix, Arizona, as its primary philanthropic partner.