Or, why the customer is not always not always right.
Mom intensely dislikes ratings & review sites such as Yelp, for their uncontrolled anonymity. While I don’t always agree with her, I can definitely understand how she, working in the restaurant business, would have issues with platforms that allow for unfettered, spiteful vitriol from anyone with an axe to grind, even more so given that, for a fee, you can give your company a preferred listing, as in “may we suggest this and this alternative to the crappy review you’re currently reading” , as well as, I assume, the opportunity for paid subscribers to remove or edit poor reviews.
The same pretty much goes for any online forum; Web 2.0 is nice and all, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of permitting anyone to plant even unfounded doubts in the minds of even occasional readers, along the lines of “so, tell the court please, when did you stop beating your wife?” The reasons for bashing products or businesses can range from having a bad day over legitimate founded gripes, all the way to targeted reputation assassination campaigns, leaving the reader to make his own judgment. Again, though, even if I were an intelligent thoughtful person, if a site confronts me with a review of, say, a hotel that proclaims it to be “the worst ever”, even in the midst of otherwise glowing critiques, it might plant a seed of wariness in the back of my head — especially if otherwise equally outstanding alternatives are available. Make sense?
And yet, you can’t censor these things, because whom would we trust to decide which review is legitimate and which is not? Maybe, as with Karin’s and my visit to a well-known San Francisco restaurant, which others (whom I trust) proclaimed to be outstanding, the reviewer just happened to catch a bad day. Unlucky for the customer, unlucky for those reviewed. All the assurances that, no, really, they’re generally wonderful, don’t change the fact that we had a bad experience. Then again, maybe you’re dealing with a bad customer (for whatever reason), or even a competitor’s shill? What if it’s genuinely bad, shouldn’t it be my right to say so in a public forum if I want to?
Taking the sanctimonious moral high ground for a moment, I make it a point in my food and travel journal to only post things I genuinely enjoyed; as it’s for my own reference as well as that of friends and acquaintances, I love having reminders of good experiences. Unless someone asks me for advice regarding a specific place that I disliked for some reason, I see no point in wasting anyone’s time with rants about how bad something was. Life’s (usually) too short for pointless bile shouted out into the void.
When I feel mistreated by a company, I often try to inform them what happened. A disagreeable waiter or bellhop or secretary whose dog just died, who didn’t get enough sleep worrying about Aunt Hilda’s Haemorrhoids or who’s just genuinely a defective pissant shouldn’t have the power to sink a business; in a lot of cases, the owner may not even know that this is going on, and, I feel, ought to have a chance to rectify the situation. Unless you feel you’ve been intentionally and royally screwed, drop the management a note about it.
This was the case with the extremely gracious management of both the Kahala (then Mandarin Oriental) in Hawaii several years ago, and the Copacabana Palace in Rio during our big South America trip in 2007, this worked wonders. Both hotels were part of major holidays we’d planned for a while; we had intended them as special treats, and felt unwelcome and badly served at the hands of condescending staff. A complaint to the manager in charge and a letter to the Orient Express group, respectively, both elicited very friendly, apologetic replies, thankful that we’d informed them, and offering to bend over backwards to make good. I think we’re pretty gracious, grateful guests, so nobody was trying to weasel concessions out of big companies by being difficult, and after the responses we got to our objections, both Karin and I felt that they’d taken us seriously, would do something about the problems to help future guests avoid them, and really appreciated us as customers. Nice, eh?
All of which brings me to the point — I once read about something called the “seven friends principle”, or whatever name it goes by (there has got to be a well-known marketing term for this.) The idea was that every customer you piss off will tell seven of their friends about you, and you are likely to lose at least some of them as customers.
Let’s say you still feel treated like crap; I like this way of handling a disagreeable commercial exchange, even though it seemingly contradicts my point above about “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Tell a given number people you know how bad your encounter was, making sure to give a good reason. Granted, your point of view will always be objective, but this way you’re allowing the other people at least a chance to make up their own minds. In return, good karma dictates only paying heed to criticism that’s equally founded and justified (not just “that restaurant / movie / hotel / city” sucked.
You’ve let the other guy know that you didn’t appreciate what they gave you for your money and gave them a chance to make up. If they don’t take this at all seriously, you then voted with your wallet, and gave a limited number of your friends information that might help them avoid what you went through, all without expending any significant amount of effort in the process. The market works, and all’s well in the world.
