Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Aaron Franklin
“what makes you think people want to hear your reviews? Did you just figure out that specials are more expensive than regular menu items. That’s why they are SPECIAL you ignoramous! Knock knock….. nobody cares!”
I recently received this message on yelp from a new, anonymous account. It is directly tied to an overwhelmingly positive review of one my favorite restaurants, responding to feedback that their servers should share the prices of specials because they are significantly (over 40%) more expensive than regular menu items. For the purposes of this post, let’s assume this message came from someone who works at the restaurant. While I can’t prove the message’s origins, who else would care enough to go through the trouble of creating a new account to send me this message?
What this person didn’t realize is that people do care what I have to say. This article will reach thousands in the Seattle area, and if I chose to share the name of the business, they would be very embarrassed. The reason I write reviews on yelp is that people do care – and I hope the businesses care, too. All I got from this message was that someone at the business doesn’t care about or respect their customers, and that the owners of the business don’t have a good social media policy.
Whereas one customer may not have been important in the past, any customer can now make or break a business. And because every employee now has the opportunity to interact with customers, any employee can make or break a business too. A restaurant may recognize a food critic from the New York Times, but they won’t recognize a food blogger or influential yelper. So now they have to treat everyone like the ‘professional’ food critic. They also need to train every employee to provide the best possible service. This is great progress for both consumers, who are treated better as a whole, and businesses, whose investments in engaging customers will translate to brand loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing. Businesses that don’t recognize the shift towards quality will fail.
Every time someone connects with your brand you have a marketing opportunity. One of my clients, KlearKase, took the opportunity to engage every customer possible and exceed their expectations. As a result, customers began to passionately recommend the brand and not just the product. Many posted reviews and forum messages just to rave about their customer service experience. In one instance, when a soldier deploying to Afghanistan asked for expedited shipping, we also sent him a second KlearKase and thanked him for his service – he was so impressed he posted his experience on reddit, which received thousands of page views.
Thanks to the internet and review sites like Yelp, quality is finally more important than marketing dollars. Quality includes both the quality of the product, and the quality of customers’ interactions with the brand. All businesses – online and offline – need to take advantage of the opportunity the internet provides to win loyal customers. At the core is a strong social media strategy, and that strategy needs to be communicated to all employees. You can have the best marketing and social media strategy in the world, but it only takes one careless employee to ruin the whole thing.
Do you have a quality product and customer engagement strategy? Have you shared your social media strategy with all your employees? For anyone interested in the power of customer service, I highly recommend Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos).
