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If you own or run a hospitality business, and you're not monitoring your reputation via social media reviewing sites, you're missing the boat. Your customers and guests are posting opinions about you there, so if you're not paying attention, you're missing out on valuable opportunities to hear what people are saying and improve.
My favorite starting point is at Google Places because it acts as a content aggregator, where I can access reviews from multiple sites, including OpenTable, Yelp, Google, UrbanSpoon, TripAdvisor, Menuism, InsiderPages, and Yahoo. I never select a restaurant, hotel, spa, etc., without first checking it out online, and I suspect that there are increasing numbers of folks just like me.
From the hospitality business owner/manager side however, I can't stress enough the significance of monitoring these sites for feedback about your business. You can read what people think about your service, food, ambiance, facility, and many other details that you might not be paying attention to. I recently wrote a review of one restaurant that has incredible food but uncomfortable chairs, and I read another review of a restaurant where the acoustics are so poor that its impossible for a group to converse.
These are important details for patrons to note, but from the management side, this feedback is invaluable. Yes, chairs are expensive, but if they're driving away customers, it might be advisable to invest in more satisfactory replacements. And there are plenty of available options to reduce noise level within an establishment. However, you must first be aware of these perceived problems in order to rectify them.
Customers do often relay their concerns to a server, however, after working many years in this industry, I can attest to the fact that these issues are often not shared with management. Servers are busy and they often just plain forget to mention such things.
Two more significant factors to note are Yelp's features called, "Nearby," and "Monicle." People with smartphones, who are rapidly growing in numbers, can see what is close by using Monicle's gps/augmented reality feature. This is especially important for people in unfamiliar areas. You simply touch the screen and your phone's gps takes over as you rotate the phone all around to see how close "Restaurants," "Bars," and "Everything" are. From there you can go to Yelp reviews of the establishments. It's a time saver because users don't even need to enter your establishment's name. Consider the implications of this as travelers and outsiders decide where to drop in for their meals and other services. Your Yelp reviews are very significant.
One more thing to note. We all know that you can't please everybody all the time, and these review sites usually provide a business owner with the opportunity to publicly or privately respond to reviewers. Now, while I don't recommend becoming adversarial or unprofessional, you do have the opportunity to address your customers' concerns within these review sites. As is the case with all other social media, users pay just as much attention to how you deal with uncomfortable situations as they do to actual bad reviews. Are you friendly and apologetic? Did you make a genuine effort to try to rectify the situation at the time? Are you sincere in your efforts to create good will and make up for any perceived slight now?
How you handle bad reviews speaks volumes, that is, of course, if you're paying attention to what users are saying about you.
If you own or manage a hospitality business, ignoring review sites is ignoring customer feedback. At best you're demonstrating ignorance, and at worst you're demonstrating apathy. When you prove to your customers in such a public venue that you don't care about them, you're in trouble.
I recently learned the hard way that Facebook has a big loophole through which spammers can crawl within Facebook Groups.
In short, if a spammer joins a group and blocks the Group Admin, the Admin is unaware of the spam activity until it is reported by Group members, because she can't see anything that this person does. But that's only the first challenge. The bigger issue comes in when the Group Admin can no longer even see the spammer within the Group Membership roster because of the banning activity. How can one delete and block a spammer when the Admin can't even see the offender in the member list?
Here's what recently happened within a Facebook Group that I started and administer, called Social Media Brainstormers:
This Group consists of people who generally make their living doing some aspect of social media. Some are speakers, some are trainers, some manage the social media operations of a company, others are consultants, you get the picture. We're all on the higher end of this relatively new communications platform, and we don't want or need to be spammed with sales messages for the very services that most of us provide. This Group is mostly a think-tank. We share ideas, post links to interesting resources, and ask each other for help in resolving issues we encounter.
Once in a while a new member spams the Group with a sales pitch, and that member is quickly politely but firmly reprimanded by many members of the Group.
Well, as the Admin, I can't really screen members who ask to join, as I can only see their public Facebook profiles, and more often than not, there's not much information available to Everyone. A couple weeks ago, someone requested membership, and he seemed to be a legitimate social media entity who could add value to the Group. Within hours, he started spamming the Group with pitches and links to his own social media training webinars. He obviously didn't understand that his audience was as educated and qualified or more so than he was, and he didn't bother to even monitor the unfavorable comments under these posts. I deleted them and sent a private message explaining his misunderstanding and asking that he please not repeat this activity.
He didn't respond, but a couple days later, he posted 2 more spammy messages that drew the increasing wrath of several Group members because he was disrespecting our time and this special space that we had built as a private resource. I deleted his posts again and sent a stern message that this was strike two and at strike three, he was out and banned from the Group.
So what did that snake do? He blocked me personally on Facebook. Suddenly my private message to him was listed as sent to "Facebook User," and I couldn't see him in the Group membership list or any of his subsequent spammy posts to the Group Wall.
He thought he had outsmarted me, but he forgot one key fact, a Facebook block is mutual, so he could also not see my Group activity. I promptly promoted another Group member, whom I trust, to Admin status and asked my friend to block and ban this person. Mission accomplished.
Unfortunately, this loophole displays an example of Facebook not thoroughly thinking through a particular privacy action and its implications over Group operations. I can think of no situation where a Group Admin should be blocked from viewing the activity of any of her Group's members. And no member should become invisible from the Admin's sight within the membership roster.
So, now I wonder, does this occur on Pages as well? Have you encountered this situation? Have you found another solution?
Image credit: This image has been used so many times across the web, that I can't find the original source. However, the creator stated that anyone could use the image, provided that they post a link to it on the creator's site. I fulfilled the owner's original requirement, but I regret not being able to post a link back to him/her now. My apology and thanks!
Late Wednesday afternoon, a violent tornado ripped through Western MA, cutting a cruel path of destruction from Westfield to Sturbridge. It spun through downtown Springfield, mere blocks from one of my clients. All of my client's employees and others in the building at the time are safe, but there was a lot of glass damage inside and out. The parking lot was hit hard especially hard, with downed trees, branches everywhere, and smashed and overturned cars.
So, was my client, a law firm, open for business on Thursday? That was the question I had to resolve by first thing Thursday morning, as I knew the firm's clients would be looking to its popular social media channels for guidance.
I was in touch throughout Wednesday night with personnel from the firm's executive office, and at 7AM I called the managing partner at home. He shared with me that the damage was fixable, all hands would be on deck within an hour or so, and the public should be informed that, although the Springfield office was not closed for business, clients should call their attorney to check if their appointment would occur or be postponed.
With that information, I got to work on my disaster communications plan for the firm.
By the end of Thursday, the major damage had been repaired, cleanup was completed, and I was informed that the firm would return to business as usual on Friday, so I posted follow-up messages to all of the above channels.
Interestingly, traffic to those blogs and the website increased an average of about 15% since the messages were posted, so I do believe that people looked to them for information. The Twitter account was brand new, so it's impossible to gauge if that helped.
The above communications plan wasn't complex or difficult to implement, it just took a little thought and time to craft the appropriate messages. And time is of the essence. You need to have the messages available when people look for information, not 6 hours later.
So, what's your plan if disaster strikes? Your response would certainly vary by industry and organization size, and be appropriate for your particular business and the circumstances of the crisis. But have you given this any thought? How would you communicate with your business's constituency if traditional channels were impeded? Who would take responsibility? What messages would you send?
Photo credit: Kunal_Clicks
