It used to take hours, a day or even a few days before a customer’s experience was shared with his/her friends and family. A bad meal or a great experience might have been discussed that evening or at work the next day. That was before the mobile phone which meant that customers could text their experience to one or two friends. Maybe even take a picture of a great dish with their camera phone.
But this limited and delayed communication is nothing compared to the speed at which hundreds or thousands of people can be updated about your experience thanks to the arrival of Facebook and Twitter.
Web-enabled Mobile Phones and PDAs have made it extremely easy to install these social media applications.
Think about what this means for your business for a second and think why every touch counts:
A customer waiting for attention from the waiter instead decides to update his Facebook Status with the message that “I’m in The Mill Pub and can’t get service. Hate that”. This message then becomes visible to the customer’s network of hundreds or thousands of friends. Could this have a negative effect on perception and even on bookings? Potentially.
A similar incident became widely publicized in the US recently when the high profile wine blogger and internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk when he attended a recent conference in Miami. His poor experience in a high profile hotel affected him so much he video blogged about it, as did a few other high profile internet folks with the result that hundreds of thousands of people learned of their experience within 24 hours. The results were huge and the hotel went into fire-fighting mode to try and offset the negative publicity.
The effects will be felt for a while because two of the bloggers posts are on the first page of Google for anyone searching for Mondrian Miami. Can you afford an impact like this? Could you survive it?
So the next time you sit down with your staff or plan your training schedule, don’t forget that every touch counts. Every time.
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Barry Chandler is Managing Director of http://www.manageyourbar.com , the complete online resource for independent bar and club owners and operators, designed to assist bar owners manage their business more effectively and provide all the tools/downloads/templates/articles for prospective bar owners to research and plan their new bar.
2 Responses to “How Every Touch Counts”
What a great read. And so true in today’s climate. It’s amazing to me just how powerful twitter and facebook have become. But of course it also can be used for ill too. Remember the line from Spiderman? Something like, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
I like the title, Every Touch Counts because with it is the notion of connecting with your customer one a personal basis that builds loyalty. That’s a focus of a company that I do work for. They recognize the power of the internet and that building loyal customers is key for restaurants to survive in this current economic climate.
Excellent post, which I found via Twitter!
Dons last blog post..infooverload: RT @sellmoremeals: Great read about how social blogging – 4example twitter – is affecting the Restaurant biz http://bit.ly/cPTEK