If you’ve owned a hospitality business for any length of time you will have dealt with customer complaints. It might be bed sheets too starchy, music too loud/too soft or dare I say it “a fly in the soup”.
The thing is if you know about it you can almost always fix it.
A heartfelt apology, a replacement or a remendy, and maybe a free coffee, choclate, or round of drinks will do wonders for most disgruntled customers.
What about when you don’t know about? When a customer has a sub-par experience with your business and you don’t find out about it.
It is estimated that for every customer complaint received, there are at least 26 complaints that are never expressed. What are the implications of this statistic? Furthermore, a customer with a complaint is likely to tell 20-25 other customers and potential customers about his complaint. Therefore, every organization needs a procedure for resolving customer complaints. Source: University of Florida
New Media – Everyone’s a Broadcaster
With the rapid growth of New Media disgruntled customers have never been more able to rapidly and passionately share their disappointment when a restaurant, hotel, or retailer fails to meet their expectations.
Meet awgmly. awgmly went out for a meal 64 days ago, and had an experience he’d rather forget.
But did he forget about? No way!
awgmly used his mobile phone and 2 free New Media websites (Twitpic and Twitter) to share his grief.
New Media tools such as blogs (powerful easy to update website), video and photosharing, and social networks allow people to be more connected and to communicate more powerfully then they have ever done before. That’s bad news if you don’t value and cultivate your brand.
Cultivate Your Brand with New Media.
Cindi Bigelow of Bigelow Teas understands the power of New Media and recently harnessed it to build her brand.
Thanks to Chris Brogan – Social Media Rockstar for sharing Cindi’s story.
New Media Brings Visitors to Byron Bay
My family and I are lucky enough to live at Byron Bay, one of the most beautiful and hospitable places on the planet. The local economy relies heavily on tourism, and so it is pleasing to share a very positive New Media story about the Byron Bay region.
Garry Schlatter is an exceptionally talented photographer who is very active in the New Media space. Gary shares his photos on Flickr (an online photosharing network), he networks with hundreds possibly thousands of people online. What is interesting about Gary is he is organsing a group of fellow photographers using an online events service to visit the Byron Bay region.
Moral of the Story – Listen Up
So we’ve seen the good and the not so good. The moral of the story is if you own a hospitality business chances are people are talking about your business in the New Media space. I found all these stories using free tools to track conversations that are important to my business, that’s part of my New Media strategy.
If you don’t have a New Media strategy to “listen” for those customers who have had a bad (or good) experience, to “share” your response and to “connect” with influencers like Gary. Then it’s something you need to think about.
Postscript
For one more example, check out this horror story as told by New Media Maven Gary Vanerchuk.
