Everyone rags on restaurants (4460)

Communications strategist Simon Salt gave a presentation to my social media class this week, and I asked him how companies are responding to customer complaints that pop up on the Internet. I wanted to know if companies could tell the difference between customers who were truly upset about a bad experience and who were complaining just for the sake of it. He said that when dealing with a whiner, ask yourself two questions:

1.    Is public complaining the only thing the person does (griping on multiple sites)?

2.    Is the problem fixable?

If it is fixable, Salt said, take the conversation out of the public forum as soon as possible.

This is probably the best that companies can do as far as battling the swing of negativity that seems to be coming more and more from the public. People seem to be reacting more negatively to customer service experiences, and I think there’s a reason.

It seems as though the more big corporations took over, the more the shopping experience became roboticized and impersonal. Sales representatives at corporate businesses didn’t remember customers’ names or greet them in any way that hadn’t been previously scripted. Customers grew to feel marginalized and powerless, so the only way to be heard was to gripe. I know from experience that the closer your relationship to the customer, the less likely they are to become upset. Corporate culture has put the customer at arm’s length and ruined the customer experience.

I’ve worked in restaurants for close to 13 years, and I’ve learned a great deal about complainers. Out of all the different jobs I’ve had, from factory worker to dishwasher, data entry and reception work, people complain in restaurants exponentially more so than they do in any other business where a customer-provider transaction occurs. Part of it is the situation. When someone arrives at a restaurant at 6 p.m., he or she has likely had a crappy, stressful day at work, and his or her blood sugar is probably rock bottom since lunchtime was five or six hours earlier. (For those of you out there who work in restaurants and don’t know: if something goes wrong, just get food on the table – give them something to snack on.) The other part of it is that complainers at restaurants are chronic restaurant complainers. It’s almost part of their personalities to complain at restaurants. I’ve been able to study this behavior pattern by working in different restaurants that are frequented by the same customers.

Combating negative comments on the Internet is a serious problem for independent restaurant owners. The restaurant business is one of the hardest in the world to succeed in on one’s own, let alone in a country whose citizens gain their power through finding a voice on the Internet. Everyone looks at restaurants online, and a majority of potential patrons decide whether or not to try one based on customers’ reviews that litter dozens of websites. This is a shame, because the customers writing the reviews are almost never credible journalists or individuals with any culinary level of expertise, and an independent restaurant can be buried by online reviews. Corporate restaurants can contact the complainers and offer coupons or free food, but small business owners can’t afford to give things away to anyone and everyone who complains.

This all goes back to Salt’s questions. Will trying to make the whiner happy even matter, and is the problem fixable? This is a great way for restaurants to approach online complaints, but what can really be done? Restaurants get caught in the undertow of the sea of customer complaints, and I’ve worked in too many that don’t have the means to handle all of them. Salt said the answer is that customer service problems must be addressed when complaints arise, but I think it’s a bigger issue than that. Simply blaming it on the front line if the battle is lost is pretty shortsighted. Blame it on the side that started the war.

I appreciate the outlet for free speech that the Internet has provided. Oppressive dictators have been ousted and countries freed because of its power. But there is a problem with anyone out there being able to say whatever they want whenever they want. Restaurant critics were best when they were trained, published, credible journalists who had experience in the culinary world. I’m not saying that someone who has a bad experience isn’t entitled to an opinion and an outlet to express it, but too many people use the Internet just to rant.

I don’t know exactly what’s going to evolve out of this situation, but it’s really unfair. Will most independent restaurants close while only the big money corporate chains and hoity-toity places survive, all just because some jerks have been given the power of a critic? Will people start ragging on companies just to see if they can get something for free? Who knows? But the next time you’re reading reviews online, think about how much you know about the people writing them. Maybe you’d be better off reading an article in an accredited online news outlet.