Do you remember the old 1 and 10 rule? You know every time 1 person has a bad customer experience they will tell 10 people about it, so technically 10 people might as well have had the bad experience. Well let me tell you a quick story about an experience I had in a restaurant recently.
I was sitting in a local campus hangout having lunch and in the booth behind me were two female college students. As soon as I sat down, it became obvious that they were not having a very good experience. One of the girls was complaining to her friend about the service and the food. Then in the middle of her venting she noticed her friend was typing on her iPhone and said to her “Who are you texting?” Her friend replied – “I’m not texting, I’m reading Brittany’s post on FaceBook, she’s having a party tonight.” So the girl upset with the food and service said back to her “Tell her we’re at xxxxx and the food and service sucks here!” the girl with the iPhone replied “I already did – haha!”
Well the restaurant consultant in me couldn’t hold back, my mind immediately began to speed up its gears and do some calculations. I couldn’t help myself, so I stood up and turned to the two girls in the booth behind me and ask:
Me: “Sounds like you ladies are having a bad experience here today?”
Girl on the right: “ Oh totally! The waitress forgot her drink, she brought me a diet coke when I ask for a regular coke and my chicken sandwich was raw!! – this place sucks if I were you I wouldn’t eat here!”
Me: “Yeah I just got here and I’m sitting right behind you and couldn’t help but over hear your complaints. Let me ask you a question did I just here that you posted something about it to a friend on FaceBook?”
Girl on the left: “Ya I did – I don’t want any of my friends to come here and get sick!”
Me: “Can I ask you another question if you don’t mind, how many friends do you have on your FaceBook page?” (Now I said this with a half sarcastic smile on my face because I was looking at this young lady and she was quite attractive – I already knew in my mind it was going to be a big number!)
Girl on left: “Uh I don’t know let me check” – she scanned over her FaceBook page on her iPhone and answered “three thousand six hundred and thirty eight”
Me: “hahahaha!” laughing maliciously
Now lets do some quick math. For those of you who have never been on FaceBook – in a quick frame here’s how it works – you have friends that follow you, when you make a post they all see it, and when one of your friends writes a post all of there friends see it. Now when you make a post responding to another friends initial posts all of your friends see it, all of their friends see it and all of the friends of anybody else who comments on that particular posts sees it.
So let me show you how that works out mathematically –and in less than 1 second this is how many people were notified of these two girls terrible experience:
Her friends: 3,638
Amount of friends the friend she responded to had – lets be conservative 1,000
Lets assume her friends post had 10 replies – after all it was about a party
So 10 replies from people with 1000 friends each = 10,000
Total people notified of the bad experience in 1 second = 14,638!!!
Wow – can you see now how powerful social media can be and do you realize how it can harm you as much as it can help you?
So lets turn this scenario around and see how quickly this could be a business boomer instead of a viral infection spreading around town about your restaurant.
Lets say you managed this bar and restaurant. Now since you are such a great manager the whole wrong drinks and raw chicken thing never happened. Instead, as you are walking through the dining room, you notice these two ladies sitting in a booth and you also notice that one of them is texting or posting to a social media site. You approach them and ask how everything is. They’re happy, smile and say “great” You reply to them, “How would you ladies like a free dessert on me, we have the most delicious frozen chocolate mousse pie in town?”
They smile big and say “Sure”. You say back to them, “OK but under one condition. Tonight we have an awesome live band coming in and we really want to get the word out because it’s going to be a great party! I will buy you both dessert if you would just simply use your iPhone to post onto Facebook that this great band is playing here tonight and if any of your friends mention either of your names and that they saw this on Facebook they can get in for free without paying the $5 cover charge – deal?”
Two girls: “No problem we can do that!” Hey Brittany’s having a party tonight, maybe we’ll all come here after!”
Now that is a turn around and that is an example of how two experiences can be blasted out into the world in one second flat. As a restaurant owner the idea of the first bad experience scenario has to scare the hell out of you – but as a restaurant owner the idea of the second experience of promoting to thousands for the cost of a piece of pie has to excite the hell out of you.
This is why, like never before, the service part of the service business is so very, very important. Because for every customer sitting in your restaurant is literally representing thousands of eyes, ears and noses at once. Every single customer experience that takes place in your business must be treated as if thousands of others are having it. Because with social media in the world – they are. And as you just learned from the above random experience I had, it can be lethal or fruitful for you. The very first thing you must do in the 21st century is be aware and conscious of that at all times and train your team to do the same.
Related posts:
- The Secret to Increasing Profits in Your Restaurant Business & 5 Easy Ways to Apply It (Part 2)
- The Secret to Increasing Profits in Your Restaurant Business & 5 Easy Ways to Apply it. (Part 1)
- You are at Chef Mickey’s Restaurant Business and Marketing blog
- Restaurant Management Success Key: You Only Have 4 Seconds To Do This (Part 2)
- Restaurant Management Success Key: You Only Have 4 Seconds To Do This (Part 1)
2 users responded in this post
I love it! Great idea! I think the problem that most restaurants overlook is they’re simply not asking people to participate in their social media campaigns. A face-to-face suggestion like that can go a long way and generate a lot of loyalty from someone. Great social media doesn’t just automatically happen!
Exactly Matt – and the beauty of it is you don’t have to train customers or employees in social media – they are already experts. All you need to do is “ask for the dance”
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