Thoughts on Yelp Shaming

Yes, this. If someone is offering a review, it is an opinion, and should not be argued. The exception to this might be if, for instance, you give a Chinese restaurant a bad review for pizza they don't serve. Or something that is so clearly outside of their control - such as a power outage - that the bad review is totally unfounded. Even then, take the high road, point out the obvious matter of factly without insulting them, and their foolishness will be obvious. Let subsequent reviewers shame them - someone usually will.

 

Yep, I don't have any issue with owners reaching out to explain certain things. Its just the blatant insulting that I don't like. Which might be deserved, cause reviews can certainly be off point (to put it softly). Though an owner should have the ability to not comment at that point, but what do I know?

 

Link?

 

Yelp and other online forums - where a customer has a bad experience on a certain day and lays waste to a business anonymously. That is for cowards. Be an upstanding adult and contact the business directly, try and get a hold of the owner or a manger and give constructive criticism. If the owner cares about his/her business they will take care of whatever was wrong that day.

 

Yelp is the stupid person's way of complaining. If I have an issue with a bar/restaurant/brewery I'll make it known while I'm there, not anonymously on the internet.

 

Yep. I had one when I was handling some of the social media. (owner was ill). The person was being unreasonable, then went on to post a review of all 1s, with a moderately long rant. In a perfect world we might accommodate him, but in this one, the NY State Dept of Taxation & Finance would consider it......irregular.

Anyway, I asked the owner if my initial inclination was correct, and she agreed : ignore it. In about 3 weeks, several glowing reviews buried it, probably never to be seen again.

 

I see this from both sides of the spectrum. I don't post on Yelp and I don't own a business but if I have a problem with a store/bar/restaurant/etc I would simply not go back.

Some people, on location or online, are very unreasonable and nearly impossible to please. I think of a family "friend" who demands a free dinner when the food takes 15 minutes or they bring her the wrong sugar packet for her iced tea. Calm down.

Some people take things personally and need everything to be perfect. If you own a business, along with your product/service you also need to make/keep customers/clients happy. If someone has a problem with your business you don't bully people into not complaining. Calm down.

People are more likely to go out of their way to complain about a terrible experience than praise a great experience.

As long as the review is honest and truthful to your experience, the owner should not be so upset. Don't get angry, get better. Seems so petty, bad experiences happen whether you want them to or not.

 

To sum up:

People are more likely to go out of their way to complain about a terrible experience than praise a great experience.

Gratitude is a burden, revenge is a pleasure.

people are more likely to post about a bad experience than a good one. owners are more likely to shame a negative poster than thank a positive poster. ahh human nature

 

A business could give away free puppies with 100 dollar bills tucked into their collar and they'll still get some percentage of 1 star reviews. It's just the nature of the beast unfortunately.

I do always appreciate it though when I see a business respond to a thoughtful negative review with something along the lines of "sorry to hear you had that experience. Please contact me at [email protected] so we can fix it."

 

Man a graduate of the self defeat school of business, what a jerk.

 

The brewer here made this a much bigger issue than it should have been, and brought undesirable attention to the review. Most people looking at Yelp, or even Beer Advocate take a negative review or two with a grain of salt. The brewer's making an issue of the situation is clearly already making people wonder. It would have been much better to just let the matter rest.

 

I've had multiple breweries try to argue with my ratings on that badge-collecting mobile App. Don't know what they're trying to accomplish.

 

The only thing worse than arrogant Yelpers is arrogant replies from Yelp business owners. It's usually best to just keep your mouth shut.

 

It really depends. I've read some really negative yelp reviews where the reviewer was a total moron. Like being upset that they waited an hour for a table at a restaurant. When said restaurant was in their first week of being open and they didn't have a reservation.

Why is that the restaurants fault that you're dumb?


But if it's a negative review that actually seems sound I'd prefer the business casually apologize on yelp. Which I've seen.

 

Definitely agree with what many others have already said, as a business owner you can't do what this brewery owner did here; either you reach out and offer to do everything in your power to make the situation right, or you simply ignore it. Firing back never ends well.

Just wish sites like Yelp would let the users respond directly to obvious bullshit reviews. I hate garbage people who completely abuse the whole "the customer is always right" attitude and then try to ruin a business's reputation with a malicious review online. Obviously there are certain circumstances that call for a legitimate bad review, no complaints there... but it's usually clear as day to spot the customer that's just being a massive tool. And while the owner is in a lose-lose from engaging these jackasses, it would be great as a fellow customer to call them out on their shit.

 

I was assuming that you had a typo and meant PR (not HR) in your first post... but then you went on to talk about Toby from The Office in your next post. I'm incredibly ignorant, but I believe PR is what you're really getting at. I'm just confused.

 

PR is typically done by HR, hence my wording. Obviously everyone in a company gives some PR whenever they're wearing their company's logo, or talking about their work, but at the end of the day HR tends to hold the jobs related directly with developing community relations. If the CEO or owner was on the Facebook and responding, s/he should have an HR rep that handles those situations instead. If an HR rep can't handle his/her cool online, then the company should find a new individual to fill that role. If this particular company in question does not have an HR rep, or someone trained in HR/PR, then they should be considering it.

I still maintain that HR is a vital aspect for successful businesses.

 

"Typically?"

Not in my experience.

HR should only concerned with personnel matters and should be focused on employees not Public Relations.

E.G.

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/human-relations-HR.html

http://work.chron.com/job-functions-human-relations-manager-27687.html

 

I stated HR out of my own experience within my company, since the public relations, and spokespersons are all employed within the HR department, as are the spokespersons I know from other companies. I pulled from my own experience, which is anecdotal, and clearly misaligned. Although the second link does say HR "represents workers". Regardless, I found another site that supports your statement as well. I was wrong.

Sorry.

 

Not to worry.

Not all companies are organized the same way. Some don't follow the play book. Often they don't have the resources to avoid having to assign dual responsibilities to folks who aren't fully prepared or trained for either or both.

I suspect the brewer being discussed is small enough to be doing a lot of jobs he has no experience for and no one else around to blame except himself. He is probably still unaware of how stupid his behavior was.

Edit: if he's also acting as his own lawyer his business will probably go under and any PR problems he has created will also go away.