Category Archives: Helpful Hints

September 11, 2015 · 11:02 am

Disparaging Non-disparagement

More silliness from the restaurant world this Foodie Friday.  Today we have the tale of Grill 225 in Charleston, which is a well-reviewed steak and seafood place.  They do many things right.  According to most of what I can find,  the food is delicious and the service is attentive.  They are the #8 restaurant in Charleston, according to Trip Advisor, which is no small feat in a very competitive restaurant town.

In addition to being good at what they do in the restaurant, the management appears to be very good at social and other media.  Many of the Trip Advisor comments have a reply from the restaurant in the thread.  Not only does the writer thank the customer but they manage to turn each of their posts into a subtle commercial for some aspect of the restaurant (our USDA Prime steaks, so glad you enjoyed your famous Nitrotini).  Smart!  Which is why I was surprised to read about them doing something seriously dumb that has blown up and is instructive to the rest of us.

Like many popular places, Grill 225 asks for a credit card when you make a reservation.  If you are making a reservation for a party of 5 or more, they send you a “dining contract” which notifies you that should you cancel all or some of the requested seats within 24 hours of the party’s arrival, they will hit you with a $50 per seat fee.  If someone gets sick and doesn’t show, the same fee applies (so if your party of 8 becomes a party of 7 because your pal got hung up at the office, you’re out $50).  Many restaurants have a similar policy, although most will tell you they never actually charge the fee.

Where Grill 225 failed is what else they added to the agreement.  As the local paper reported it:

The terms set out by Grill 225 aren’t unusual. To curb the costs associated with empty tables, an increasing number of restaurants are threatening to charge miscreants. But Grill 225’s contract includes an additional clause: “By agreeing to these terms and conditions, the guest(s) and their party agree that they may be held legally liable for generating any potential negative, verbal or written defamation against Grill 225.” In other words, if someone in your group kvetches online about the restaurant enforcing its stated rules, a lawsuit may follow.

 

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September 9, 2015 · 9:00 am

Hearing Aids

One thing that I find when speaking with clients and others on the topic of social media is there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what social is all about. Most of them seem to approach social as yet another megaphone. The reality is that social media is a hearing aid. Most of them want to be speaking when they really ought to be listening, and that fundamental difference has resulted in some pretty disturbing trends.  

First, data shows that companies are speaking a lot more in social than they are listening. Brands send four times as many posts as replies, according to data from the latest Sprout Social survey. My guess is that this has to do with a couple of factors. First, the management team is still fixed on the old way of thinking about marketing: we talk, you listen. Second, this results in a content strategy, not a service strategy. Third, it’s easy to hire a single social manager who can schedule your posts in advance and work across many social platforms. All of this is pretty wrong in my book.

I won’t spend any time on the changed (notice past tense) nature of marketing. The customer is in control of the brand to a large extent –  deal with it. If you’re listening to what those customers are saying you must, be nature, be servicing what you’re hearing unless you don’t mind missing golden opportunities. Sprout Social’s data says brands are, in fact, doing just that. Most brands ignore 88% of messages on social media. That’s 7 in 8 social messages to brands go unanswered within 72 hours. Sad…

Finally, brands are not set up to support constant service. I know resources are a challenge, but as I’ve said to clients, if you can’t support a platform properly you need to wait to deploy there. Social media is still in its infancy, and like any infant it requires constant monitoring and support. Ignoring customers almost 9 times out of 10 is insane.

We need to be responsive and engaged.  We need to use the hearing aids and drop the megaphones.  You agree?

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August 20, 2015 · 12:08 pm

Coleridge And Your Data

Someone probably made you read Samuel Coleridge‘s Rime Of The Ancient Mariner along your educational way. It contains a couplet that got me thinking about data:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

We spend so much time collecting and attempting to analyze data and yet it seems difficult to “drink” from the overwhelming amount we have.  I wonder if we keep an eye on the reasons why we gather data in the first place.  In my mind, there are  two main reasons to collect data:

    • To form actionable business questions
    • To measure how where we are today is different from where we were yesterday

Let me take a second to discuss them.  When we gather information from a customer or potential customer, we should always have a reason for doing so.  Otherwise we’re just filling up our data storage with bits we’ve got no need to store.  A recent IDG Connect study found that the biggest hurdles facing companies in terms of data were poor data quality and excessive data, so we need to think before we gather.  Some of the information they will give you (name, email, maybe a physical address); other information you’ll take yourself (usage patterns on the web and/or mobile, information our of social profiles, etc).

We ought to be using some of that data to educate our fans about our brand and industry.  That falls under the “actionable” category.  What results do we want from them?  How can we tell if we’re moving the needle?  One big day of traffic might be an aberration but trends tend not to lie over time.  I like this quote from the report:

The true value of Big Data is in the ability to leverage it for development of an informed strategy. Organizations need to move beyond a focus on just managing data to extracting trends and insights that will drive business outcomes.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information you have, you probably have too much.  It’s probably not properly focused.  We need to collect as little data as possible – it’s much easier to drink a glass of water than an ocean.  It should be just enough to generate insight and not enough to foster confusion.  Which are you doing?

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