ShanaRay.com

I work from my laptop which means when not working from my kitchen table, I work out of various coffee shops around Sonoma County.  Mainly in Healdsburg and Santa Rosa, but I have been known to frequent a few in Sonoma, Petaluma and Windsor.

I would also like to add that I worked as a supervisor at Starbucks for over three years while living in San Diego, so I know what it takes to provide great customer service while managing employees.

Many times while working, I tend to twitpic images of what I am eating or drinking or talk about my surroundings.  Mostly I experience great customer service and while my drinks/food may not be outstanding, my overall experience is usually pleasant.

Then there is my experience at one specific place where I have tweeted on three separate occasions about my displeasure with an owner of a coffee shop in Santa Rosa.  I hesitate to call them out because even though I really hate what I have to listen to (I will explain soon), it is such a great location and it is quiet so it is a coffee shop I will be going back to again.  Anyone who lives in Santa Rosa reading this probably already knows which place I am talking about and most likely has had a similar experience.  And, if you ask me, I will gladly tell you their name.

Okay, imagine this:  You are sitting at your table, drinking your tea, eating a bagel at about 8:30 in the morning.  The cafe has two or three other customers on their laptops or socializing with each other.  The owner of the cafe is working from her own laptop at a table near by.  She gets up to talk to the barista and instead of taking her in the back room to discuss work matters, she proceeds to yell (yes, yell) at the young girl, telling her that if she didn’t do the order right she would write her up.  You look at the other customers who also can hear this woman yell and then look at the barista apologizing for her mistake, clearly noting that everyone is listening to the conversation.

Or, another scenario: One of the barista’s is 10 minutes late and the owner yells at her saying she was writing her up… Oh, in front of a short line of customers waiting to order their coffee.

Or, the owner yelling at one of the barista’s for leaving something in the food shelf out.

All of these obviously happened and all of these events could have really been simple matters that wouldn’t be a big deal if handled properly.  In this economy and this new media age, I am astounded that any small business owner thinks that yelling at their employees is a good idea.  In any era it is not good business practice, but with inventions like wifi, Twitter, blogs and Yelp, I am even more in shock.

Employees are usually the first contact that a customer has with a brand.  The servers and tasting room staff and sales people are the people that create an experience for the customer and they are also your best Word of Mouth advocates because they talk about their job to their friends and family, thus bringing in customers that already have a connection with the brand, which means that they will possibly tell their friends and so on and so on.   Why would anyone want to mistreat the people who can make our break your business?

Second, the internet has allowed me to voice my own opinion of this restaurant though Twitter, turning away several people I have talked to about which cafe it is… Even if their Yelp page has 8 comments, all with fairly good reviews (all commenting on the new decor) it is the repeat customers that  make a coffee shop or restaurant stay open.

Anyways, now that I am done with my rant on mistreating your employees, I will end it on a high note.  For restaurants or anyone in the customer service industry, the Food Channel has a few words on building your brand by connecting with your customers.  Also, I just came across an awesome blog called ALL THINGS WOM and their latest blog post on a hamburger joint called Mighty Fine Hamburgers in Austin, TX gave me hope that some small business people still do have the common sense to treat their employees and customers with respect.

Years ago, back when the terms blog and twitter were still unknown, if restaurants, retailers or wineries provided terrible customer service then the word only got around to the visitors immediate friends and family.  If it was a truly horrific act of bad customer service or product failure, then maybe the word would spread a bit further.  Of course this is not the world we live in now.

As shown by Lisa de Bruin’s trip to Domaine Chandon, Gary Vaynerchuk’s visit at Mondrian, a “hip” hotel in Miami, as well as my recent trip to Korbel, a bad experience is not only is talked about online – it has the ability to “go viral.”  Consumer review site’s such as Yelp (even with their problems) and personal blogs have had a great impact, both positively and negatively on the service industry.  It isn’t just wine reviewers or food critics that are telling the world their opinion.

You can bitch all you want, but this trend is not going away anytime soon.  The internet is here, and social tools are just making it easier and faster for people to voice their opinions.  Go ahead and complain that these reviews are not from trained professionals, who know what they are talking about, or negative reviews could be from disgruntled employees, or that positive reviews could even be from someone affiliated with the company.

Okay, hopefully now that you are done complaining about the situation you can take a deep breath and accept that consumer written reviews are not going away…. Or, hopefully, you are one of the ones reading this that understands that this new form of reviewing the service industry can actually help businesses.

What some people don’t get is that BOTH negative & positive postings provide a great opportunity for publicity.  The online landscape allows businesses to respond to negative comments and even generate positive posts by asking visitors to post reviews, or just by delivering customer service that is truly above and beyond.  Those businesses that adapt to the new era of online voices and not only respond to what is said, but actually LISTEN and (if need be) make changes will be the ones who will make it through.  Yes, I do know there is more to running a business then just this — just stick with me here….

Service businesses HAVE TO adapt to the landscape or watch their competition, that are paying attention, take away customers.  They have to know that in this new online era that they truly have to go above and beyond when it comes to customer service.  If you are a business that needs some help with online publicity or even an evaluation of your place of business, then please visit here.

I will leave you with some quotes from Gary:

“Stop age discrimination in the tasting room because that 24 year old will go and blog about what kind of douche bags you are and no one will buy your wine.”

“Service industry is really going to start feeling these impacts.”

Everyone who is “online” knows all about what Tony Hsieh the CEO of Zappos is doing via Twitter to create a brand personality based on human interaction and honestly.

Just today, I read a great article about Bill Taylor‘s visit to the Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas in which he describes what new employees have to go through to work there.

Zappos hires new employees, provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s culture.

Then, a week into training, Zappos offers them $1,000 to quit…. Why? According to the article, it is because if the employee takes the money, then they are not the type of person they want working there anyways….

Coming from an ex-Starbucks employee, I can easily say that other companies in the customer service industry need to pay attention to what Zappos is doing. Their obsession with customer service has turned them into a billion dollar company. Their continuation of their free shipping , easy to use 800 number and free return service is a welcome change from Best Buys’ new policy of not being able to return items when you lost your receipt and paid cash or numerous amount of time spent on hold with AT&T.

My favorite quotes from the article:

“So the value proposition is a winner. But it’s the emotional connection that seals the deal.”

“Companies don’t engage emotionally with their customers—people do.”