Why I Won’t Slam Your Business on Social Media

A couple weeks ago, I had a less than stellar experience at what I would consider a high-end restaurant here in the Valley.  I’ve been to the restaurant several times over the years and as I was entertaining clients, I didn’t hesitate to make us a reservation.

There were a series of missteps along the way that should have been handled differently. But the final straw was, after asking the server about the “service fee” that was included on the bill, realizing that it was actually the gratuity and I had tipped her on top of that.  My fault for not asking for clarification, but typically when a gratuity is already added the server tells you so.

I mentioned the experience to my sister, Sandy.  She wondered why I hadn’t immediately gone to social media to “slam the business.”  My answer was simple – as someone who counsels clients when that exact thing happens to them, I am not about to create that issue for someone else. She hadn’t really thought about that before.  She also suggested I write a blog post about it.

What I did do was take the time to send an email to the restaurant manager, explaining the situation and how disappointed I was.  Within two hours, he called me (on his day off mind you) to apologize for what had happened and told me that when he returned to his shift the following day, he would get back to me with a solution.  And he did.  He took responsibility for the situation and immediately processed a refund for the over-tipping.

Sure, I could have posted a bad review on Yelp or put the details of our experience on social media.  I chose, instead to give the manager an opportunity, privately, to resolve the issue.

Before social media we might have asked for the manager claiming, “we will never come here again.”  Today, some may take the “we will never come here again” mantra to their social media feeds.  And I’m not saying not to, just remember that there is a social media manager, a business owner, an employee, among others that are on the receiving end of that post.  And maybe before hitting the post button, take one more minute to see if sending that directly to the manager may be a better a solution.