When Talk Turns Bad: How Cafe Yumm Deals with Negative WOM

We talked with fast casual restaurant owner Mark Beauchamp and his marketing director Kelli Matthews about social media at Cafe Yumm
Kim S: A lot of small business people that I’ve talked to are scared to get involved with social media because they’re afraid o f negative comments and starting negative word of mouth. Now, I have a standard answer that I tell them, but what would your response be?
Kelli M: Embrace the negative. My standard answer, it’s really an opportunity for you to respond to your customer’s questions and concerns and fears and problems in a way that’s live and everyone else can see how you’re dealing with it. And ultimately, I think, builds a lot of credibility and a lot of trust. We did this with a post on the blog about the new packaging (for Yumm sauce), which people are not so fond of in a lot of respects.
Marc B: Yes, a very vocal group.
Kelli: M A very vocal group of folks, yes. And so we (undertook) a very collaborative process between Marc and some folks here and me to create a post to address packaging and just said tell us what you think. And people did and it was great. I mean we have 20-some-odd comments on that post and get more all of the time. I just approved another couple this week where people, they want to tell you what they think. And a lot of their response has been, “Okay, I get it. I get why you made that decision. I still don’t like it but I get it.” And people appreciate that.
And I worked customer service in retail for years and the best way to diffuse a difficult situation is just to say I hear you and I understand and let me try to fix it. Let me see what I can do to fix it. And you get, “Oh, okay, I’m not upset any more.” And so that’s generally my same philosophy with social media. It gives you a chance to respond and to say what we can do for you and our great customer service.
Marc B: My response is that we get a lot of accolades. We get a lot of people who just love Café Yumm. And what I tell our managers and the owners is the criticisms are more important than the compliments. We get a lot of compliments. We get a lot of people that love it but they’re saying, “We like the way you’re doing things.” What those compliments are not saying is here’s what we don’t like. Here’s what you’re not doing well. So the criticisms actually show you how can improve. And one of my core principles is constant improvement. Continual improvement. One small step at a time.
How do we do that? It’s not easy. Now, because you get a complaint or a criticism, that may not be from your core customer. It may be something that you decide you’re not going to answer because it’s not your core customer. Now, the other difficulty, I know, from particularly when you’re a single unit what do I do with that complaint? What action do I take? The person doesn’t like this that or the other thing of what we do, the colors of our building, whatever, the art we have, whatever it is, what are you going to do that about that? What action do I take? If you don’t have an answer for that, first always accept it, always apologize. Always respond and then take an action. Make a decision. It’s that decision now. And the decision should go back to a core philosophy of “is that our customer?” Is that something that fits within our business? So that decision process can be daunting, especially if you get three a week or five a day and all of a sudden, I don’t have time to do that. You don’t have time not to do that.

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