Every time I have a negative interaction with a company, I immediately seek out their online reviews—and I’m not surprised when I find many that echo and substantiate my own experience.
What I do find surprising are the choices many business owners make in responding to those reviews. Attempts to refute negative comments by painting unhappy customers as “bad,” alleging that competitors are trying to sink their brands, or accusing the platforms of extorting them with bad algorithms are shockingly common. And when these same companies find themselves struggling for business, they blame their challenges on factors such as a lack of qualified employees or an unfavorable economy. Interestingly enough, I find that there are plenty of direct competitors seeing success.
For an illustrative example, let’s look at a field with which we’re all familiar, one which seems to have a great divide between the successful and those on the brink of collapse: the restaurant industry. A wise person once said “any restaurant can be busy on a Friday and Saturday. Show me one that has a wait on a Wednesday night, and I’ll show you a restaurant that is successful”. And it’s an excellent point; walking into any restaurant on a Wednesday evening can tell you just about everything you need to know about it. In an industry with tight margins and high competition, perhaps nothing is a better indicator of success than demand on an off night. But what is it that creates such a divide? How can one restaurant have a completely full dining room and a line out the door on a Wednesday night while others nearby sit all but empty? It’s not rocket science; in fact, it comes down to the building blocks which every business imaginable has in common. There are three key principles at work here.
- Staff – When you walk into a restaurant, are you greeted with smiles from attentive and friendly staff who remain present and engaged throughout your stay? Or, do you find that you only sporadically encounter apathetic team members? A staff that makes you feel welcome and seems truly happy to see you can absolutely make or break an experience. Before the atmosphere or the product quality even come into play, a staff that treats a customer well can be all the difference needed to earn a loyal and repeat client. A quick scroll through the Yelp and Google reviews of some of the best and worst restaurants in your area will prove this point: You might be surprised to see just how many of them center on the customer-facing staff.
- Atmosphere – Atmosphere is everything in a business. The warmer and more welcoming you can be, the more comfortable you’ll make your customer. If you’ve ever walked into a restaurant that looked as if it hadn’t been updated in decades, with water-stained walls and peeling seats, you’ll recall how that can make you want to walk right back out again. Business owners who fail to consider the impact of their organization’s aesthetics and atmosphere risk losing potential clients to poor impressions.
- Quality of Product – Once customers are through the door, quality becomes the most significant differentiator between packed dining rooms and empty ones. It blows my mind how many restaurant owners seem to think that they can pass off subpar foods and then wonder why they have so many tables free. Here’s the thing: Your customers know quality when they see it, and with inflation on the rise, people are more motivated than ever to get the most bang for their bucks. At the end of the day, if your product quality isn’t acceptable or better, your one-time customers will choose to go elsewhere for their next meal (or their next purchase or service). Consumers are growing so weary of low-quality products that they are ready and willing to pony up the extra cash for brands they perceive to be superior.
The relevance of the principles laid out above extends far beyond the restaurant industry, and it backs up a critical point: that successful businesses are more in tune with their customers than their struggling counterparts. They take feedback seriously, they use social media as a tool, and they provide quality worthy of loyalty. The common denominator in all of this is a focus on the customer. As a business, if you focus your efforts on accommodating rather than fighting the customer, it will be almost impossible not to succeed.