This post touches on customer service, social media… and a $28 meal that consisted of fried chicken, green beans and mashed potatoes…
I decided to treat myself to a “southern’ish” New Year’s Day meal, but wasn’t exactly sure where to go. So, I went to twitter and send the following tweet,
1:26pm – “Where can I get a good southern meal in NYC? Would be a great NYD treat!”
Within minutes of sending that tweet someone responding by telling me to go to Bubby’s in Tribeca. I checked out their site and decided that I’d pay them a visit later in the evening.
Fast forward several hours, and an out of the way trip, and I sent the following Tweet (Foursquare check-in),
5:39 pm – “I’ve been told a taste of the south can be found here. Time to find out! (@ Bubby’s Pie Company w/ 4 others) http://4sq.com/tchmWG.”
At this point I’d been craving a good meal for quite a while, and was happy to have finally arrived.
I was greeted by a waiter, and this is where things started to go south. By the time I finally ordered it was 5:54 and before leaving the table the waiter said, “I can’t put in orders from the dinner menu until 6pm, so it’ll be a few minutes.”
[Disclaimer: I fully acknowledge that I can, at times, be a pain in the butt.]
After the waiter said that I once again thought about the $28 that I’d be paying, for fried chicken, and said something like, “That’s obnoxious and I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”
I then fired off another tweet,
5:56 pm “Seriously, @bubbys? You can’t put in my order from the dinner menu for 6 min. That’s almost redic. Not a good 1st impression so far.”
At 6:15 pm @Bubbys responded by saying,
“@ryanshell well, the reason for it is, we just did 800 covers for brunch. Takes time to turn the kitchen!”
The fact that they responded (Keep in mind this is not a huge chain restaurant with a social media division) was great, but the response wasn’t exactly ideal, so I responded with,
“@bubbys sorry, but that doesn’t really mean anything to me. I’ve been here 30 minutes… and am hungry.”
In this situation, I (the customer) don’t care that the restaurant has served 800 dishes and made gobs of money. I’m hungry, and all I want to know is that my food is coming out soon.
@Bubbys responded to my previous tweet by saying,
“@ryanshell I’m pushing them. Hang in there for a sec!”
I responded by saying, “that’s what I want to hear!”
Oh, and before I continue, let me just say that the meal was amazing. $28 (and that’s just for me) is a bit expensive for the meal in question, but I ate everything on my plate.
Moving on.
This is is a great example of how social media can be used as a customer service tool, and how social media empowers consumers.
At the end of the day Bubby’s did a good job of turning things around, but we have to think about how complicated social media can be for small businesses.
I don’t know who tweets on behalf of the restaurant, but I’d anticipate that they weren’t at the location I visited, and that they may have actually been at home after a long day’s work.
That’s tough.
What’s important for businesses to realize is that by engaging with a customer, especially one that isn’t exactly happy, they have committed to a customer service experience. How the situation is handled could make or break the relationship, and more importantly, lead to future revenue and word of mouth advertising.
Bubby’s engaged in the conversation and eventually made it seem as though they were helping me, the consumer, and no matter if the person behind the handle made a call or not… it still made it feel like they were trying to help.
