I should probably say right now that I am a major food snob. For me, every meal has to be an occasion. So before I eat anywhere, I have to make sure I’ll be having a great experience. It’s not unheard of for me to scour Yelp or Facebook for 30 minutes or more looking for somewhere to eat.

One of my unwritten rules is that I will always check a restaurant’s online reviews and rating before I eat there. Let’s have a look at the rating for this restaurant:

1.5 stars. That doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence, does it? If this were a real restaurant, I’d never eat there unless I had no other option. That’s the power of an online rating.

After the terrible photos and the awful rating, I’d wager the majority of customers would decide to go elsewhere. But still, I’m going to plunge deeper.

Let’s have a look at the actual reviews:

No matter the business, there will always be dissatisfied customers. With social media, all those people that are too polite to complain in person, suddenly have a way to voice their frustrations.For a business owner, there’s little to be done here. But if you offer consistently good service, a hundred happy voices will drown out the few annoyed ones. If your service is terrible, your social media will show it.

How businesses react to negative reviews is important. Talking back to customers or looking for a fight are never good ideas. They just ensure the customer really will never come back, but it also makes the decision for potential customers too. Everybody will wonder, “If this is how they treat their customers online, I wonder how they treat them in person.”

Owning the mistake and apologizing is the best way to go. Even ignoring the review would be better than starting an argument.

Here’s another review for what’s turning out to be the world’s worst restaurant:

Laughing at the customer’s misfortune is one thing. But if we delve a little deeper, there are other issues at work here. Let’s take a look at their Facebook page again:

It’s unsurprising that the customer couldn’t find it. The location of the business is shown as being in the center of a lake! The hours are clearly stated as being open til 11pm, so the customer has a good right to be frustrated.

Many business owners seem to underestimate just how many people use Facebook or Google to get information about their business. So it’s essential that the information is accurate. If something changes for the business, the website and social media accounts need to reflect that.

That means checking your social media regularly to ensure nothing is out of date. In this case, the link to their website is incorrect. Nobody has noticed because nobody checked it! Do yourself a favor today and check over your Facebook page, it’s something that even the largest businesses can forget about.

I can see why business owners don’t choose to think of these things as important. In their minds, they think of their business as their physical location – with the customer’s experience starting from the moment they come through the door.

But the truth is, the customer experience starts from the moment a search is done on Facebook or Google. A Facebook page is now the first part of the customer experience.

By now, for the Worst Facebook Page In The World, all of their potential customers would be long gone.

Next week I’ll discuss what they can do right when it comes to reviews, both negative and positive.

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