So.  Somebody thinks you suck. That’s never good.

But if somebody thinks you suck, then chooses to post their displeasure online, that can be disheartening at best and catastrophic at worse, depending on how you deal with it. Which begs the question: how do you deal with it? 

It isn’t that hard actually. Here’s what to do:

DETERMINE WHY THE PERSON POSTED THE COMPLAINT

Before you deal with the negative feedback, it’s essential that you correctly ascertain the reason why somebody posted that you suck. There are four possibilities.

Troll / Spam: You don’t suck and the complaint is totally without merit, delivered either by a troll looking to stir up a fuss, or a spammer, (possibly a competitor without ethics,) using the forum to promote an alternative product or service.

Minor Slip-Up On Your Part: You don’t suck, but on the instance the customer experienced your products or services, you failed to deliver the goods to your usual standard.

Difference of Tastes: You don’t suck, your product or service simply isn’t what the customer wanted.

You Actually Suck: Self Explantory.

 Ok, now we’re going to review how to handle each one of the four types of complaints, starting with the easiest one first.

Troll / Spam:  (NON LEGITAMATE COMPLAINTS)
Easy. Ignore ‘em. Positive feedback needs to be acknowledged with a thank you, and negative feedback needs to be acknowledged with a thoughtful response. But Trolling or spam isn’t feedback… its attack without justification. A response only gives the troller another opportunity to sell their own services, or spew their vitriol for a greater period of time. Kill it dead right away by deleting the message.

End of story.

Minor Slip-up On Your Part:
Believe it not, if you failed to deliver the goods, and somebody calls your attention to it… they’re actually doing you a big favour. And that’s the tone to take when you deal with the complaint.

BE POSITIVE: They’ve given you an opportunity to deal with an issue. Thank them for calling the problem to your attention.

BE PROACTIVE: Let the complainant know what you’ve done to resolve the situation and what you’re going to be doing in the future to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

BE BRIEF: Feel free to write a 3-page response. Include foul language, and insult the complainant’s intellectual sophistication and personal hygiene. Then delete the letter. This type of response makes you look like a goof, but will feel GREAT to write. Once you’ve got the negative out of your system, toss it, then write the streamlined version suggested above.

Difference Of Tastes:
Ok, let’s talk about the last Adam Sandler movie. One guy can leave the theatre thinking it was the funniest thing since poo-on-a-stick, and another can think it was dreadful. Both are correct. Why? This kind of thing is subjective. If somebody doesn’t like the fact your restaurant uses aged cheddar on your burgers, and not the processed cheese they’re accustomed too, they’re neither right nor wrong. Simply briefly explain why you’ve chosen to do it the way you’ve done it, and leave it at that. Don’t be defensive or aggressive in your response.

You Actually Suck.
Again. Easy solution. Stop sucking. If you get a single complaint about a certain product or service, you can assume it’s a one-off, and deal with it accordingly. If you get dozens, or hundreds of complaints about the same issue, then you need to take immediate action.

For example, let’s say forty people all post that your washrooms are filthy. This is good news. Why? Filthy washrooms can be cleaned. A new janitorial service can be hired. The complainants can be invited back to see the amazing new results. ALWAYS BE POSITIVE.

Word of mouth is powerful indeed. Handling unpleasant situations in a gracious, thoughtful and positive fashion can turn things around. In short, by acknowledging your suck-ocity, then detailing how you’re going to eliminate it, you’ll come across as a dude or dudette that’s cool, professional, and knows how to put out a fire. Nobody likes fires. Everybody likes cool.

Not too long ago if you had a bad experience at a place of business, your course of action was either to ask to speak to a manger, or to go home and write a letter to head office.

Now you can use Yelp, or Epinions or Trip Advisor, or any one of a myriad of review sites and within minutes you can inform hundreds, if not thousands of potential customers about the business you had a bad experience with.

I’ve taken a couple of dispute resolution courses, and worked in executive response at AT&T Canada. At AT&T I dealt with the customers that were so irate nobody else quite knew how the heck to handle them.

Fortunately, now that I work for myself, all my clients are hap-hap-happy all the ti-ti-time, so my dispute resolution skills have yet to be called into play. Inevitably, at one point they will be though. When that happens, I’ll probably have fodder for a blog.

Until that time…

What follows is a real life example of WHAT NOT TO DO when somebody thinks you suck. Next week we’ll make some suggestions on how to effectively deal with a complaint, valid or not, in the online world.

The thread below is a capture. It looks like the owner has wisely chosen to delete her intial ill-advised response.

The truncated yelp posting can be seen here.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/amys-baking-company-scottsdale#hrid:c6GfpA9j5HAVJIbK6D50Vw

The original, in all its jaw-dropping glory, can be read below:

Dear Joel,L. It is blatantly obvious to me why you were ALONE on a Saturday night!
Read any of the reviews that have been written about us and you will see that EVERYONE loves us!! The only people that don’t is our “Competition”. We knew you had been sent by another restaurant before you even ordered your $14.00 Pizza.

The Pizza was fresh and amazing. The reason the tomatoes had different texture was because I use three different heirloom tomatoes and some of them are sundried. So of course they are going to have a different texture from the fresh ones!!!
But perhaps you are only accustomed to tasting the ones that come “fresh from the can!”

Moving on to the “Store bought Dough” Comment. PLEASE!! My dough is made fresh every day from 100% organic ingredients. Perhaps your palate is not sophisticated enough to tell the difference.

As for you having the Patio all to yourself unless you have been living on another PLANET it is summertime in ARIZONA MORON!!! Only TRAMPS and LOSERS want to sit outside in 110 temperatures!!!!
We are hiring because we are so busy that we need to hire more people. You just so happened to come right after a huge rush. And the people did not change their mind for the Margarita Pizza they ordered. They were still enjoying their amazing Caesar salad and I thought perhaps you would appreciate not having to wait so long for your pizza. Which was just coming out of the OVEN.

I am the CHEF and the owner, and I am the one that made your Pizza.

As for the no smoking comment everyone knows that it is against the LAW to smoke within 20 feet of a public place. But perhaps you think you are above the LAW. Have a little respect not everyone wants to subject themselves to being around second hand smoke.

And as for the overpriced menu items if you think that $12.00 is too much for an ENTRÉE sized ORGANIC Salad or $14.00 is too much for an AMAZING Pizza then perhaps you should go to the PITA JUNGLE that is just a stone’s throw away. And if you get lucky maybe you can even dig up someone up to take with you so you can share a $5.00 Falafel.
Do US a favor and keep your ugly face and you ugly opinions to yourself and go back to the restaurant that you really work at!!

I would LOVE for anyone who reads this review to come to ABC and try our Pizza. If you don’t like it then I guarantee you don’t have to pay for it.

______________________________________________________________________

Joel L.

Phoenix, AZ

In retrospect, I should have known better than to step foot into Amy’s Baking Company (a.k.a. ABC Bistro).

-8 pm on a Saturday night, three tables are occupied
-a sign on the door indicates they’re looking for an experienced line cook, a dishwasher, waitresses, you name it
-Pita Jungle, just a stone’s throw away, is packed to the gills

These are all bad signs. They go ignored, however, because I’d eaten one thing all day, and I had drove here to try their pizza. Never, ever again.

The waitress brings me out a water and a menu to my table for one on the patio, which I had all to myself. Browsing the apps, I was pleasantly surprised to see several things priced $3, which seemed like a bargain, given the high price of everything else. $3 tapanade sounded like a good deal, but I was informed that it didn’t come with anything – it was $3 extra for bread. Since I was solo, I decided to skip it and instead pay $14 for their 12″ margherita pizza.

About three minutes later, the waitress drops off my pizza. “Your pizza”, she says, leaves a plate and off she goes. I sat for a moment, confused as to how things happened so quickly. I try to grab a slice of the pizza, but it was so blazing hot that I wasn’t even going to attempt to handle it. I waited for a few minutes to let it cool off, only to discover that not only had it cooled enough to handle, but was actually well-cooled and most likely reheated. After a closer inspection of the pie in front of me, it was evident that it had been reheated, as there were smaller tomatoes that had spent their time in the oven, and larger tomatoes that had barely been kissed by the heat of the oven.

I took a bite, and was immediately underwhelmed. The crust had very little character, was slightly sweet but had that store-bought quality to it. The pesto tasted okay, but the tomatoes were completely tasteless and overall, it just fell flat. It’s margherita – the ingredients need to shine to make such a simple pizza. These ingredients were sub-par. After two small pieces, I decided I was wasting my calories and just gave up on it.

So I sat outside, not eating, and sat. And sat. Where the hell was the waitress? I glanced inside a few times, hoping to catch her eye, but she must have been occupied elsewhere.

The owner comes out. “How’d you like your pizza?” Instead of immediately responding, I asked how it had come out so quickly. In short, he told me another table had ordered it, decided they didn’t want it, and it sat in the kitchen for two minutes, who in turn decided to send it out to me since I didn’t order anything else.

Me: “Well, it didn’t really taste fresh”.
Him: “No, no, our pizzas are the best. Ask our customers. You’re the first person since we’ve opened to ever not like our pizzas”.

He got very defensive about the pizza, but I hadn’t really launched a harsh criticism on the pizza, just said I didn’t really enjoy it. So I sat some more, with an empty drink, and realized they wanted me gone. The owner wouldn’t make eye contact with me. The server never came back out asking if I wanted something else. And they still hadn’t refilled my drink.

So I sat on a patio, alone, and decided to have a smoke. The waitress comes out…

Her: “Sir, there’s a no smoking sign over there, I was told to tell you to not to smoke here.”
Me: “Is this the last f*** you in this experience?”
Her: “Yes, I think so”.

She walks away. I walk inside, pay the bill, and leave. No apologies, no discounts on the bill, nothing. $18 for weak iced tea and shitty pizza.

This is arrogance in its worst form. I can forgive bad food, but I cannot forgive misplaced arrogance and the blatant dismissal of a customer, whether you agree with them or not.

Perhaps the sign on the door should also say, “Wanted: New owner”.

I cannot, for the life of me, recommend this restaurant to anyone.

_________________________________________

Ok. It’s probably not a good idea to call a customer a loser for eating alone.

Nor should you actually post a letter written in anger or when you’re emotionally compromised. But respond you must. What should that response be? Good question. We’ll discuss it next week.

Not too long ago I sat down with a prospective client and a member of his staff at a coffee shop for one of my complimentary one-hour consultations.

At the end of the meeting he asked me for a dollar figure on what it would cost to make a website for his company. Now, I had just done a similar site for another customer so I had a very good idea as to what it would take to complete the project.

That said, I quoted this guy exactly $1,000 more than the other site, even though it was essentially the same service.

My question to you is:

Was it ethical of me to do that?

And my special bonus question is:

Have YOU ever charged one person one price for a product or service, then charged somebody else a different price for exactly the same product or service?

Before you answer the first question, you’d probably want to know what was my reasoning for charging the second guy so much more than the first guy?

Easy answer: The second guy was a jerk.

I didn’t like the way he spoke down to his staff member. He was condescending to the waitress, and most importantly: I KNEW he would be a problematic client. I would likely be spending quite a bit more time catering to his whims and desires than I had to with the first client.

We won’t even discuss his personal hygiene.

He ended up not doing business with me. Did he find out about my price differential? I don’t know. Do I care? Not particularly.

Later on I asked a University professor pal of mine if what I did was kosher. He was a good guy to ask, as he was a business consultant dude for several years. His response was an unequivocal “YES, it’s ok.” In fact, he told me, the practice is so common, they have a name for it: “Price Discrimination.”

Actually, they have several other names for it as well: targeted pricing, flexible pricing, tailored pricing, and of course, “a**hole pricing.” My university professor pal made it clear that it’s just common business sense to offer different prices to different people. He explained that if you know somebody is likely going to burn up extra time, energy, and patience, there needs to be a premium added the to the price.

But is it legal? Yes. Except when it’s not. A salesman I knew once confided that if someone of a specific nationality came into his store, he’d automatically raise the price for that person 25%. He explained the rationale thusly: (I’m paraphrasing)

“There are a couple of cultures that are known for being the best traders and shrewdest negotiators in the world. They EXPECT to negotiate on a price. If you raise the initial ‘starting price’ then they can negotiate you down to the real price you charge everybody else.”

Uhm, what if he agrees to the initial inflated price, Salesman Guy? Do you immediately drop it? Regardless, adjusting pricing based on race is illegal, both in Canada and the United States. Besides being illegal, if any of the customers in question had gotten wind of it, the resulting word of mouth could have decimated the company the Salesman worked for.

If you think about it, you’ve probably seen instances of price discrimination at least three times today alone. Seniors get a discount at the movies. Their buttocks take up the same seat as a younger person’s buttocks, so isn’t that discrimination? It doesn’t stop there of course:  Businesses routinely offer students special rates, and openly give discounts to locals that tourists do not get to enjoy. Two different guys can buy exactly the same car with the same options at the same car dealership and pay significantly differently prices depending on their knowledge of cars and their negotiating skills.

This type of pricing is getting more and more sophisticated, especially in the online world. Website tracking “cookies” allow businesses to monitor your past purchases and price accordingly. They know if you look at an item but wait till it goes on sale before you actually purchase it.  Online merchants can actually customize a personalized sale, just for you. I wouldn’t be surprised if our generation sees some sort of advanced GPS tracking technology to set prices. As you walk down the aisle, you’d see digital price tags in lieu of the normal cardboard ones. One guy will see one price, and another guy a few minutes later will see a completely different price.

But forget about science fiction-y speculation. What about RIGHT NOW?

As business owners, the decision you have to make when offering flexible pricing is how to do it in such a way to get the best possible price for your service without angering potential customers. For example most people will not take umbrage at a seniors’ discount as they know they will one day qualify. The key, I think, is transparency. If you clearly and concisely offer the different pricing for all to see, people are much less likely to feel cheated. If your prices appear to fluctuate on a whim, this could result in angry customers, and lost business.

As consumers, we can take advantage of flexible pricing by keeping  informed, developing negotiation skills, and not being perceived as a pain the ass.

On another bloody occasion, I had to hustle from a night club dance floor to the washroom to mop up the mess. En route people gave me looks which could be summarized in one word:

“EWWWWWW!”

A guy sees me in front of the washroom mirror, dabbing at my nostrils with Kleenex. “I’m a Doctor,” he says. “Are you on cocaine?”

No Doc. I’m not.

Kind of insulting actually, I should have bled on him.

Understandably concerned, I get home and Google “frequent nosebleeds.” The result was somewhat disconcerting to say the least. According to a few Google results,  I might have leukemia, or worse, cancer.

So I go to MY doctor who thankfully did not bring up the cocaine thing.

He assured me there was nothing to worry about. Apparently a recent change in climate basically dried up some membranes in my nostrils, and the solution was a spray called “nasal lubricant.” The “nasal lubricant” very effectively, very affordably, and very simply resolved the issue.

At this point you might be asking, “What does this have to do with marketing?”

A website can be the nasal lubricant of your marketing strategy. It’s fast, painless, effective, affordable and simple. When faced with various advertising options, it’s so easy to imagine worse case scenarios  and gazillions of lost dollars. Don’t think too much. Start with the basics: Get a business card. Get a website. And network, network, network.

So if you know someone whose business is bleeding, or simply needs a boost…

…Tell ‘em to get a website. More specifically: A VSP media website.

Why VSP media?

We’re very effective. Very affordable. Very simple.

Next week, I promise an article that isn’t so self serving:

Is it ethical to charge different prices to different people for exactly the same products and services?