Lessons from a Yelp tragedy

At this point, most readers are probably familiar with the Yelp Pizzapocalypse which occurred between Joel LaTondress (@azhotdish) and Amy Bouzaglo (@bouzagloabc) of Amy’s Baking Company. If you’re just catching up, the Chow Bella post at Phoenix New Times will bring you up to speed. Be sure to read through the comments to see all of the slings and arrows which were exchanged.

Back in February, I wrote about small business owners and their lack of understanding of social media. Most don’t seem to understand how valuable it is for connecting with customers and building your brand within the local community. Many business owners fumble their way through social media use, not getting much benefit from it, but not doing any great harm either. Yesterdays Yelp incident, however demonstrates the destructive power of social media when badly misused.

I created a quick Twitter poll to gauge the public opinion regarding the damage Ms. Bouzaglo had inflicted upon her own business. Granted, this isn’t scientific and is hardly conclusive, but I find it interesting that over 50% of responders think Amy’s Baking Company is now facing certain doom.

If you’d like to cast your vote, click here to head over to Twtpoll.

So, what are some lessons restaurateurs can take away from this ugly incident?

  1. Be respectful. Customers are paying you a very high compliment by spending their time and their money to enjoy your work. If you fall short of their expectations or your own, it isn’t their fault.
  2. Keep things private. A public disagreement will make you look bad. Period.
  3. Learn to use the tools. One thing which really inflamed this storm was Ms. Bouzaglo’s misuse of the Yelp platform in her reply. Not only did she reply publicly, which is frowned upon in the Yelp community, she replied in a review, not in a business owner’s reply. This showed a total failure on her part to understand how Yelp works and her options for replying to a bad review. I only needed about 2 minutes to find the page entitled Responding to Reviews in the Business Owner’s Guide on Yelp. Do your homework before responding to negative or positive feedback on social media platforms.

Business owners need to remember that viral works in both ways. Do something really great and potential customers all over the community will hear about it immediately. But do something incredibly unwise, and individuals will change from potential fans to haters in seconds.

Your business may be your passion and life’s work, but regular patronage from customers is what allows you to live your passion daily. Don’t forget that.

  • http://twitter.com/chriscardinal Chris Cardinal

    What's fascinating is how easily this would have been resolved if Amy would have just took a deep breath and privately messaged him “I'm sorry you felt the pizza was unsatisfactory. We always strive to exceed our customer's expectations, and we'd love for you to come in and give us a chance to make up for it.”

    Two sentences and she doesn't come off as a raving lunatic who has a temper and takes someone's taste personally, flying off the handle, calling them names, and genuinely scaring me away from ever dining in any restaurant she has anything to do with.

    Jumping to the conspiracy theory (“our competitors sent you!”) and calling the reviewer names (including “ugly” which seemed particularly harsh) was such a disproportionate response, and what's worse, she kept defending herself in the comments. “If he's going to dish it out, he needs to take it” is NOT how to handle a bad review.

    Amy seriously underestimated the power of the internet here, but it's not like she made a mistake in thinking that her response would be private—she directed parts of it to the general public, so it's clear that she was okay with people seeing her response. I wonder how it's possible that at no point during the crafting of her tirade did she even once question how it might make people perceive her? (In this case, as a total bitch.)

    Amy needs a lesson in social media, the internet, dealing with criticism, and just plain manners, if not cooking pizza.

  • Pingback: Is Amy Bouzaglo really bat-shit crazy?

  • http://twitter.com/boldavenue stephanie

    Be nice. It's what they teach in kindergarten. And following that rule would have gone a long way here – even if she had misused the platform.

  • http://matthewpetro.wordpress.com Matthew Petro

    You're definitely correct about Amy wanting to make her response public. Judging by that, I'm not really surprised by any of her other actions. When she wrote her initial response, she clearly thought that she was being attacked, that there was some sort of conspiracy and that it was appropriate to publicly insult Joel. All of this is ridiculous, but in her mind it was perfectly logical. For a mind which works that way, understanding the power of social media to shape opinion is an impossible task.

  • http://matthewpetro.wordpress.com Matthew Petro

    Absolutely. I think most people are amazed at how blatantly rude she was and how she seems to not understand how inappropriate it is. Had she responded in a polite and appropriate manner but used Yelp incorrectly, most people would have given her a lot of credit and pointed out how to use the platform in a way which conforms to the guidelines.

  • http://www.zyphon.com willbradley

    I think biz owners console themselves, thinking that the public will see it from their perspective, or that people reading the review don't matter to their bottom line, both of which are totally false. The public generally has no idea the stress involved in running a business, and votes with their feet. In the Internet age, your true character will shine through and people in China will hear about it.

  • http://chuckreynolds.us Chuck Reynolds

    yeah…. this is a good example of how NOT to handle said situation…

    And yet she still remains smug and as arrogant as the first crack response… sigh

  • http://matthewpetro.wordpress.com Matthew Petro

    The only thing she's done well is be consistent in her smugness and arrogance. I guess she gets +1 for that, but it doesn't help much compared to the -1,000,000 she gets for her angry responses.

  • http://matthewpetro.wordpress.com Matthew Petro

    That's true. The amplification power of social media is huge. Heck, a guy from New York just commented on the Chow Bella post.

  • http://www.ninamiller.us/ Nina Miller

    I totally agree with what you're saying, Mr. Petro. I have thoughts about how you phrased the poll question. I think by saying “How badly has the owner of Amy's Baking Company damaged the restaurant's business?” you are leading people down a path of negativity. I think we all agree here that this is bad, but the poll collected information based on that bias, because the question starts the respondent assuming there could be no good out of the situation. Its a lightening fast moment that the question is read, and if anyone thought “Hey this isn't so bad, people are overeacting” the sheep mind of humanity will erase that thought when they read the phrase “How badly.” And then the poll is weighted in favor of the questioners point of view. Does that make sense? I love the poll, and I love the post. Just a thought about wording to consider for the future.

  • http://www.ninamiller.us/ Nina Miller

    lol. I said lightening. IT'S SUPER FAST, okay?

  • http://matthewpetro.wordpress.com Matthew Petro

    I do agree that the poll has a focus towards negativity. It was created from my viewpoint that Amy Bouzaglo's actions have only been detrimental to her business, and it was created to quickly gather a coarse-grained view of public opinion.

    I do agree that ultimately, it's impossible to separate a poll like this from the questioner's point of view. It's interesting that no one has created another poll which is biased in favor of Amy's Baking Company, nor created one which attempts to be unbiased. Has the court of public opinion already sentenced Amy Bouzaglo, or are her supporters just not active within the social media sphere in which my poll resides? I'd really like to see someone support the notion that she has done no lasting damage to her business, or has even helped it by garnering so much attention.

  • Ron

    If nothing else, we owe Amy a huge debt of gratitude for the sheer entertainment of watching her stomp and scream her denials across the internet like a spoiled child who's been caught stealing dessert out of other kids' lunchboxes.

  • http://matthewpetro.wordpress.com Matthew Petro

    True, but it's the kind of train wreck entertainment that bad reality TV capitalizes on. We have way too much of that already. Having said that, I really hope Crazy Amy doesn't get her own show.

  • Pingback: Is Amy Bouzaglo really bat-shit crazy? | No Semicolons