Week 3A: Communication - Business & Consumer

  I currently work for a large bio-tech company as an asset manager for the laboratory equipment on site.  One of my main responsibilities is coordinating with different internal (sub companies) and external companies to perform equipment maintenance.  Most of the companies I work with understand the service level I require and are more than happy to make my job easier.  We had one company who was the complete opposite and although we gave them plenty of work, their mindset was very closed in terms of cooperating with our needs.  The things I needed from them weren't anything extravagant, mainly a constant communication (I need to provide updates to the equipment owners) and to receive service reports for their work completed. I reached out to the technician multiple times to try to resolve the issue at his level but he never replied to phone calls or emails.  After a few weeks of trying, I finally escalated the issue to his supervisors who made it seem like they were going to remedy the issue.  In reality, the issue was resolved for about a month before the communication died out again. At this point, I still have not received a service report from them.  I reached out to the supervisors again but no one responded after multiple attempts.  Finally, I had had enough and decided to stop using the company all together. Within a few months, they noticed their profits take a huge dip.  Each repair they perform is usually 4-8 labor hours at about $200 per hour.  They were getting about 10+ work orders a week.  Months later, out of the blue, I get an email from a new supervisor who had revamped the entire process and has adapted to my needs.  Seeing the turn around, I've been sending them work orders again and so far, I've received my service reports and had communication well maintained with weekly phone calls and almost daily emails from the supervisor asking for improvement points.

  As a customer, I've also had bad experiences at businesses and with no real form of direct communication with the owner, I had to take to social media.  Yelp has been my go to tool when I have an issue with a business and I tend to get responses back from the owners.  I think the reason it works so well is that yelp directly effects the profitability of a business.  If the Yelp reviews are low, then there will be less people willing to visit the establishment and vice versa. My wife love boba and we go to Sharetea a lot in Orange County and Mira Mesa.  Recently an Escondido location has opened up and we've become regulars.  We have noticed that the boba amount per drink is significantly less than the other locations by almost half.  After weeks of getting drinks there, my wife said she was going to just order extra boba to make it like the normal amount at other locations.  Funny thing is, when she got her drink, they gave her even less than their normal amount!  She was dumbfounded.  She asked the cashier if it was extra boba (which she knew it wasn't) and he checked with the kitchen worker who said it was. Usually I'm the yelper but she got on the app immediately and uploaded her picture of her drink with a 1 star review.  The next day, the owner reached out saying they will be providing training to their servers.  Who knows if it actually happened, but at least the business owner reached out to attempt to resolve the issue.  I've had several positive experiences based off my yelp review which has resulted in better service. 

  If I had a business, I would do my best to acknowledge every review on yelp.  I would thank all the positive reviews and probe for points of improvement.  For the negative reviews, I would acknowledge the issue and create a plan to remedy (if plausible).  I would ask politely for the reviewer to try my business again and to provide an update on their current review whether positive or negative.