It’s almost 2015. If you haven’t realized yet how powerful one single individual on the internet can be, and you still choose to treat your customers poorly…you deserve to go out of business. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s a new age and the age old rebuttal of…
You and What Army?!
Just doesn’t work anymore.
Now…We have the Internet Army. The Reddit Army. The Yelp Army…..The People’s Army.
In yet another brilliant Yelp campaign, a group of activists are trying to get a homophobic restaurant to become the highest rated gay establishment in the country. While this campaign and story is actually 6 months old, it only made the home page of Reddit today. From personal experience with reaching the home page of Reddit, this will easily garner over a million page views, maybe more. (I got 1.8mm views to a pic that hit the top story.)
Similar to this other great Yelp campaign where a restaurant is trying to get the lowest rated reviews to combat one star reviews, and similar to the story of the hotel/ wedding venue that charges customers $500 if any of their guests leave a negative review online…or of course the famous Amy’s Baking company on Kitchen Nightmares, where the internet banded together to teach them a lesson about treating people right.
For the longest time I wanted to build a website dedicated to rallying the internet troops to fight back against injustice.
There is a kickstartereque site called ThunderClap.it where you contribute your social following to a cause you believe in…and they see how far they an amplify your message. While Thunder Clap is really targeting non-profit causes…it would be nice to see a way to empower individuals to fight back when they are treated horrendously.
Bottom line, as a business owner in 2015, if you are doing anything short of WOWing your customers with amazing experiences, your days are certainly numbered.
The next time someone says, You and What Army…You can counter… Me, and the Internet Army.
About David Melamed
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The internet has a lot of downsides but numerous positives too, and I truly believe that it is one of the greatest tools of this era. It’s brought the world so close together when a couple of decades ago, communication – while not limited to people in your circle of life – wouldn’t branch out around the world or country as it does now. This is an amazing thing because it helps us motivate each other and become a movement for change in the world, to a greater capacity than before. And you are very right about wowing the customers. For those that aren’t doing right by them, the internet is very capable of uniting against you and running you into the ground. Word of mouth can only go so far, but the internet had the power to expose a campaign to millions if used in the right manner.
Yes, the internet is not only good for mobilizing people in a range of campaigns and raising awareness for things that you would otherwise not have the slightest clue about, but it really is the best tool to rally people against something as well. Considering pretty much everyone uses the internet these days and knows the power that it has, it always surprised me when a business only puts in a half-hearted effort, or doesn’t have their customers best interest in mind, because you can guarantee that at some point it will spread and have a negative impact on your business. “It’s almost 2015. If you haven’t realized yet how powerful one single individual on the internet can be, and you still choose to treat your customers poorly…you deserve to go out of business. ” This is something that I agree with one hundred percent, and such a good point for people to keep in mind when they’re starting out so that they don’t get into any of those bad habits that will reflect badly in the end.