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Recommendations and just how important they are
Giving someone a suggestion or advice for a place to go or, a person to use for something is really important. I get asked quite a bit about places or if I know anyone that does XYZ. As a business owner myself I take great pride when a customer places their trust in us. When they share that with their friends and family that is really important. I am pretty careful about tossing out recommendations and I guess even more so now since the success of Shop Local Delmarva. I am not going to say how great a place was if it wasn't. I am also not going to go and leave a negative write up or bad review. I don't want to hurt a business by posting something like that. Many of the post on our group reach thousands and thousands of local people all over Delmarva.
We all know that things are not always perfect and for that matter sometimes they aren't even good. Sure I have had bad food, bad service, terrible experiences with businesses. And when this happens to me I just go on with my day or night but I am not into posting or leaving horrible reviews of places.
On our group we simply ask people to share their positive experiences with us and keep the negative stuff off of the group. But if you have to share things like that there are more than enough places to share those types of reviews. Our group is to promote local businesses on Delmarva.
How do you respond
Whether it is a positive or a negative experience as a business owner or a customer - how do you respond? If you are the customer and you do not let the business owner know you are disappointed is it really fair to go out of your way to let everyone know how bad things were? It would be nice to give them a chance to make things right. If you are the business owner and a customer brings up a issue...how you respond to it can make a big difference.
A couple messages from friends about this place or that place got me thinking. One message was about a place that I had just left and had a wonderful time. Well they went and didn't have the same experience at all. I had another friend that used a local business that I have seen several people extremely happy with for something and they were quite disappointed in it. And even more recently I got off of the phone with a customer who used someone I had recommended and they weren't happy. I apologized. :(
What bothered me more than anything was 2 out of the 3 of the business owners knew the customers were disappointed and apparently didn't make any sort of effort at all to rectify it. That is hard for me to hear. And I can say quite confidently that I will not be recommending them in the future.
Something else that was a little disappointment was that neither of those business owners took the time to say "Hey Thanks for the recommendation" this is something that I really always try to do and it means I know you went out of your way to help me and my business.
Reviews, ratings, best
We can all get caught up in this game of trying to find who is the best or who do you recommend. I just hope that when you are looking for important purchases you take the time to look a bit further than a recommendation from many people that you don't know. I see it on several other groups, and other places online. I see some of the people making the recommendations and it is almost like they have a fulltime job recommending a place or a business? We have discussed before some of the ways businesses offer kickbacks or incentives for reviews and positive ratings before. Do they have a friend that works there, but they don't use the services themselves?
And when it comes to paid advertisements DO you really think there will be anything negative remarks or testimonials in the advertisements? Of course not. So look on Google, or the reviews on Facebook, or one of the countless other places. See if a friend has used them. And if it is a really large purchase or something really important call a couple places to see what you think. After all you are the only one that will really matter.
When I give a recommendation
I get asked quite often if I know someone who could do this or that, or where I would go out to eat around here or there. I bet I have been asked where I should go to get this more than 200 times this past year. Much like on our group I try to stick to positives. I almost always offer a couple of places or people and not just one place.
And when I am asked about a place or a business that maybe I haven't had a great experience or heard great things about. It depends who I am talking with. If it is a family member or close friend I might tell them what I really think about it or the experience I had. Otherwise I will let them know that although I didn't have a positive experience, that certainly doesn't mean that they won't.
David
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