“The advice every single person in business has given me is not to let it get to you, which is much easier said than done,” Baldwin says.
“[There are] reviews that really bother me. But overall, I have to try and remember 20 people in the restaurant were happy tonight; one person didn’t have a good time. That’s fine too.”
Being an intimate venue, Baldwin says it’s often easy to match a Google review with a booking. If a diner has posted negative feedback, she tries to reach them privately.
Despite being pictured here with her favourite Japanese knife, when facing negative feedback, Joy chef-owner Sarah Baldwin says she always tries to “kill them with kindness”.Credit: Markus Ravik
“I send a message to say, ‘I just want you to know that feedback is really important, and it’s really important for me that every guest had a beautiful time in the restaurant. So to hear that you didn’t is really upsetting, and I’d love a chance to rectify it’.
“I always offer for them to come back and dine for free to give us a second chance.”
Not everyone takes up the offer, and there are times when mediation between disgruntled diner and chef-owner play out online. To Baldwin’s credit, she always responds graciously.
“When I’m posting publicly like that, all I’m thinking about is how I want my business to be perceived by people who haven’t been there or don’t know me personally.
“It’s important to me that people aren’t turned off by the way I respond.”
I tell Baldwin about a restaurant owner in West End who, on occasion, goes to war with one-star reviewers on Google. In one thread, they responded to criticism by telling the diner that “potentially, costing and flavour are too complex for your mind”. Questionably professional, but the former hospitality worker in me smiled.
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QUT professor and consumer behaviour expert Gary Mortimer cautions against defensive or reactive responses.
“It’s incredibly risky. And this notion of ‘the customer is always right’ does to some extent hold true,” he says.
“From a business perspective, if the customer is willing to not just take the time to dine with you, but go online and provide actual feedback, it means they actually are giving you feedback on your business.
“We find that most consumers who are disappointed in the service experience … just want to be listened to.”
Baldwin says if it were up to her, feedback would always be given personally. “Especially the way the restaurant is set up, I’m face to face with every single guest, so in an ideal world, they could tell me to my face.”
It takes guts to give honest, face-to-face feedback. The last time I left a restaurant “review” was August last year. I contemplated raising it in-person, but ultimately took a softer approach and sent an email the next day.
Normally, I wouldn’t bother raising a few average dishes, but the food was expensive and made us sick – feedback they needed to hear, though, in my opinion, best delivered privately.
I’m sure there are places deserving of a one-star review. But I wonder how many people who post negative feedback publicly have ever worked in hospitality. As Baldwin put it: “It’s important to remember that hospitality staff are still just humans.”
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