Even without the economic downturn, most restaurants would be delighted to have a crowd for happy hour. Especially in the last week of August, when much of official Washington is either in Denver, bound for Minneapolis, or just taking advantage of the downtime to get some downtime. Most restaurants–but not Oya.
The Penn Quarter restaurant may look cool and sophisticated, but it’s just a facade. After agreeing to allow IABC/Washington to hold a happy hour at the bar on Tuesday, staff told arriving event organizers that they would have to run one tab, and that the restaurant would add a service charge to every drink. This for patrons buying drinks at the bar. No special room. No extra bartender.
Oya finally dropped that idea, but then they asked event organizers to move the nametags to a far back corner. I guess they were ruining the aesthetics.
After that, I had a glass of water. Then I went to the ball park, where they want my business, said hello to India (my awesome usher), and had a beer.
Business is reputational, and consumers have lots of options. So why would any business opt to make its customers unwelcome?
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I also attended that event at Oya, and found the management and staff unwilling to work with us (IABC/Washiington chapter). When the cocktail party was setup, we were not informed about their relentless policies.
If our group wasn’t there – the bar area would have been basically dead.
Don’t service businesses understand that that they need to please their customers – or their customers will go elsewhere. This is what word of mouth marketing (WOMM) is all about …
WOMM is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business …
It recognizes that a happy customer is the greatest endorsement (and an unhappy customer can tarnish your business).
It also gives customers a voice and provides something worth talking about. The power of WOMM is to listen to consumers and engage them in open, unfiltered conversation, and then promptly and honestly respond to their concerns.
Most importantly you must value customer opinion, whether it is positive, negative, or neutral.
With that said – Oya should have been delighted that we brought over 30 members and guests to this event – because a good experience becomes an endorsement/recommendation to friends and family.
WOMM isn’t just the latest marketing fad. It’s a fundamental change in the nature of communications between consumers and marketers.
Consumers control the message now … and we all need to learn how to harness their voices. We are using blogs, communities, viral marketing, buzz, evangelism, WOMM, and other new techniques to create a more open and productive relationship between businesses and individuals.
I hope that Oya gets it right the next time with another group. They probably will not get a second chance with our IABC members that attended this event.