Adamantly declaring, in the first 2 minutes of filming no less, that “the customer is not always right” may not be the best move for a restaurant owner who wants to improve their business. This is the situation Amy’s Baking Company of Scottsdale, Arizona found themselves in before becoming the face of an epic meltdown on Facebook.
When you go on a show called “Kitchen Nightmares,” it seems inevitable that it can only end badly if you have a bad attitude. Kitchen Nightmares follows famous chef Gordon Ramsay around the country as he tries to help debilitated restaurants come back from the dead. Amy, the owner of Amy’s Baking Company of Scottsdale, Arizona, claims she lost a “tremendous amount of business” from bad bloggers criticizing her cooking. Perhaps the bloggers were on the right track. During the filming of the show, both customers and the restaurant’s own waitstaff criticized the food. It seems that not only the food is the problem, as customer service at the restaurant leaves much to be desired. Word to the wise: when customers call over the manager to discuss issues with their dinner, don’t tell them “you don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like” and walk away. You need only watch the episode for a few minutes before one universal truth becomes abundantly clear: restaurant owners Amy and Samy are FIFTY SHADES OF CRAZY.
But that’s neither here no there. If you want a glimpse into the hell that is life at the restaurant, you need only watch the first 5 minutes of the show here.
Owner's of Amy's Baking Company, Amy and Samy
What this Albany marketing firm is more interested in is what ensued AFTER the airing of the show. After the airing of the show, something happened on the Amy’s Baking Company Facebook page that Buzzfeed refers to as “The Most Epic Brand Meltdown On Facebook, Ever.” See some screenshots below to see how the situation spiraled out of control:
And those are just the highlights!
The following day, after the incident went viral, the following post was found on their Facebook page:
Obviously our Facebook, YELP, Twitter and Website have been hacked. We are working with the local authorities as well as the FBI computer crimes unit to ensure this does not happen again. We did not post those horrible things. Thank You Amy & Samy
Perhaps someone is having a little remorse about their bad behavior? PR gurus, how would you handle this situation ifthis restaurant was your client?
MORE CHANGES!?- New Facebook Replies and Threaded Comments
Zuckerberg, why do you keep torturing us with your latest Facebook “updates” that are supposed to be improvements but, in reality, they just make our social networking experience more annoying than usual?
Maybe that comment isn’t fair, but I think we can all agree that whenever we hear about a “Facebook update” we all brace ourselves for the worst. Facebook Timeline…need I say more?
The techies must have been busy in Palo Alto this week as Facebook has thrown us 2 new curveballs: the addition of replies and threaded comments for brands and businesses as well as public Profiles for individuals with more than 10,000 followers. A comment thread WITHIN a comment thread? Isn’t that treading a little too far down the rabbit hole? It’s not mandatory for all Page owners just yet, but starting on July 10th the change will become universal. Starting this week, Page owners can test the waters and get the kinks out before it becomes required. This new Facebook feature was rolled out with the purpose of brands and public Profiles being able to increase interactions with fans and readers. Active-thread sifting is also another feature that is being rolled out, but this is still in beta testing. This function will bring the most active conversations to the top of a comment thread by using an algorithm.
We smell disaster.
The biggest reason we feel this way is because, for now, the new feature will only be available on desktop, so when viewing the comments on mobile devices, you will not be able to reply. For busy PR people on the go, this is a huge problem when managing client pages. In addition, because of the comment-sifting, all the comments will be out of order, which is a HUGE PAIN for Admins. This presents a BIG problem for Pages who have hundreds of comments (think big brands like Pepsi or Johnson & Johnson) as there is no way to see which comments are new without reading through the whole thread. However, there are some perks. According to Facebook, Page Admins can choose to make the default for new comments entered either “visible to everyone” or “has limited visibility” on the site (i.e., the comment is only visible to the commenter and their friends), to help mitigate irrelevant content. Admins can also blacklist words and ban users. If a new comment is published from a banned user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility.
Currently, Huffington Post has been testing the comment thread and a screenshot can be seen here:
TechCrunch describes how the new function will work and some of the benefits Pages and Profiles will gain from it: “Direct replies will serve a couple of purposes on the social network. For one, it will give those Page and Profile owners more ways to use their pages. For example, they can use them to run Q&A sessions or informal polls about different topics or ideas. This will also potentially mean more time spent by users on these pages — something that benefits both Facebook and the Page/Profile owners. It also gives Facebook a little more interactive functionality that brings it closer to the kind of direct contact you get in Twitter, or the open forum feeling you get in Reddit.”
While no one can argue that Facebook has revolutionized PR and marketing, sometimes bigger isn’t always better. I yearn for the days of Facebook’s simplicity, when it was all wall posts and pictures of you taking Jell-o shots with your college roommates at your favorite dive bar in 2003. When “Poking” was a social norm and even a way to flirt with someone you liked. A time before future employers were creeping your profile and your social networking movements/interests were being tracked by Facebook/advertisers like a scene from Zero Dark Forty.
Le sigh. We can only wait and see what new “improvements” lay on the horizon….