Do You Know Who Am I?

A sentence that we, the Turkish people, desperately try to hide behind when we cause a problem or feel guilty “Do you know who I am?” After all, we would not need to quibble about our identity to remind someone who we were unless we had a problem or we were guilty.

We make it to the airport at the last minute and find out that the door to our plane has been closed. We start a poor argument by saying "Do you know who I am?" We forget to buy a ticket to a football match and do the same thing at the ticket booth. There is a long queue for applications. We start snapping at the person in charge.

We already have a problem about being "important" and it is just the right time to remind it. However, things don’t work out as planned! Our interlocutors don't really care "who" we are or "how important" we are. We usually leave these kinds of places crestfallen with a pensive expression like "we lost although we played well".

We were provided with another platform where we could remind “who" we were since we started spending too much time on social media in our daily lives. Our names might have been Jane, John, Jack or Mary, but we were all "consumers" and that was very "important". That was how we started reminding who we were! Now we could remind brands and companies that own them “who we were”. The days when those brands and companies could boast of their early years were long gone. Who would dare complain about them in those days?

We actually have reasonable grounds when we stand up to others about who we are. The scandals in Goodyear, Pinar, Ulker and Bitaksi in Turkey and the ones in United Airlines and Uber abroad have recently revealed how brands could suffer severe financial problems since their customers reminded them "who they were".

They’d better know who we are. We stated that in the June 2017 issue of Brandmap based on the data collected by ZENNA Corporate Brand Research.

"We Abandon Brands"

• 61% of us share their complaints on social media.
• We take the trouble to share our thoughts on all platforms especially www.sikayetvar.com, a customer complaint website, and the related brands' websites.
• What’s more, we do not hesitate to spend time on guiding others to do the same thing.
• One in two people tend to abandon a brand if the name of this brand is mentioned in a scandal.

Places to eat and places to visit are the best areas to witness how we shape our behaviours about “who we are”. We start playing with something as we used to play with modelling clay when we were kids. We keep reshaping our feelings of impatience, anger, dissatisfaction and revenge.

"Reputation Inspection of Brands"

The behavioural pattern of our reactions is not different from our reaction to an electronic device which was delivered with a missing piece. Our facial expressions, our adrenaline flowing, our tones of voice, the words we choose, the sentences we make and the social media platforms where we tell our feelings reveal the route followed by our world in terms of negatives.

We have started to inspect the reputation of service quality wherever we go based on our close relationship with customer complaint websites and brands such as Foursquare and Booking.com.

It is another question whether the contents, a reflection of our feelings, achieve useful or worthwhile results in an extensive sharing network.

"I'll Pay Whatever The Price Is"

Some of us may pour out their feelings through their complaints on social media, and consider this temporary “satisfaction". We share “positives" when necessary. However, they do not last long compared to the complaints encouraged by our feelings of “revenge”.

Satisfaction or dissatisfaction in an “I’ll-pay-whatever-the-price-is” type of relationship between the customer and a brand will always exist in that brand's aura whether it involves a complaint, comment or suggestion. It cannot be decomposed by nature. In other words, “from now on, the brand is noted down”.

Even if they are few in number, unsatisfactory experiences attract our attention first on the Internet when we are about to make a choice. Statements, observations and information about these unsatisfactory experiences become more important than satisfactory experiences which are more in number. If a mistake eliminated two right things, the related business would still make a profit. However, “a negative comment” can sometimes ruin tens of positive comments!

"There Has Got to Be A Happy Ending"

The consumer’s main strength is “buying and recommendation”. Businesses should be able to make a profit from this strength although it sometimes turns into contamination on social media. A “happy ending” can sometimes become a benchmark!

Something that happened in Alacati in the past weeks and that was seen on social media made me write this article.

Chef Kemal Demirasal, the creator of Alancha, has started a new “challenging” business called YEK this season. I’d like to introduce Kemal Demirasal in a few words for those of you who do not know him. He is a young customer-oriented entrepreneur who does his job passionately and follows closely many similar restaurants not only in Turkey but also all around the world. One of his customers claimed that he had food poisoning in YEK, a very popular place in Alacati, and shared his claim on his social media accounts. I think the way Kemal Demirasal brought up this subject almost immediately will be an example of crisis management and communication for a lot of business managers. Therefore, I'm sharing his message as posted on his Facebook account.

“I have rarely been in any situation where we upset our guests unintentionally and felt helpless during my ten-year restaurant and kitchen management experience.

I have seen on social media that one of our guests had food poisoning in our restaurant last night.

We are deeply sorry and investigating in detail the source of this event.

We owe our guest an apology for causing such an unfortunate event.

Even if only one person has been affected, it does not change the dimensions of this event for us. We are investigating in detail the possibilities that may have caused it.

I wanted to share this issue with everyone instead of whitewashing it, because I believe that we have been working so hard to provide better and cleaner service for our guests since the first day I set my heart on this job.

I would like everyone to know that we have always been and will always be careful that our entire kitchen, production, buying and sourcing team do their jobs faithfully with love, that we find the best and reliable suppliers in the right season, that our ingredients are delivered, kept and treated fresh, and that they are thrown away without a second thought in case of a suspicious situation.

I would like to underline that I have never seen and will never see this profession as seasonal restaurant management.

We realise that this event might have happened due to our negligence. However, I also ask everyone to consider that it might have happened due to contamination caused by hot weather in the sourcing chain until the ingredients were delivered to us or due to similar possibilities which cannot be identified and prevented sometimes.

I know there is no excuse for that. However, I would like to point out that even the best restaurants in the world which have much higher inspection levels and much better facilities such as FATDUCK and NOMA experienced this kind of events where all their guests had food poisoning. I truly hope that neither I nor any other restaurant manager or chef experience this unfortunate event ever again.

Kind regards,                       

Kemal Demirasal”

We see that tens of comments and supportive messages are sent to Kemal after this post. The commenters, most of whom are his customers, try to support him by giving him advice and by sharing the subjects that can change the course of his investigation. Kemal Demirasal could have made other choices. He could have said "People forget easily, nobody will remember anything in a few days". He could have denied it. He could have looked for “someone else to blame”. However, the culture and character of business management is generally revealed in these kinds of situations. As Kemal says, this is a “lesson”.

If Kemal hadn’t shared his thoughts at the right time, true or untrue things would have been written on the walls of silent thinking corridors by unknown people.

Let me give some other similar examples:

Especially the businesses which have become “brands” are under the spotlight. The devil in us always looks for a mistake, deficiency or fault. Since we pay the required price, we start judging the place based on our feelings. If we also consider our current psychological mood, (maybe there is no fault in this place but…) we will start looking at our smart phones in our hands.

“In short: Don’t go there. Why? They are slow, careless and expensive. Details: They kept us waiting for 1 hour before we could choose our appetisers although we booked in advance. Then, we waited for the main course for 40 mins and cancelled it in the end.”

 “A place where a lemonade, a coffee and a tiramisu cost 40 liras, where lemonade gives you stomach ache since they put too much citric acid in it and where you get mediocre tiramisu for the money you pay.”

 “Its concept sells otherwise food is not even mediocre but poor. Grumpy employees do not suit this village concept.”

 “Our food came after we had waited for an hour and we wished it hadn't come. We went there since it was recommended by Vedat Milor, a famous gourmet. We were not pleased and we paid a crazy price. Don’t go to this place, there are better places.

 When we are about to reach a climax of revenge, we start seeing the other comments about the same place one after the other.

 “The best Aegean cuisine I have ever had. It was full of food I have tasted for the first time. Especially the appetisers were wonderful. You should definitely try it no matter what the other people say."

 “Pumpkin cake and lemon cake, both more delicious than the other. You want to taste all the other desserts. Employees are very polite and smiley. They served me although I went there at the closing time."

 “Unbelievably delicious. You may not be able to stop yourself thinking whether this place is paradise. I strongly recommend it."

 “Everything is simply great. I feel like eating mum's food in my garden. I thank the whole team for making me have such a romantic and sincere evening."

 Naturally, we try to evaluate the place by looking at the number of positive and negative comments, and to classify the contents under specific topics such as price, service and offers. 

"Our Digital Footprints"

The main point is to let the ones who make us unhappy know who we are. Digital platforms are also our footprints. Consumers say that they look at a brand's website (48.0%) and read blog comments on the brand (49.6%) before buying its products/service.

3 out of 4 people who have had a problem with a brand state that they share their problems on the Internet. 41.4% say that they do not buy products / service from the related brand. More importantly, 19.5% guide their acquaintances not to buy its products and service (ZENNA, Digital Footprints Survey, 2016).

To make a long story short, brands and companies that own them have to know and understand “who” consumers are and do what is necessary!