April 7, 2025 • 19 mins
Dr. Melissa Hughes joins Zack to explore the neuroscience behind the guest experience. As a keynote speaker and author, Melissa breaks down why small missteps in a restaurant can have an outsized impact, and how operators can respond to reviews with empathy and intention.
Zack and Melissa discuss:
- How the brain's negativity bias affects guest perception
- Why noise can ruin a meal regardless of food quality
- The power of thoughtful responses to negative reviews
- Why most feedback contains hidden truth
- How service recovery can create more loyal guests
- How personalization and empathy influence customer retention
Tune in to hear how Melissa’s brain-based insights can transform the way you handle feedback and build guest loyalty.
Thanks, Melissa!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation, the
restaurant guest experiencepodcast, where I talk to
industry experts to get theirstrategies and tactics you can
use to create a five-star guestexperience.
This podcast is sponsored byOvation, an operations and guest
recovery platform formulti-unit restaurants that
gives all the answers withoutannoying guests with all the
(00:21):
questions.
Learn more at OvationUpcom.
And today we have Dr MelissaHughes with us.
She's a keynote speaker, she'san author, she's a
self-proclaimed neurosciencegeek but she is all about the
science of neuro and she'swritten some amazing articles,
some great books and superexcited to have you on the
(00:42):
podcast, melissa.
How are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I am great.
Thank you for having me.
I'm super excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Now, this is going to be a unique podcast because
normally we have people thatcome on and they talk about the
guest experience from arestaurant perspective.
And while you do have quite abit of restaurant experience,
especially through marriageChristopher Siebes being your
husband and he's an awesome guyjust bit of restaurant
experience, especially throughmarriage Christopher Siebes
being your husband and he's anawesome guy just an amazing
(01:09):
restaurant veteran but you comeat it from a neuroscience
perspective.
First of all.
What got you into neurosciencein the first place?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, so my roots are in education.
I started my career in a fourthgrade classroom.
At the end of that first year Isat down with my mentor, kind
of did a little postmortem whatdo I need to work on for next
year?
And my overarching question washow can I be a great teacher if
I don't understand how thebrain works and how the brain
learns and those factors thatimpact creativity and problem
(01:43):
solving all those places in thebrain that we want our kids to
hang out right?
So I'm going to fast forward awhole bunch of years, and that
was actually where my journey inneuroscience research began.
And as I traveled along thatpath called life, what I
discovered was thatunderstanding how the brain
(02:03):
works is far more importantafter you leave the classroom,
because there's no teacherguiding you to the right answers
or to how to learn or what tolearn.
And, all things being equal, weall have the same access to
information.
Now, If you have internetaccess, you can get the
information you need.
So the difference between thebest of us and the rest of us is
(02:27):
understanding what's going onup here and how to create the
conditions we need to get ourmind to do what we want it to do
.
That's how I got here.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Your quest for a PhD.
In this, though, I mean, likeit's one thing to be like hey,
this is interesting, but how'dyou decide?
Oh no, I think I want to do aPhD.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
So I was that geek in school.
I didn't want to know what ittook to get an A, I wanted to
know what it took to get an Aplus.
And I just loved learning.
And when I really kind of doveinto the neuroscience of how we
think and it wasn't just how thebrain works and how we think,
(03:12):
that fascinated me, it was theway the brain quirks that
fascinated me.
Like, why are we so irrationalsometimes?
Why is it that when we go intoa restaurant, the food can be
amazing, but we walk out of thatrestaurant and we have a
negative perception of theexperience?
What is it that made thathappen?
(03:33):
So that's just one example ofthere are lots of factors that
influence our perception that weare not even aware of.
Most of our thought processes,most of our brain function
happens in our subconscious, andso until you really start to
dig into that and figure out,well, what is it that's making
me irritated about this meal?
(03:53):
I mean, it has nothing to dowith the steak and the baked
potato.
The steak and the baked potatoare fantastic, but I'm irritated
about this meal.
Now, what I know is maybe it'sthe noise, because restaurant
noise is the biggest complaintamong guests, and that is the
thing that can really create anegative perception of the meal.
(04:14):
Now, the noise has nothing todo with the quality of the food
or way it's prepared, or eventhe way it's served to you.
The server, the chef, they didall their jobs, but still noise
creates this negative perception.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Interesting.
So there's all of these otherthings going on that formulate
this guest experience, and Ialways tell people you have to
get a thousand things right inorder to have a good experience,
but one thing wrong can reallyoutweigh it, unless, of course,
you have some kind of a personalconnection to either the brand,
(04:49):
the manager there, somebodyworking there.
Once you build that personalconnection, there's more that
could be forgiven.
But if I'm going into arestaurant and I'm paying $50
for a meal for me and my kids, Iwant to make sure that I'm
getting what I'm paying for andI'm having the experience that I
expected.
When I go to McDonald's, intothe play area, I'm expecting
(05:12):
there to be a lot of noise,right.
What I'm not expecting is forthem to put onions on my burger
when I specifically asked for noonions.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
So two things are happening there, right?
So the first thing is what youmentioned is that one negative
thing far outweighs all thepositive things that happen in
that experience, right?
And that is an ancestralhand-me-down.
We are wired to tune in to thenegative.
It's called a negativity bias,and that's why we've survived
like a bazillion years, becausewhen their caveman ancestors
(05:45):
were walking through the tundra,they didn't pay attention to
the rustling in the bushes.
It could mean like the end forthem, right?
So that was hardwired into usand we've just kept it, and so
now we're not escapingsaber-toothed tigers.
But the brain is as amazing asit is.
It doesn't actuallydifferentiate between
(06:06):
psychological threat andphysical threat.
So that physical threat hascarried over and as our brains
have evolved, now we know whatpsychological threat feels like.
And the brain does the samething.
It's always on the lookout forthat negative thing.
Where's the danger?
What can hurt me physically orpsychologically?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Interesting, because data shows that people are three
times more likely to leave anegative review than a positive
one right, and so that's thatnegativity bias that you're
talking about.
So what can restaurateurs do tocombat that?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Well, when I am talking to restaurateurs, I
always say that negative reviewis a gift, it's a total gift.
So here's the thing the personthat walked out of your
restaurant, who was irritatedbecause of the noise or because
I don't know they got Frenchfries instead of a baked potato,
(07:00):
or whatever their irritation is.
That review is your chance tonot just make a personal
connection with one of abazillion customers that you
have over the course of the week.
It's your chance to tell thewhole world how you feel when
one of your customers'expectations are not met.
(07:21):
Because here's what I thinkpeople kind of miss in the
negative review thing.
I don't think people expectrestaurants to be perfect.
We know restaurants are notgoing to be perfect, we know
things happen.
But they expect that therestaurant will listen to me
when I have a complaint.
And, like you said, people arethree times more likely to sit
(07:45):
down and pound out a negativereview and I've been there.
I mean I've done that too right.
But the part that is the mosttelling is after that negative
review is written, how does therestaurant respond?
Because if the restaurantdoesn't respond at all, that's
worse.
If the restaurant comes backand says well, you're just a
(08:07):
lunatic.
I don't need your businessanyway.
Okay, that's awful, but in bothof those cases you're going to
lose me as a customer.
But what is also happening isevery other person that checks
the reviews before they try yourrestaurant is going to see that
either you responded like anass or you didn't respond at all
(08:28):
, and so, as a new customer, I'mlike whoa, they don't care when
things go wrong.
But if you sit down and write athoughtful response and I wrote
a blog post about here's theanatomy of a thoughtful response
to a bad review it's not thathard.
It's really pretty simple.
All people want is to be heardand they want to be acknowledged
(08:51):
that things didn't go asplanned.
And if you do that, then peopleare much more forgiving and
also they're much more likely tothink the restaurant's okay.
The person that wrote thatreview must be a nut job.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, and that's the thing, melissa, is that when I
look at public reviews, it'sreally hard to win people back
who have left a public review.
But the thing is is that I say5% of it is winning back that
individual customer.
95% is sharing your story, ismaking sure that when people
read that, they read that.
(09:27):
Number one you're human, youacknowledge it, you understand
it.
You wrote this great article.
The one that you referenced isturn negative reviews into loyal
guests.
And when you talk about it,it's like number one is hearing
the customer.
Number two is takingresponsibility.
Even if the guest was partiallyat fault is what you say.
And number three is offer asolution of we'd love to invite
(09:48):
you back and make this right.
And when you look at this, theproblem with online reviews,
when you're posting thispublicly, is a lot of people say
I don't want people to knowthat if they leave a negative
review, that I'm going to giveout a free hamburger.
And that's one of the reasonsthat we created Ovation was
because we want to make surethat if you can keep it private
and if you can track who thatguest is, it's so much more
(10:10):
powerful because you don't haveto wonder in the back of your
mind.
Are they just trying to getsomething for free?
You actually posted how to notrespond to a negative review.
And this owner kind of goesunhinged and is like, oh, it's
all about the money.
But if you're able to track howoften has that person
complained with us and if it'stheir first time ever
(10:31):
complaining and they've been in10 times and we treat them like
they're trying to steal ourkid's college tuition, then yeah
, it's going to paint a reallybad picture for the person
reading that response and forthe person who's giving you that
feedback, because, at the endof the day, 99% of feedback,
(10:51):
there's truth in there.
There's honesty.
There's something that honestlybetrayed their trust.
They trusted to have anexperience with your brand and
they didn't get it.
And so they have that primevalbetrayal feeling and they want
to feel heard.
They want justice, right.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Right, and you mentioned earlier.
You mentioned expectations, andit is all about trust and
expectations.
In that particular example ofthat restaurant that I actually
clipped.
I clipped the, I screenshottedthe review and included that in
my article.
And here's what I wantrestaurateurs to pay attention
(11:32):
to In that particular case.
If you look at that restaurant,there is scathing review after
scathing review after scathingreview and they're not all the
same person.
And so as a restaurant person,I'm like, okay, if everyone's
carping about the weight like Ihad a 7.15 reservation, I didn't
(11:54):
get seated until 8.15, thenthat's my cue to pay attention
to how I'm schedulingreservations.
Right, if one person has a badexperience with the wait time,
maybe it's that person, maybe itwas an off night, maybe
something happened to thereservation, but you know, those
are the kinds of things that aguest who's looking at reviews
(12:17):
to decide.
Do I wanna come and spend $100at your place on Friday night?
If everybody's kind ofcomplaining about the wait time,
then I'm going to be like theyhave a terrible wait time,
everybody's complaining about it.
If one person complains about it, I'm going to forgive that.
That's not a big deal In thiscase.
If you go to that particularrestauranteur's reviews.
(12:40):
I mean this was like one of thelamest reviews out of the
criticisms there.
I mean I want to just call himand say dude like what happened
in your childhood, Right andhe's in my backyard.
I'm in Naples, florida, and he'sin my backyard.
And in that particular reviewit was written by someone who
lives here year round.
(13:01):
And also, if you read the edit,the update of that review, the
person said I'm never comingback.
But that's not who you have toworry about.
I'm going to tell every personI know about my experience.
Now, flip that around.
Had he just respondedthoughtfully and he didn't even
have to give anything away.
Just come on back and introduceyourself when you come back and
(13:22):
introduce yourself when youcome back.
I really want to meet you.
I want to apologize in person.
Maybe it isn't even a freeburger right.
Then now she's going to say youknow what I went in?
He introduced himself to me.
It was.
He's a really nice guy.
It must've been an off night.
I love that place now.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
It's such a gift, it's such a gift.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
It's such a gift because it's an opportunity to
publicly tell everybody else howyou handle guests.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
And what's so incredible is they've done
studies.
That's called the servicerecovery paradox and it shows
that a guest who has a negativeexperience with proper service
recovery is more likely tobecome loyal than a guest who
never had that service failurein the first place.
And in fact, when we look atour data, we're able to see that
that guest actually is twice aslikely to come back.
(14:10):
When they do come back, theycome back four times more
frequently, they spend moremoney on each subsequent visit
and they're 12 times more likelyto leave you a five-star review
on a next visit.
And so what we've found is that, quantifying it, one recovered
guest is worth 24 average guests.
Yeah, and I tell people all thetime, it's not that you need to
(14:32):
manufacture mistakes, they'regoing to happen organically.
It's about having that safetynet and it's about handling it
properly to make sure that youhave the proper service recovery
.
And one of the biggest itproperly to make sure that you
have the proper service recovery.
And one of the biggest thingsthat we found is that if you're
texting a guest or you'reresponding to a review, if you
want it to be super powerful,use your name and use their name
(14:55):
yes, by just saying hey,melissa, I'm Zach, the owner of
Zach Shack.
I just wanted to say I am sosorry that you had an hour-long
wait.
We obviously messed up.
We were super slammed thatnight, not how we want to
portray it.
I would love to invite you backin and give you a regular
(15:17):
five-star experience, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm not asking you to rewriteyour review.
I'm not giving you somethingfor free, but it's just an
acknowledgement of human tohuman connection and not just
like this faceless brand whomade me wait an hour for my
reservation, right.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
You are so right.
And when you think about whatare the ingredients of a human
to human connection, I mean theingredients.
It's not tough, it's being seen, being heard, being valued.
Those three things make youfeel connected to another person
, whether it's a guest in arestaurant or in a relationship,
or with your boss.
(15:57):
Whatever Be seen, be heard, bevalued, and restaurants can do
that.
So, simply by just what yousaid, that, just that I'm Zach.
Hey, melissa, thatpersonalization is worth gold
when somebody is like I justwant to be seen, heard and
valued.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, yeah, oh, that's so powerful, and I love
reminding people.
We don't serve customers inrestaurants and we don't even
serve guests.
Do you know who we serve,melissa?
We serve humans and it doesn'tmatter, like you said, is it a
steak dinner or it's arestaurant or a marriage, but
you still are dealing withhumans and I love how you said
(16:38):
that they want to feel seen,they want to feel heard.
And what was the third one?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Valued they want to be valued Melissa.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I know this was such an unorthodox podcast, but I've
loved this conversation.
I think it is so powerful toremind our teams about the power
of recovery and making surethat we are telling our story
publicly but we're takingownership privately and that
(17:18):
we're making sure that they feelseen, heard and valued.
I think that's really powerful.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, there's another post on my website that talks
about one restaurant that reallyturned a negative review around
and it went completely viraland it was all kinds of press
and people were rallying and itwas because it was this nasty,
nasty review and it was all inthe way the owner responded and
(17:45):
she didn't give anything away.
She didn't give anything away.
She responded sincerely andauthentically and that's all
people ask for.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
And if you want to read more of Melissa Hughes'
articles, which I think youabsolutely should, you
absolutely should.
It's melissahughesrocks,Melissa.
How else can people find andfollow you?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Well, I do a Neuro Nugget video every week because
everybody wants to be a littlebit smarter and know how their
brain works, and so every weekyou can go to YouTube.
You can subscribe to my YouTubechannel and get a three to
eight minute video in theresomewhere in there and learn
something fascinating about thehuman brain.
I also send a NeuroNugget emailout every Friday, and the one
thing that I'm really terribleabout is marketing.
(18:35):
So I don't try to sell youanything, I just want to tell
you about the brain.
So the NeuroNugget you cansubscribe to that on my website
at melissahughesrocks.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Awesome.
Well, I'm so excited that youcame on.
I'm so excited to have thisperspective and to share this.
But, melissa, for reminding usthat a negative review is just a
customer trying to savethemselves from a saber-toothed
tiger, today's ovation goes toyou.
Thank you so much for joiningus on Give an Ovation.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Thank you, zach, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Thanks for joining us today.
If you liked this episode,leave us a review on Apple
Podcasts or your favorite placeto listen.
We're all about feedback here.
Again, this episode wassponsored by Ovation, a
two-question, sms-basedactionable guest feedback
platform built for multi-unitrestaurants.
If you'd like to learn how wecan help you measure and create
a better guest experience, visitus at OvationUpcom.
Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation, the
restaurant guest experiencepodcast, where I talk to
industry experts to get theirstrategies and tactics you can
use to create a five-star guestexperience.
This podcast is sponsored byOvation, an operations and guest
recovery platform formulti-unit restaurants that
gives all the answers withoutannoying guests with all the
(00:21):
questions.
Learn more at OvationUpcom.
And today we have Dr MelissaHughes with us.
She's a keynote speaker, she'san author, she's a
self-proclaimed neurosciencegeek but she is all about the
science of neuro and she'swritten some amazing articles,
some great books and superexcited to have you on the
(00:42):
podcast, melissa.
How are you today?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I am great.
Thank you for having me.
I'm super excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Now, this is going to be a unique podcast because
normally we have people thatcome on and they talk about the
guest experience from arestaurant perspective.
And while you do have quite abit of restaurant experience,
especially through marriageChristopher Siebes being your
husband and he's an awesome guyjust bit of restaurant
experience, especially throughmarriage Christopher Siebes
being your husband and he's anawesome guy just an amazing
(01:09):
restaurant veteran but you comeat it from a neuroscience
perspective.
First of all.
What got you into neurosciencein the first place?
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, so my roots are in education.
I started my career in a fourthgrade classroom.
At the end of that first year Isat down with my mentor, kind
of did a little postmortem whatdo I need to work on for next
year?
And my overarching question washow can I be a great teacher if
I don't understand how thebrain works and how the brain
learns and those factors thatimpact creativity and problem
(01:43):
solving all those places in thebrain that we want our kids to
hang out right?
So I'm going to fast forward awhole bunch of years, and that
was actually where my journey inneuroscience research began.
And as I traveled along thatpath called life, what I
discovered was thatunderstanding how the brain
(02:03):
works is far more importantafter you leave the classroom,
because there's no teacherguiding you to the right answers
or to how to learn or what tolearn.
And, all things being equal, weall have the same access to
information.
Now, If you have internetaccess, you can get the
information you need.
So the difference between thebest of us and the rest of us is
(02:27):
understanding what's going onup here and how to create the
conditions we need to get ourmind to do what we want it to do
.
That's how I got here.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Your quest for a PhD.
In this, though, I mean, likeit's one thing to be like hey,
this is interesting, but how'dyou decide?
Oh no, I think I want to do aPhD.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
So I was that geek in school.
I didn't want to know what ittook to get an A, I wanted to
know what it took to get an Aplus.
And I just loved learning.
And when I really kind of doveinto the neuroscience of how we
think and it wasn't just how thebrain works and how we think,
(03:12):
that fascinated me, it was theway the brain quirks that
fascinated me.
Like, why are we so irrationalsometimes?
Why is it that when we go intoa restaurant, the food can be
amazing, but we walk out of thatrestaurant and we have a
negative perception of theexperience?
What is it that made thathappen?
(03:33):
So that's just one example ofthere are lots of factors that
influence our perception that weare not even aware of.
Most of our thought processes,most of our brain function
happens in our subconscious, andso until you really start to
dig into that and figure out,well, what is it that's making
me irritated about this meal?
(03:53):
I mean, it has nothing to dowith the steak and the baked
potato.
The steak and the baked potatoare fantastic, but I'm irritated
about this meal.
Now, what I know is maybe it'sthe noise, because restaurant
noise is the biggest complaintamong guests, and that is the
thing that can really create anegative perception of the meal.
(04:14):
Now, the noise has nothing todo with the quality of the food
or way it's prepared, or eventhe way it's served to you.
The server, the chef, they didall their jobs, but still noise
creates this negative perception.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Interesting.
So there's all of these otherthings going on that formulate
this guest experience, and Ialways tell people you have to
get a thousand things right inorder to have a good experience,
but one thing wrong can reallyoutweigh it, unless, of course,
you have some kind of a personalconnection to either the brand,
(04:49):
the manager there, somebodyworking there.
Once you build that personalconnection, there's more that
could be forgiven.
But if I'm going into arestaurant and I'm paying $50
for a meal for me and my kids, Iwant to make sure that I'm
getting what I'm paying for andI'm having the experience that I
expected.
When I go to McDonald's, intothe play area, I'm expecting
(05:12):
there to be a lot of noise,right.
What I'm not expecting is forthem to put onions on my burger
when I specifically asked for noonions.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
So two things are happening there, right?
So the first thing is what youmentioned is that one negative
thing far outweighs all thepositive things that happen in
that experience, right?
And that is an ancestralhand-me-down.
We are wired to tune in to thenegative.
It's called a negativity bias,and that's why we've survived
like a bazillion years, becausewhen their caveman ancestors
(05:45):
were walking through the tundra,they didn't pay attention to
the rustling in the bushes.
It could mean like the end forthem, right?
So that was hardwired into usand we've just kept it, and so
now we're not escapingsaber-toothed tigers.
But the brain is as amazing asit is.
It doesn't actuallydifferentiate between
(06:06):
psychological threat andphysical threat.
So that physical threat hascarried over and as our brains
have evolved, now we know whatpsychological threat feels like.
And the brain does the samething.
It's always on the lookout forthat negative thing.
Where's the danger?
What can hurt me physically orpsychologically?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Interesting, because data shows that people are three
times more likely to leave anegative review than a positive
one right, and so that's thatnegativity bias that you're
talking about.
So what can restaurateurs do tocombat that?
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Well, when I am talking to restaurateurs, I
always say that negative reviewis a gift, it's a total gift.
So here's the thing the personthat walked out of your
restaurant, who was irritatedbecause of the noise or because
I don't know they got Frenchfries instead of a baked potato,
(07:00):
or whatever their irritation is.
That review is your chance tonot just make a personal
connection with one of abazillion customers that you
have over the course of the week.
It's your chance to tell thewhole world how you feel when
one of your customers'expectations are not met.
(07:21):
Because here's what I thinkpeople kind of miss in the
negative review thing.
I don't think people expectrestaurants to be perfect.
We know restaurants are notgoing to be perfect, we know
things happen.
But they expect that therestaurant will listen to me
when I have a complaint.
And, like you said, people arethree times more likely to sit
(07:45):
down and pound out a negativereview and I've been there.
I mean I've done that too right.
But the part that is the mosttelling is after that negative
review is written, how does therestaurant respond?
Because if the restaurantdoesn't respond at all, that's
worse.
If the restaurant comes backand says well, you're just a
(08:07):
lunatic.
I don't need your businessanyway.
Okay, that's awful, but in bothof those cases you're going to
lose me as a customer.
But what is also happening isevery other person that checks
the reviews before they try yourrestaurant is going to see that
either you responded like anass or you didn't respond at all
(08:28):
, and so, as a new customer, I'mlike whoa, they don't care when
things go wrong.
But if you sit down and write athoughtful response and I wrote
a blog post about here's theanatomy of a thoughtful response
to a bad review it's not thathard.
It's really pretty simple.
All people want is to be heardand they want to be acknowledged
(08:51):
that things didn't go asplanned.
And if you do that, then peopleare much more forgiving and
also they're much more likely tothink the restaurant's okay.
The person that wrote thatreview must be a nut job.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, and that's the thing, melissa, is that when I
look at public reviews, it'sreally hard to win people back
who have left a public review.
But the thing is is that I say5% of it is winning back that
individual customer.
95% is sharing your story, ismaking sure that when people
read that, they read that.
(09:27):
Number one you're human, youacknowledge it, you understand
it.
You wrote this great article.
The one that you referenced isturn negative reviews into loyal
guests.
And when you talk about it,it's like number one is hearing
the customer.
Number two is takingresponsibility.
Even if the guest was partiallyat fault is what you say.
And number three is offer asolution of we'd love to invite
(09:48):
you back and make this right.
And when you look at this, theproblem with online reviews,
when you're posting thispublicly, is a lot of people say
I don't want people to knowthat if they leave a negative
review, that I'm going to giveout a free hamburger.
And that's one of the reasonsthat we created Ovation was
because we want to make surethat if you can keep it private
and if you can track who thatguest is, it's so much more
(10:10):
powerful because you don't haveto wonder in the back of your
mind.
Are they just trying to getsomething for free?
You actually posted how to notrespond to a negative review.
And this owner kind of goesunhinged and is like, oh, it's
all about the money.
But if you're able to track howoften has that person
complained with us and if it'stheir first time ever
(10:31):
complaining and they've been in10 times and we treat them like
they're trying to steal ourkid's college tuition, then yeah
, it's going to paint a reallybad picture for the person
reading that response and forthe person who's giving you that
feedback, because, at the endof the day, 99% of feedback,
(10:51):
there's truth in there.
There's honesty.
There's something that honestlybetrayed their trust.
They trusted to have anexperience with your brand and
they didn't get it.
And so they have that primevalbetrayal feeling and they want
to feel heard.
They want justice, right.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Right, and you mentioned earlier.
You mentioned expectations, andit is all about trust and
expectations.
In that particular example ofthat restaurant that I actually
clipped.
I clipped the, I screenshottedthe review and included that in
my article.
And here's what I wantrestaurateurs to pay attention
(11:32):
to In that particular case.
If you look at that restaurant,there is scathing review after
scathing review after scathingreview and they're not all the
same person.
And so as a restaurant person,I'm like, okay, if everyone's
carping about the weight like Ihad a 7.15 reservation, I didn't
(11:54):
get seated until 8.15, thenthat's my cue to pay attention
to how I'm schedulingreservations.
Right, if one person has a badexperience with the wait time,
maybe it's that person, maybe itwas an off night, maybe
something happened to thereservation, but you know, those
are the kinds of things that aguest who's looking at reviews
(12:17):
to decide.
Do I wanna come and spend $100at your place on Friday night?
If everybody's kind ofcomplaining about the wait time,
then I'm going to be like theyhave a terrible wait time,
everybody's complaining about it.
If one person complains about it, I'm going to forgive that.
That's not a big deal In thiscase.
If you go to that particularrestauranteur's reviews.
(12:40):
I mean this was like one of thelamest reviews out of the
criticisms there.
I mean I want to just call himand say dude like what happened
in your childhood, Right andhe's in my backyard.
I'm in Naples, florida, and he'sin my backyard.
And in that particular reviewit was written by someone who
lives here year round.
(13:01):
And also, if you read the edit,the update of that review, the
person said I'm never comingback.
But that's not who you have toworry about.
I'm going to tell every personI know about my experience.
Now, flip that around.
Had he just respondedthoughtfully and he didn't even
have to give anything away.
Just come on back and introduceyourself when you come back and
(13:22):
introduce yourself when youcome back.
I really want to meet you.
I want to apologize in person.
Maybe it isn't even a freeburger right.
Then now she's going to say youknow what I went in?
He introduced himself to me.
It was.
He's a really nice guy.
It must've been an off night.
I love that place now.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
It's such a gift, it's such a gift.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
It's such a gift because it's an opportunity to
publicly tell everybody else howyou handle guests.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
And what's so incredible is they've done
studies.
That's called the servicerecovery paradox and it shows
that a guest who has a negativeexperience with proper service
recovery is more likely tobecome loyal than a guest who
never had that service failurein the first place.
And in fact, when we look atour data, we're able to see that
that guest actually is twice aslikely to come back.
(14:10):
When they do come back, theycome back four times more
frequently, they spend moremoney on each subsequent visit
and they're 12 times more likelyto leave you a five-star review
on a next visit.
And so what we've found is that, quantifying it, one recovered
guest is worth 24 average guests.
Yeah, and I tell people all thetime, it's not that you need to
(14:32):
manufacture mistakes, they'regoing to happen organically.
It's about having that safetynet and it's about handling it
properly to make sure that youhave the proper service recovery
.
And one of the biggest itproperly to make sure that you
have the proper service recovery.
And one of the biggest thingsthat we found is that if you're
texting a guest or you'reresponding to a review, if you
want it to be super powerful,use your name and use their name
(14:55):
yes, by just saying hey,melissa, I'm Zach, the owner of
Zach Shack.
I just wanted to say I am sosorry that you had an hour-long
wait.
We obviously messed up.
We were super slammed thatnight, not how we want to
portray it.
I would love to invite you backin and give you a regular
(15:17):
five-star experience, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm not asking you to rewriteyour review.
I'm not giving you somethingfor free, but it's just an
acknowledgement of human tohuman connection and not just
like this faceless brand whomade me wait an hour for my
reservation, right.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
You are so right.
And when you think about whatare the ingredients of a human
to human connection, I mean theingredients.
It's not tough, it's being seen, being heard, being valued.
Those three things make youfeel connected to another person
, whether it's a guest in arestaurant or in a relationship,
or with your boss.
(15:57):
Whatever Be seen, be heard, bevalued, and restaurants can do
that.
So, simply by just what yousaid, that, just that I'm Zach.
Hey, melissa, thatpersonalization is worth gold
when somebody is like I justwant to be seen, heard and
valued.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, yeah, oh, that's so powerful, and I love
reminding people.
We don't serve customers inrestaurants and we don't even
serve guests.
Do you know who we serve,melissa?
We serve humans and it doesn'tmatter, like you said, is it a
steak dinner or it's arestaurant or a marriage, but
you still are dealing withhumans and I love how you said
(16:38):
that they want to feel seen,they want to feel heard.
And what was the third one?
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Valued they want to be valued Melissa.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I know this was such an unorthodox podcast, but I've
loved this conversation.
I think it is so powerful toremind our teams about the power
of recovery and making surethat we are telling our story
publicly but we're takingownership privately and that
(17:18):
we're making sure that they feelseen, heard and valued.
I think that's really powerful.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, there's another post on my website that talks
about one restaurant that reallyturned a negative review around
and it went completely viraland it was all kinds of press
and people were rallying and itwas because it was this nasty,
nasty review and it was all inthe way the owner responded and
(17:45):
she didn't give anything away.
She didn't give anything away.
She responded sincerely andauthentically and that's all
people ask for.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
And if you want to read more of Melissa Hughes'
articles, which I think youabsolutely should, you
absolutely should.
It's melissahughesrocks,Melissa.
How else can people find andfollow you?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Well, I do a Neuro Nugget video every week because
everybody wants to be a littlebit smarter and know how their
brain works, and so every weekyou can go to YouTube.
You can subscribe to my YouTubechannel and get a three to
eight minute video in theresomewhere in there and learn
something fascinating about thehuman brain.
I also send a NeuroNugget emailout every Friday, and the one
thing that I'm really terribleabout is marketing.
(18:35):
So I don't try to sell youanything, I just want to tell
you about the brain.
So the NeuroNugget you cansubscribe to that on my website
at melissahughesrocks.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Awesome.
Well, I'm so excited that youcame on.
I'm so excited to have thisperspective and to share this.
But, melissa, for reminding usthat a negative review is just a
customer trying to savethemselves from a saber-toothed
tiger, today's ovation goes toyou.
Thank you so much for joiningus on Give an Ovation.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Thank you, zach, it was a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Thanks for joining us today.
If you liked this episode,leave us a review on Apple
Podcasts or your favorite placeto listen.
We're all about feedback here.
Again, this episode wassponsored by Ovation, a
two-question, sms-basedactionable guest feedback
platform built for multi-unitrestaurants.
If you'd like to learn how wecan help you measure and create
a better guest experience, visitus at OvationUpcom.
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