Violet Mae Lim

Massage Therapy Center in West Los Angeles treats their customers how all business should treat their customers. I recently went there for a massage, had a mediocre experience and Yelped about it. I gave them what I thought was a fair review. The owner, Mark Chatow personally reached out to me about my review and has offered me a refund including gratuity or a credit including gratuity. He also offered to help me find a massuse at Massage Therapy Center that would fit my needs.

Dear Violet,

Thanks very much for your review about the Massage Therapy Center.  While I was disappointed to see that your  massage didn’t leave you feeling the way you expected it to, I am glad that you took the time to write about it, so we can hopefully make things better.

If you’d be willing to share a little more about your massage and your preferences I would be happy to match you with a therapist who might be a better fit for the style of massage you prefer.  I’d also like to work something out with you on the massage you already paid for.  Our policy is that if a client isn’t happy with their session, they don’t have to pay for it.

We can either refund your payment (including the tip), or I can give you a credit for another session including tip.

If you’d be willing to give us another chance please let me know.  I look forward to the opportunity to welcome you back for the experience you should have had in the first place.

Best regards,
Mark Chatow

Owner

The Massage Therapy Center

I review a lot of small businesses on Yelp. I don’t use Yelp strictly to vent about a bad experience; I talk about great experiences I’ve had and I review the good, the bad and the ugly. I can be ruthless with my reviews but if your business is great, I’m your biggest evangelist, fan, free marketing department etc.  Mark’s message really surprised me as my review’s overall sentiment was neutral. I didn’t complain in my review but the fact that he took the time to go above and beyond really impressed me. I’ve accepted his offer and will go back to Massage Therapy Center one more time.

This is a great example of how to conduct customer service through social networks. I hope more business owners will understand how important it is to monitor their business, listen to their customers and respond accordingly. Stay tuned for my next post on how business owners can further use Yelp as a customer service strategy.

There’s so much buzz around the term “social media” lately. People seem to be obsessed with social media, Facebook fans, Twitter followers and the “killing” of traditional media. People and brands have become obsessed with adopting social media as their sole marketing strategy. Unfortunately, people presume social media = solely the newest social network (ie: Twitter). What they sometimes don’t always know is that there is so much more to social media.

Social media is an essential part of marketing, but social media has many parts. Social networks are a small part of social media. As a brand, you ought to be learning and adopting social media into your marketing/communications/community outreach plan. Keep up with all the evolving web strategies but weave them into your traditional marketing/PR strategies when appropriate. Know how you can tie your social web presence together to effectively communicate with your online community. Make you sure you understand how social media also ties into customer service, SEM, SEO, content creation and even basic web development (amongst many other things). Simply starting a blog on WordPress.com will not be effective if the bigger picture isn’t considered. Starting a Twitter account and following everyone you think might be interested in your new product and calling that your “new media campaign” won’t cut it either.

Having an understanding of social media really is will enable you to set your goals and achieve results. Social media is a multi-faceted approach to B2C communications. If you know this and understand how your customers prefer to communicate with you, you’ll do great on the social web. Lastly, if you don’t have someone who is knowledgeable in social media or digital strategy, please hire someone. And by someone, I don’t mean a summer intern to tweet on your behalf or upload videos to your YouTube account.