ESPN, Car Towing and Yelp Reviews: Do Customers Hate Other Customers?

When discussed in the context of social customer engagement, fear is typically presented as a business concern. Businesses worry that their brand will come under undue—and uncontrollable—fire and thus suffer irreparable reputational damage.

Recent anecdotes, however, suggest that customers also have reason to fear the social media battlefield.

Whether evaluating a professor’s dispute with a Chinese restaurant, a chef’s decision to publicly shame a pair of "entitled" customers or an ESPN anchor’s encounter with a towing company attendant, many social media users—and customers themselves—vehemently sided with the brand.

They empathized with the business more than they did with the customer(s) in question. They delivered their insults at the frustrated customer rather than at the business involved in driving that frustration.

In two of the cases, the situation served to outright strengthen the business’ image. In the other, it served to minimize the power of the customer.

Valuable in that they dispel the notion that social media is inherently oppositional to businesses, the examples—and many similar—nonetheless come with a concern for customers in what is supposed to be their age of empowerment.

The backstories

Professor vs. Chinese Restaurant: Last year, a Harvard Business School professor found that a local Boston Chinese restaurant had charged him a price in excess of what was listed on the official menu. In addition to complaining about the unexpected price hike, the professor—and practicing lawyer—bombarded the restaurateur with legal jargon, questionably applied policies and threats of further action. No matter how the restaurateur responded or what he attempted to offer as compensation for the error, the professor responded with a statement of dissatisfaction.

The court of public opinion ruled in favor of the business. The professor was viciously lambasted on social media, while many customers vowed to frequent the Chinese restaurant because of what transpired.

Chef vs. Yelpers: What is it about Boston? Earlier this year, a chef from Alden & Harlow used Instagram to shame a pair of female customers.

Per the post, which included a photo of the women, the individuals sat themselves without reservations and behaved rudely toward the staff. Upon being asked to leave, the women did not simply refuse but implicitly threatened to post a negative review of the restaurant on Yelp. The chef used the hashtag "#wedonotnegotiatewithyelpers" in his caption before criticizing the flawed "online review system and entitled mentality."

The overwhelming majority of bloggers and commenters took his side. Their empathy went to the employees who were insulted and the restaurateur whose brand was threatened rather than to the customers who, from all indications, were not happy with the experience they received.

Britt McHenry vs. Towing Employee: Last week, leaked security footage showed on-air ESPN reporter Britt McHenry dressing down an employee at a car towing company. Evidently upset with the experience, McHenry issued personal attacks against the attendant’s appearance and presumed level of education.

Distinguishing herself from those who would "work at a scumbag place like this," the on-air personality boasted about the fact that she had a degree. Citing her on-air role as proof of her attractiveness, she followed by noting she would need to lose some teeth to get hired by the towing company.

While the incident earned McHenry a one-week suspension from ESPN, it earned a far more vitriolic reaction from the masses. McHenry was lambasted as a rude, elitist, out-of-touch bully, and the incident was used as a platform for criticizing her lack of talent.

The role the frustrating towing experience – and the employee’s allegedly inflammatory remarks – played in fueling McHenry’s rant was not a popular talking point. News of the towing company’s horrible Yelp reviews—and apparent history of poor customer engagement—gained some traction, but it did little to swing the tide in favor of McHenry. In the eyes of the masses, she was wrong for how she reacted. The employee and company were not wrong for producing that reaction.

Strange alliances

Everyone is a customer. Everyone has endured bad experiences. Everyone, therefore, should be preconditioned to side with other customers.

In an "us vs. them" battle, the intuitive answer is typically "us." In a "little guy vs. The Man" battle, the right answer is typically "little guy."

In these cases—and in many more—intuition does not dictate reality. Individual little guys are sidingwith "The Man" against other individuals. They are choosing business over customers.

What fosters these strange alliances?

Empathy with the employee: All individual social media users are customers. Many of them are also employees. As a result, they can relate to those on the other side of the counter.

When watching Britt McHenry berate an everywoman towing employee, viewers saw an average, hardworking employee being insulted by a privileged individual carrying a sense of entitlement. Having surely been insulted by a customer or boss at some point in their lives, such viewers gravitated toward the everywoman employee.

Because individual employees (including managers and owners) serve to humanize a business, customers do not process the engagement question as one of man versus machine or David versus Goliath. They see it as one individual versus another individual.

Asked to choose between the person being rude and the person bearing the brunt of their rudeness, many will be inclined to choose the latter. When doing so, they will not feel as if they are betraying their fellow customers but as if they are defending their fellow man.

Situational distance: While social media adds a personal layer to technology, it is still an inherently distant, impersonal medium. It allows individuals to read or watch others’ customer experiences, but it does not necessarily involve them in the experiences. It rarely captures the complete emotion associated with those experiences.

By stripping the emotion from situations, distance makes them less relatable. Being systematically overcharged for Chinese food would likely be a very frustrating experience, but it felt trivial—especially compared to the professor’s reaction—from a distance. Having your car towed is a horrible experience—especially if the company involved seems shady, unethical and impersonal—but none of that is captured by a video documenting some other woman’s issue. Not receiving great service takes the shine away from a restaurant experience, but it was easy to ignore that when learning about the restaurant saga through the lens of the restaurant.

The stigma of complaining: No matter the justification, customers who confront a business subject themselves to the risk of being labeled a complainer.

Neither the Harvard professor’s frivolous breed of aggression nor Britt McHenry’s elitist rudeness is a prerequisite. In a society that values "chill pills" and "turning the other cheek," taking issue with an experience is whining. Whining is not an admirable endeavor.

If forced to choose between the person whining and the person who has to deal with that whining, customers do not require ample incentive to side with the latter.

Distance from the situation makes that choice even easier. When watching the Britt McHenry video, other customers were not dealing with a car towing hassle of their own. They were not receiving suboptimal care from a car towing employee. All they saw was a woman complaining and relying on personal insults to prove her point. "Complainer" is likely the nicest label they offered.

Concern over precedent: While there is a clear precedent associated with taking a business’ side, there is also one associated with improper customer behavior.

When customers berate front-line employees, they create a bad reputation for all customers. They also reinforce the notion of a battle between brand and buyer.

Successful customer engagements occur when the two entities are on the same side. If a perception emerges that the customer is attacking the business for its shortcomings rather than requesting assistance, the illusion of that alignment crumbles.

Sensing customers as opponents, agents become more dismissive than they should. Sensing agents as opponents, customers become more belligerent than they should. A vicious circle ensues.

Customers like the rude restaurant patrons contribute to that vicious circle. They allow the business – which should always see itself as obligated to appease the customer – to come across as a victim. When a business feels entitled to defend itself, it will. The customer experience suffers.

If a customer senses another customer creating this problem, he will naturally oppose that customer’s behavior.

Schadenfreude: No one goes through life exclusively enjoying customer experiences. All possess at least one horror story.

Knowing that they do not always win, some customers develop a sense of schadenfreude. They failed, so why should they want to see others succeed?

If fear of being labeled a complainer prevents them from vocalizing concerns, they resent those who do raise issues. If they endured bad experiences and unfriendly agents, they do not want to feel exclusively victimized – they want others to share in the misery. If they could not argue their way out of a bad situation, they do not want to see others do so.

The stigma associated with complaints—and ugliness associated with rudeness—makes it particularly easy to root against other customers.

The hazards

Psychologically understandable and justifiable, this proclivity to oppose other customers can prove hazardous to the customer experience.

Notably, it shifts the power dynamic back in favor of the business. Instead of mandating that the business is responsible for satisfying the customer, the trend requires that the customer also work to appease the business. If the customer is not polite and gracious, he, under this system, deserves lesser care.

In other words, the fact that he is a customer by no means entitles him to a satisfying customer experience. He has to earn that experience by blunting his reaction to the business’ shortcomings.

Moreover, by dwelling on the customer’s specific reaction, we risk absolving businesses of the role their action—or inaction—played in driving that reaction.

Make no mistake, there are elements of all three anecdotal examples worthy of scorn. Grace is not a word one would use to describe how the professor, the restaurant goers and Britt McHenry handled their situations.

That scorn should not, however, preclude an inquiry into the experiences that drove the individuals to behave so unappealingly. Insofar as Britt McHenry does not walk around calling strangers ugly and uneducated, there was something unique to this situation—and potentially the way the employee handled it—that provoked the reaction.

Society does not have to like or approve of the way McHenry behaved. But if it wants to improve the quality of customer engagement, it does need to focus on the question of provocation (or on the question of how the business and its employees could have minimized that provocation).

Instead of condemning the way a professor handled his anger, we should question why he needed to manager his anger in the first place.

If we can agree that the customer is always right – if not about what happened than at least about how he feels and what he wants – and the business’ ultimate priority is to keep that customer satisfied, the three anecdotes are not merely examples of people behaving badly. They are potentially examples of businesses functioning badly.

Businesses know that social media can serve to etch their failure in stone.

What customers evidently need to know, however, is that social media can challenge their deservedness of a quality experience. They do not simply need to be customers – they need to pass behavioral and philosophical muster.

In that sense, the social media deck is far more even than traditional notions of "fear" would have you believe. Both sides can benefit from social media. Both sides can also lose.