Meet The Garden; the new spot for Egypt’s pretentious bourgeoisie to relax with a Corona during the week. This cute little spot in Heliopolis literally promises its visitors that they will be able to finally enjoy Cairo as it was before #Jan25 as put forward by CairoScene:
“You can sort of tell how Egypt is doing on a certain economic level by how many new high-end bars or clubs are opening up and it seems that we’re crawling back to a pre-revolution situation, with a new venue to take over our nightlife opening up every week or so.”
Because, of course, we can all agree that before the economic curse of #Jan25, we were all living in a much safer and prosperous Egypt judging from the number of bars and clubs – the essential indicators of a flourishing economy. Not, mind you, the ever rising unemployment rate, growing number of Egyptians under poverty line, incognito crime rate, or the fact that if #Jan25 hadn’t happened, all signs were pointing towards a complete failure of the state. But let’s leave the economical and political analysis to the ‘‘intellectuals’ at CairoScene, and allow us to examine their social media strategy as a cautionary tale for all new businesses that are looking to avoid going bust.
It all started when Mohannad Ali called to reserve a table at the “little slice of paradise in the city”, only to be kindly requested to share his Facebook profile, as well as all those in company, after which, and only after which, would they confirm reservation. Outraged by this ridiculous violation of anything sensical, especially in this day and age, he vented out his sour encounter with Egypt’s bourgeoisie on Facebook:
Within the span of a few hours, this post was shared 214 times, with 279 likes and 135 comments. And it didn’t stop there…
It wasn’t long before people were on their Facebook page giving one star rating and reviews that ranged from angry to well…R rated:
In a matter of minutes their ratings dropped from 4.5 stars to 3:
Now, my personal view of this place as a pretentious pit hole aside, seeing that this potential customer’s complain enraged so many other people from the pool of their target audience, here is what any sane business owner should have done:
Reply to the original complaint explaining the situation and ensuring him that he is welcome at their premises by offering him a complimentary visit to show good will.
Unfortunately for the piece of heaven in Korba, what they did was:
Remove the reviews and ratings, ignore the post completely and delete all comments mentioning this atrocious “policy”. And this is when shit really hit the fan as it only ignited the fury of already appalled customers who started taking their anger out in furious comments (with an interesting sense of humor, if I may add) on the page:
In answer to that, you would think that by now they would realize that it is a horrendous policy and post a formal apology, but instead, they delete more comments, ban users and post the following:
Safe to say, this is not in anyway a valid method for creating a database of your clientele. For one, it is an invasion of privacy of customers who have no means of knowing how you intend to use their info. And please, if you don’t trust a customer enough to let them pay you for a service how can they trust you not to abuse access to their info. Not to mention their complete disregard for people who would enjoy a nice drink in their garden but prefer not to be spammed by their updates.
And on a side note, you won’t be able to find Mohamed ElGohary’s comment as it was also deleted by the page’s admin who seems oblivious to the power of a screenshot. You can check more comments below that we are sure will be deleted shortly:
The only thing more absurd than The Garden’s elitist, obnoxiously pretentious policy, is how they communicated it, and how they dealt with the harshly just feedback across social media. Only a matter of time before this fiasco makes it to their books. Anyone looking to open a new bar in Korba? I hear this spot was reserved for a little piece of paradise!
The post How The Garden bar and grill committed social media suicide appeared first on ThePlanet Blogs.