If you’re in a creative field or have a job that requires a lot of customer service, you’re likely well-acquainted with the kind of situations that exemplify the old truism, “You can’t please everybody.”
And while it can be good for the people we can’t please to have their own public ways of airing their grievances, it’s often a headache for business owners as these folks can carry a negative influence over how people perceive that business.
And as we’ve seen in some examples where customers and owners go head-to-head, it’s not as if the customers leaving angry reviews are always accurate or sensible about how they describe their experiences.
You can often tell whether this is true from the kind of responses they get from the owners. As we’re about to see, it’s easier to tell ones who clearly get angry and resort to ad hominem attacks with every piece of criticism apart from ones who genuinely came to set the record straight.
After visiting London’s Café Van Gogh, it’s clear that one customer was far from impressed with the vegan dining experience.
As they wrote in a review that the café’s owners have since posted on Facebook, “It says ‘vegan friendly’ but is just vegan. I was forced to have an oat milk cappuccino. It tasted like porridge.”
The review was titled, “A coffee shop that doesn’t have normal milk?” and gave the café one star.
But while it’s easy enough to assume that the customer didn’t know what they walked into, a response from one of the café’s co-owners suggested they weren’t telling the whole story.
This person named Steve began by confirming that Café Van Gogh is indeed a fully vegan café that makes this fact “a huge part of our ethical stance.”
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However, he also said that it isn’t standard practice to surprise customers with this fact and that the person complaining would have been explicitly asked whether they wanted soy or oat milk before they completed their order.
As Steve wrote, “You could have left at that point, but instead you allowed us to ‘force’ you to drink a cappuccino that you didn’t like.”
Steve also found it peculiar that this customer was much more vocal in their TripAdvisor review than they were in person.
As he wrote, “For reasons unknown, you didn’t say anything to the staff at the time (we’d likely have not billed you).”
He also said that the review said more about the customer’s palate than the actual food and beverages at the café.
But in case Steve’s response sounded bitter, he wanted to end it in a way that suggested otherwise.
As he wrote, “You’ve put a broad smile on all of our faces. We love a keyboard warrior and we hope we didn’t hurt you when we forced that coffee down your brass neck.”
In case you’re confused, to have a ” brass neck ” means to act in a way that shows a great deal of confidence but also little understanding for how others may react to one’s actions.
So not only did we see a pretty amusing take down of a whiny customer, but we learned something new!
h/t: Facebook | Cafe van Gogh
