Hold your clients close and your employees closer: a lesson learned by Applebee’s

In February 2013 Applebee’s suffered a major social media crisis that added up to about 40,000 — largely negative — comments. A pastor had declined to leave an additional tip, writing “I give God 10% why do you get 18,” above her signature. Chelsea Welch, a colleague of the server, took a picture of the receipt and posted it on the online site Reddit.

Chelsea Welch consequently lost her job, an Applebee’s spokesman confirmed to TheSmokingGun.com, for violating a customer’s privacy. As word of this got out too, social media users began attacking — even groups sprung up on Facebook, by the name of “Boycott Applebee’s”, “Rehire Chelsea Welch”, among others.

Applebee’s reaction was to post a status update saying “We wish this situation hadn’t happened…Our franchisee has apologized to the Guest and has taken disciplinary action with the Team Member for violating their Guest’s right to privacy.”

Their biggest problem in this situation was that just a couple of weeks earlier, Applebee’s itself had violated another Guest’s right to privacy by posting on its Facebook page a picture of a note from a guest that clearly showed the guest’s name on it. As soon as the Chelsea Welch crisis broke out, they deleted this picture immediately as a way to hide the mistake, but someone had already screenshot it for another site.

That same day at 2:53 am, in the middle of the night, as a response to the initial 10K negative comments and fuss to rehire Chelsea Welch, the person managing Applebee’s Facebook page started making comments on their status update, deleting negative comments, blocking users from the Applebee’s Facebook page, and best — or worst — of all: responding to comments by tagging people individually and repeating the same response over and over again.

But the story does not end here. There’s more! At 2 pm the next day, the update with almost 20,000 comments was deleted. People started reacting to this action again and Applebee’s could only deny it, which made things worse. Applebee’s clients got to a point to say “Applebee’s please, just shut up”.

So, how do you handle such a social media turmoil? First of all, you want to avoid it to become one this big in the first place. Time moves very quickly on social media, so companies need to take decisive action as quickly as possible. Employee issues need to be handled in house and in situations such as these, the company should join forces with its employees, realizing that one’s negative actions reflect poorly upon everyone. Only after some time, once the issue has been addressed internally, should such drastic measures as firing someone be taken.

Secondly, having a defensive and argumentative approach is not a good way to go, since it only amplifies the issue. A relationship with a client is like any other relationship in life. If you have made a mistake, you apologize and, in the best case, try to make it up to the affected person. Applebee’s could have given an honest and personal apology which could have probably changed the sentiment dramatically, without necessarily firing an employee.

And at last, hiding criticism only increases the lack of trust and values. Once a post is out there, there is no way to take it back. So, before posting on social media, make sure you have thought about it’s possible outcomes and reactions to it. Otherwise, be ready to confront the consequences.