Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
You’ve been open three months, things are going great, and then it happens — your first bad Yelp review.
Before you start throwing salt all over your center and gearing up to battle internet trolls, listen to this Daily Solutions Podcast where Graham & Ashkahn drop some wisdom on how to respond in the face of often-undue criticism.
It turns out the quickest way to address any negativity online is to reach out like a human, honestly and directly.
Show Resources
FTS Blog — A Skeptic’s Guide to Floating
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Welcome back. Today’s question is one that anyone who’s run a float center for probably a month or longer has encountered, which is “How do you handle negative reviews on Yelp?”
Ashkahn: Yeah, so these suck, right?
Graham: Often times, they’re completely undeserved as well. That is part of it. There are negative reviews where you’re like “oh, that person had a bad experience and I should apologize” and there are other ones where you’re not even sure if they even came into your center to float with you.
Ashkahn: They’re really hard to not take personally, too. It just really feels like someone is personally attacking you, like they’re calling you a one-star person.
Graham: Yeah, so it happens to everyone. I guarantee the first time it happens to you, that’s probably the reaction you’ll have is you’ll feel personally attacked and the instinct to fight as hard as you can.
Don’t just go on there and unleash on them and write this huge justification for why your center’s amazing and their one-star review is totally stupid. It’s the equivalent of leaving them a one-star review for their one-star review. So don’t do that.
So what do you do?
Ashkahn: One thing that we’ve done pretty successfully over the years is reaching out to them in private on Yelp.
Graham: Yep, exactly. And I should say this is a question about Yelp, but it goes for any of the sites out there, Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google. I think Yelp tends to be one of the more frustrating ones, because they actively filter out reviews they think are fake, and so you end up sometimes with these really nice five-star reviews that get filtered out, and then these occasional one-star complaints that come in.
It’s really easy to look at those and feel this kind of resentment bubble up towards the Yelp algorithm. A lot of the raging that I hear go on specifically is about Yelp, and I think related to that, but it could happen anywhere.
One of the things they actually advise, if you just follow the procedures that Yelp tells you to do, they’ll say don’t just launch into doing a public argument with someone. Write them a nice letter, and they’ll say specifically “nice.” Don’t argue with them. See what you can do to have made things better, to make things better going forward.
They also say to keep it short, which is absolutely not what I personally do. Our strategy, and we’ve had a lot of these changed too, we’ve gotten reviews deleted, we’ve gotten one-stars changed to five-stars. I’ve gotten four-star reviews changed to five-star reviews.
What I do for anything that’s under three stars is I will max out the character count on Yelp responding. I use my own kind of patented PS method of writing letters, which is I write a very short letter at the beginning and put my signature, and then the bulk of the content goes in this giant PS down below. It’s because I don’t want to argue with people, but I do want to explain how our shop works and that we’re fixing things and all the details that they might not be aware of.
So for me, when I’m responding what I do is I write this short message that says, “Hey, I’m so sorry you had such a bad experience.” If it’s something where they obviously should get a free float or deserve a partial refund or something like that, I’ll let them know that we’re happy to extend that their way, and basically nothing but generous and admitting fault.
Then I sign my name and I say, “PS.” Then I’ll write five paragraphs about what we do and how we’re actively trying to stop this problem, or thanking them for their feedback and letting them know that yes, we will be adding in more soundproofing in the future or no, that employee that was shrieking the entire time in the lobby at her boyfriend is getting fired, or whatever it is that they were complaining about. So that’s kind of my own method of responding to them.
Ashkahn: Another thing that seems to kind of connect with people, or people seem to understand, is sometimes they’ll come in and they might have a bad experience with something in our lobby or something like that, but their float was really enjoyable and they really liked floating.
And we’ll just tell them that. We’ll be like, “Listen, people look at these reviews and they’re often judging what it’s like to float based off of them, and we just want you to be aware of that and that people look at these, and it seems like you had a really good float and maybe you had some issues with our general hangout lobby area, but maybe would you consider changing your view to reflect more what your float experience was like or just to kind of lead people more to that path.”
And people seem to connect with that. They’ll be like, “You’re right, the float itself was really great, and I don’t want to discourage people from actually floating.”
Graham: Yeah, or conversely too, some people just have weird floats. It happens, you know? You get into the float and it doesn’t take, or you’re in and out of it, and it was just sort of a weird experience. Anyone who’s floated dozens of times has had at least one float that’s kind of like that and was just sort of a weird one. If that was your first experience, you might not have had the best time. Likewise, we’ll respond to those. Oftentimes, those are like the three-star reviews, where it’s like, “Hey, all the staff was really nice, the place is really clean, I just don’t think this is for me.” Or “I had a really weird experience in the tank.” Or whatever it is.
Same kind of tactic. We can email them and be like, “Hey, it seems like your own personal experience wasn’t that great, but since the facilities were clean and everything’s nice, and other people say that they’ve had really nice experiences in the tank, is there a chance that this was you and not our business, and do you think that people reading this might get the impression that we’ve done something wrong as a result of you just kind of having a weird tank experience?” And people are really receptive to that too.
It’s actually amazing how much these faceless criticizers who exist out there in Internetland, as soon as you start talking to them like a human being and it becomes obvious that you are in fact a human being who’s passionate about your business and who’s spent a lot of their own time and love building up this center, they’re totally reasonable back, and we get really nice responses to what started out as incredibly vicious reviews sometimes.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and at the end of the day don’t try to let it not eat you alive. Again, it can be kind of all-consuming. You’re not going to get everybody to change their reviews or sometimes even respond to you, but as you grow those become smaller drops in the bucket, and it’s not the end of the world.
Graham: No matter how much it feels sometimes like it is, also know that people reading online reviews understand what trolls are. Everyone knows what an internet troll is, and everyone knows that people go on and leave really extreme bad reviews, just like they do really positive reviews. If you read two five-star reviews in the midst of 50 one- and two-star reviews, you probably don’t think that restaurant’s amazing.
And in a similar fashion, if you read one or two one- or two-star reviews amidst 50 five- and four-star reviews, you probably think that it’s the fault of those people, not the business, so even the population that’s going and reading these as they’re judging whether or not to give you money is probably more forgiving than you think they are.
Ashkahn: Cool. Excellent. Good question.
Graham: And as we always say, see you tomorrow.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Thoughts on facilitating couples floats – DSP 85
First off, we’ll just say that Float On does not offer couples floats and never has. Graham and Ashkahn dive into their reasoning for that decision while simultaneously addressing some of the common concerns and benefits that go along with the practice. Some people say it helps get people into the tanks that wouldn’t try it otherwise. Some smaller centers rely on the added revenue per tank and increased exposure to the practice. It’s a complicated question and one that each center will likely have to consider on their own.
What are average floater return rates? – DSP 84
Getting repeat customers is integral to the health of any business. For float centers, this is especially true. It can be worrying when we see our floaters leave the center, never knowing if they’ll return. There’s a very natural inclination to start tracking this trend to see if there’s anything you need to change about your business to attract repeat customers. Memberships are a natural way to attract repeat customers and can quickly become the lifeblood of your center, too.
But how do you measure it? What time frame is acceptable to consider a repeat customer? If they don’t float within six months, does that mean you’ve lost them? If they float once and don’t return for three years, is that a success on your part or a failure?
Graham and Ashkahn tackle all of this and more this time around. Check it out!
How to handle ‘Summer Slump’ in your float center – DSP 83
Many a float center has hit their first summer and seen their schedule thin out. What causes this? Is it just a seasonal thing? What about places that don’t really have seasons? Or tourist towns? What exactly causes this and what are some good tips to combat it? Graham and Ashkahn address this phenomenon head on in this episode.
Addressing customer misinformation – DSP 82
Every float center owner has to deal with customers who get, maybe, a little overenthusiastic about the float experience. What is the best way to deal with customers who say things that are just patently false about the benefits of floating? Do you just let it slide? Do you correct them and potentially offend your customer? It’s not their fault, they’re just excited. It doesn’t seem right to punish them.
This is definitely a tightrope walk type of conversation and it can have an impact on your customers and your reputation as a business, as well as the whole industry. As stewards of the tank, Graham and Ashkahn offer their advice on how best to have this difficult conversation and offer some resources to help with it as well.
Our Report on the Chinese Float Conference – DSP 81
Ashkahn went to China and brought another one of the owners of Float On along, Jake. The two of them share their experiences of visiting the Chinese Float Conference this year and learning about all of the developments in the Chinese float industry, which seems to have exploded in just the last couple of years.
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