Tyrol Complains About Garbage on Facebook
First, I like going to Tyrol Basin. It’s a great place and they have good discounts and specials. Their terrain is good and I like the variety of terrain, too.
A Contrast
With that said, we just had our employee orientation meeting at Cascade the other night. Their emphasis is customer service and we’re all told (asked) to smile, hold doors open and pick up trash. I like that they say this. I know that even at Disney World, the President there picks up trash at the park. Things like this show that you’re willing to do what you need to do to keep the place clean for your guests. That kind of mentality is professional… for sure.
So then we have this:
Ok, here’s Tyrol Basin complaining to their followers on Facebook that they have to pick up trash. I mean, they’re really complaining and going on a small rant. I was actually really shocked to read this and had to read it twice to make sure I read it right.
To me, that’s just the opposite of what you should be posting on Facebook. How about cleaning up your guests’ trash yourself and not mentioning it? How about you instead thank people for coming by? A trashed parking lot means people came and enjoyed themselves. Man up, clean it up and invite them back!
Or, as an alternative, you could just charge an extra $0.25 per ticket and pay someone to do garbage clean up. If customers don’t want to do it, then maybe they’re telling you that they want ticket prices higher so that they don’t have to do it.
Either way, you don’t go to Facebook and chew out your followers.
Duh.
Watch What Goes on Facebook
Messages on Facebook should only be positive and grateful. Here they are, threatening to raise ticket prices if people don’t clean up. They come off as kind of crabby to their customers. It’s their Facebook wall and this is what they’re choosing to post.
What’s the best case here? I think the best case is that you get some people leaving comments in favor of what they say and sort of pitting customer against customer.
And why talk about this when you can be talking about other, cool stuff about Tyrol instead? Who wants to talk about the trash? Why point that out and focus on that?
It’s like inviting people over to your house and then getting mad seeing that they left a small mess to clean up. What do you expect? They’re your guests, so you happily clean up after them. Would you want to go to someone’s house and then have them complain about a small mess? You probably wouldn’t want to go back.
Conclusion
If you have a business, watch what you put up on Facebook. Make sure only qualified, customer service people are taking care of this part of your business and doing the branding that you want.
-Tony
P.S. Another good title for this post might be: “Tyrol Basin Posts Garbage on Facebook”
UPDATE [03-25-2013]: I was at Tyrol on St. Patrick’s Day and noticed that the parking lot was full of trash. They evidently don’t care about first impressions there or about having a nice place to park for their guests. It seems that they decided to not raise the ticket prices and not clean up the parking lot. That’s what they felt you wanted as their guests.
