
The Greatest Customer Service Story Ever Told, Starring Morton’s Steakhouse - jsherry
http://shankman.com/the-best-customer-service-story-ever-told-starring-mortons-steakhouse/
======
CJefferson
While I don't bemoan this man his steak, this kind of things increasingly
bothers me.

On the internet I sometimes get the impression that "everyone" has cute things
like this happen to them. When you dig, it often turns out, like this, the
person is big in PR or some related field.

It can get easy to forget that 99(.99?)% of the people regularly on the
internet aren't getting free stuff, lighting up twitter, hitting the front
page of reddit, etc.

From the article:

"I don’t think it’s about my follower numbers. I think it’s about Morton’s
knowing I’m a good customer, who frequents their establishments regularly. "

I am 100% convinced this is not true. I'm sure if I (with 15 twitter
followers) had posted something similar there would be no chance of something
similar happening.

~~~
lionhearted
I think part of it comes for asking for stuff. I've had a few experiences like
this.

I was in London Heathrow when the plane crashed on the runway a few years ago
- I was literally on the very next BA flight to I think the Czech Republic
that was supposed to take off when we get notified that it's going to be a
while, and then that things are canceled... nobody knew what was going until
we heard the plane crashed, and then we wondering if it was terrorism, and the
whole airport was really a mess.

I was really bummed out at that point. It's the middle of winter, and I really
really wanted to get the fuck out of London. I can't say why exactly, but
like, y'know when you're ready to leave a place and you get to the airport and
it's like "ahh, I'm leaving"? Well, I had that feeling, then a fucking plane
crashed.

After waiting in these gigantic lines for a really long time (everyone now
trying to change tickets), I got to the ticket counter and the rep there was
so, so cool. He said nothing could be done, and I could just head into the
city.

And I said, "Man, I'm just overwhelmed with shitty foggy London weather. Can
you put me on the next plane to _anywhere_ that takes off, and route me
somehow? I know this is a ridiculous request, I don't care about hotel or
accommodation or plans or anything, can you just put me on the next plane
heading eastwards?"

And - he did just that. It wasn't even on their same alliance, he went through
some complicated procedure of actually selling my ticket to another airline.
My memory is kind of failing me here but I think I wound up in Germany for the
night, saw a cathedral in the morning, and then was routed on to Eastern
Europe.

The guy went way above and beyond the call of duty in the middle of chaos just
because I was obviously bummed out. In retrospect, it was probably even uncool
of me to ask for with all of the chaos happening around, but I was just really
fed up with London at that point and wanted to get out. And the guy treated me
really really well, with no expectation of any favorable review online or
anything like that.

So - ask for stuff if you want stuff, and yeah there's some decent people in
the world that'll try to accommodate you. Also, when you get a ridiculous
request, stop and consider if maybe you can do some variation of it because
people remember that stuff forever.

~~~
a3camero
This might be more common than you suspect. I was en route to Tokyo from
Toronto stopping in Detroit when bad weather meant I missed the flight from
Detroit. The Delta staff said I'd have to stay in Detroit, I asked to go
somewhere else and they happily sent me on the next flight to Seattle where I
could depart for Tokyo the next afternoon. I assume when a lot of flights are
cancelled it's not really a problem to send people on under booked flights and
get those people out of the way and routed through a less congested location.

~~~
PotatoEngineer
I had the same experience during a snowstorm in Seattle. My flight was
cancelled, worse weather was moving in, and I just wanted to get to California
for a family holiday.

I got a ticket to San Jose---from Portland. Because I was willing to change my
airport and take some extra hassle myself, the agent was willing and able to
help out. Ask for something nicely, be flexible on how it happens, and people
can do good things for you. (Meanwhile, the lady who was screaming to get the
exact flight she'd bought in the first place was turned down, because there
wasn't a flight like the one she bought available and she wouldn't flex at
all.)

------
wallflower
I respectfully counter this 'greatest' customer service story with the story
of Katie the Prefect:

"A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about our plans to take our daughters --
particularly our nine-year-old Elizabeth -- to Harry Potter World at Universal
Studios in Orlando. I worried, I suppose, that nothing surprising and magical
would happen. Well, as it turned out, something surprising and magical did
happen."

<http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/01/katie-prefect.html>

~~~
spydum
That is a fantastic read, thanks for sharing. I'd rank that far above any PR
stunt or clever social marketing.

------
mycroftiv
"I was catching a 7am flight out of Newark to Tampa, Florida, for a lunch
meeting in Clearwater, then heading back to Newark on a 5pm flight, getting me
in around 8:10pm, and with any luck, to my apartment by 9 or so. We all have
days like that, they happen from time to time."

I don't have days like that, and neither should anyone else. With modern
communication systems, flying in airplanes to lunch meetings and flying back
that night is such an absurd waste of resources it qualifies as obscene. The
fact that an expensive steakhouse decided to pull a cheap PR stunt by
delivering a free steak to the airport to some well-known Big Shot is less
obviously wasteful, but still a repellent manifestation of gratuitous luxury.

People within the cocoon of the upper percentiles of wealth often have a sense
of how they are perceived by others, and usually take some care to disguise
their self-satisfaction. It is always educational to get a glimpse into the
mental world of extreme privilege.

~~~
shin_lao
The difference of quality between meeting face to face and through a webcam is
so high that it's sometimes worth taking a plane just for one lunch.

For example, I like to shake the hand of people I do business with.

Additionally, I think it's generally better to refrain from commenting on how
people spend their time and money, because you certainly don't want them to
reciprocate.

~~~
onemoreact
It's not a waste of resources because there is no upside. It's a waste of
resource because you limit the effectiveness of anyone who travels as a
significant portion of their job. A single lunch meeting courtship between
executives can easily add up to well over 100,000$ for that single handshake.
So, it's not a question of shaky webcam or face to face because the price gap
quickly covers maintaining a high-end video conferencing room with support
staff with the occasional corporate retreat / week in Tahiti.

~~~
sjs
I think talking about dollar amounts is a bit silly. What's the maximum
acceptable dollar value for a lunch meeting, per person? $100? $200? $500?

Further, what if those who pay for the lunch meetings feel that it was worth
any price? How are you going to convince them they are wasting their money if
a webcam chat wouldn't actually be a replacement in their eyes, and if they
don't care about the dollar amount spent on lunch?

~~~
onemoreact
Let's suppose your talking about an executive making 20 million a year who
spends 2 days traveling for that lunch. 20,000,000 * 2 / 365 = 109,589$.
Granted he can get some stuff done while traveling, but it's also far less
than what he could do in the office and it will ofen take more than 2 days
once you include jetlag etc. I have no problem saying that handshake could be
worth 10k, but once the numbers start growing you start talking about
someone’s full time salary for a year and I have trouble thinking that
handshake is of that magnitude.

~~~
shabble
If it's the handshake that clinches a $100MM contract/acquisition/whatever,
you'd probably leap at the chance, no?

~~~
onemoreact
No, I am perfectly happy avoiding any company that requires face time to
operate. Edit: I am not saying this just to be pithy; such negotiations have a
huge upfront cost which requires a specific type of business structure to deal
with and I have no interest in participating in those structures. (And yes I
do have significant experience in this area, and yes I did decide to make less
money to avoid such things.)

PS: Ever wonder why Berkshire Hathaway is not located in NY City even though
it's managing so many subsidiaries? Could it be even with a crappy website
they better understand how technology has changed the business landscape?

~~~
jonknee
Berkshire Hathaway also owns NetJets which allow its executives to fly private
jets around the country in a way that best meets their tight schedules. You
better believe that Buffet flies all over for meetings.

~~~
tesseract
Berkshire owns its own jet; Buffet has written about how much he loves the
thing and even wants to be buried in it.

(Edit: I forgot - he named it "The Indefensible".)

~~~
jonknee
Even better. Though I know he still uses NetJets quite a bit--my dad worked
with someone who now works for NetJets and flies with the Buffets fairly
frequently. She says despite the cash and jets they're quite down to Earth--
down to cabs and not black cars.

------
timjahn
These sort of "social media success" stories need to stop.

As many here have pointed out, this was a marketing/PR stunt, because they
know exactly who Peter Shankman is and what he would do in response. It's a no
brainer from Morton's perspective to give him a free steak in this case.

But is this a "social media success" story in customer service? No. They gave
a famous person a freebie. For free positive PR.

If you follow Peter in the slightest way, you know he has this happen to him
all the time.

------
jonkelly
tl;dr one of the most famous people in the PR industry with over 100k Twitter
followers gets a free steak after he jokingly asks for one on Twitter.

Still, well played by Morton's and well-earned following I believe.

~~~
cek
This is absolutely NOT about customer service and it does a disservice to
great customer service to be presented as such. This is a fantastic PR &
marketing stunt. Well played.

I'm sure Morton's has great customer service, but this is not an example of
it.

~~~
cek
By the way, it should be very clear to people that smart companies are very
carefully _using_ twitter for PR stunts like this all the time.

One of my own examples: I have Comcast cable for my Internet connection. A few
weeks ago the connection started going up/down/up/down every few minutes. I
tweeted

    
    
        Comcast is like a yoyo this morning. Up-down-up-down-up-down. Mostly down though. /cc:@comcastcares
    

I immediately got two responses from Comcast reps (e.g. @comcastbill) and they
sent me a new modem Fedex.

I have ~6500 followers. I do not believe I would have gotten this treatment if
I had 20 followers.

For what it's worth, I plan on completely taking advantage of this phenomenon
for my own benefit :-).

~~~
AdamTReineke
Response from most businesses on Twitter is great. I have 668 followers and
get lots of help. UPS, Mediacom, McDonald's, Delta, Verizon, EVGA, and more.
Even the city I live it is active on Twitter. When I complained about an issue
with mobile bus schedules on the city's website, they forwarded my feedback on
to the bus system. The number of followers doesn't matter if the company is
committed to getting feedback on Twitter.

My only thought is that this type of response doesn't scale well at the top
end. Monitoring (and responding) to a Twitter search for a term like Google or
Netflix would take a ton of people.

~~~
a3camero
The monitoring is automated. There are a lot of suppliers of this type of
software and it's not very hard to write it yourself. I recommend playing with
YQL + Twitter search API + cron.

~~~
AdamTReineke
Right, getting a list of the tweets is easy. Filtering them and deciding which
require action and then acting on the information becomes much harder.

~~~
a3camero
One thing you can do is parse the tweets for mentions of certain words. In any
event, you can alert people to the tweets rather than having them sit there.
Not sure how large corporations handle it process-wise.

~~~
wallflower
Check out the open source ThinkUp from ExpertLabs:

Live demo:

[http://expertlabs.aaas.org/thinkup01/index.php?u=whitehouse&...](http://expertlabs.aaas.org/thinkup01/index.php?u=whitehouse&n=twitter)

<http://thinkupapp.com/>

"ThinkUp is a free, open source web application that captures your posts,
tweets, replies, retweets, friends, followers and links on social networks
like Twitter and Facebook.

With ThinkUp, you can store your social activity in a database that you
control, making it easy to search, sort, analyze, publish and display activity
from your network. All you need is a web server that can run a PHP
application"

~~~
AdamTReineke
That's pretty sweet for being FOSS.

------
bitsm
I think those pointing to his follower count are missing the point. Morton's
has established what sounds like a pretty great CRM for their customers. I'd
be really interested to know how they're set up.

We live in an age where everyone is a media creator. Instead of spending money
on mass advertising campaigns (spray 'n pray) with little lasting value, this
type of customer service is like launching smart bombs that target actual
customers and the people around them. This story & pictures is now in the
internet -- it will be around forever. Is that worth the drive from
Hackensack? I bet it is.

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is how can we be this
awesome for our customers every day?

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Yeah, the CRM was a very interesting side note for me. I wish more companies
actually used a CRM and could "personalize" my experience for me, it doesn't
even need to be anything big.

------
latch
Neat story...but he's mixing up the customer service department with the
marketing department.

------
joelhaasnoot
Great story! This happened to a coworker of mine who was traveling KLM. His
flight was slightly delayed and mentioned that and that he was flying KLM. He
was met in Amsterdam at the gate with a book about the Tour de France (they
had checked his profile to see he was a sports fanatic), and surprised him.
Then again. KLM has a good social media team too, and they do several stunts
like that a day sometimes. They have a website <http://surprise.klm.com/> that
lists al their surprises.

------
kgosser
Pretty disappointed by the assessment by the HN crowd.

I find it interesting how strong cynicism has crept into our social ideology.
It's almost like a social darwinian requirement nowadays. You can't be happy
about an interesting situation because it is, at some level, linked to some
sort of marketing directed towards you. At least that's the perception, thanks
to the Internet.

And thus, you are angry. Rawr. Upset that _you_ are the victim of some kind of
marketing stunt. Travesty!

So an interesting and unique deed--whether the person was truly deserving
because of some arbitrary, subjective parameters placed on the recipient--is
thrown the curb because the cynical perception is since it's talked about,
it's marketing, and therefore it needs to be discredited.

Bravo, HN community. Bravo! But I don't blame you. I just blame the social
media tools on the Internet that half of us are building.

------
timjahn
Careful.

Peter Shankman might direct message you on Twitter (and not follow you so you
can't direct message him back) and say he expects more from you.

Like he did to me an hour ago.

Peter Shankman: "would have expected more logic from you on your hackernews
comment... Morton's can put a dollar amount on this, yes. It's business."

Peter Shankman: "Read the comments on their website. They do this all the time
for non-famous people. As does KLM. And Virgin. It's good biz."

Peter Shankman: "An entrepreneur should know that. :)"

~~~
deltaqueue
Knowing Peter wrote the book that describes this situation[1] and then denying
that it's happening makes me seriously question whether this is Morton's own
doing (great PR) or something that was discussed beforehand. Regardless, this
is clearly just PR and in no way reflects customer service. Not to say
Morton's doesn't have great customer service--it appears they do based on
their high satisfaction rates--but the event was not causal.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Stunts-Work-Company-
Needs/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Outrageous-Stunts-Work-Company-
Needs/dp/047004392X)

------
drcube
I think these stories about Domino's drivers saving lives beat Morton's
delivering a free steak to a lucrative customer. (Which I agree every company
should do occasionally for their own best interests.):

Old lady doesn't place her regular order, driver takes the initiative to drive
over and check on her. Sure enough, she's fallen and she can't get up:
[http://consumerist.com/2011/02/dominos-delivery-driver-
saves...](http://consumerist.com/2011/02/dominos-delivery-driver-saves-life-
of-regular-customer.html)

Psycho ex threatens to stab customer with the door open as the driver arrives,
he sneaks away and calls the cops: <http://www.uhpinions.com/dominos-pizza/>

------
hnsmurf
That's not customer service, it's advertisement. There's a difference. When
you do something to get a mention from a guy with hundreds of thousands of
Twitter followers/blog readers it's marketing. If they did that for me it'd be
customer service.

------
angrycoder
Great PR. You know who else would have done this, and you wouldn't have
bothered to even tweet or write a blog post about it? Your mother.

Sounds like a best seller in the making to me, "Everything I learned about PR
I learned from my mom."

------
synnik
The brilliant part of the logistics is that Morton's really had no risk here,
other than the cost of the food itself and some time. If they didn't find him,
missed his flight, etc, no biggie - they just go home, forget it, and go about
their business.

That is the real lesson here - that it is OK to try to pull marketing stunts,
especially if there is no real downside to your company in the case of
failure.

~~~
mhb
Maybe the real lesson is to look for lost-looking people in tuxedos carrying
Morton's bags with steaks they need to get rid of.

------
run4yourlives
The only part of the story I found rather oft-putting was the fact that he
quickly dismissed the fact that Morton's did this because they knew it would
be broadcast all over the interwebs.

The most likely explanation is that Morton's does what a lot of companies do:
know exactly who their most important customers are. He just happens to be one
of them.

As an aside, I find it funny how a guy that is too health conscious for fast
food orders a 24oz steak. I love my steaks but that's a little much.

+1 for Morton's for sure, but -1 for the media expert not being able to
realize when he's being manipulated.

------
petershankman
Wow. A shame... So let's see... According to Hacker news... I'm:

1) Super Rich. (Not by a long shot.)

2) Horrible because I travel for a business lunch. Sorry, but in the real
world, business is much more fruitful when done over a handshake, and not a
pixelated image.

3) A celebrity. If that's the case, can you inform my cat? I just cleaned up
his puke from my couch. Don't celebrities have "people" do to that?

4) This was a set-up. Really? I'd risk 15 years building a professional career
for one stunt? Thanks for playing, but no.

Sad. I expected more out of y'all. But hey, it's just the Internet, right?

~~~
hopeuarefake
I sincerely hope that your account is a fake, and is not managed by the actual
Peter Shankman.

It would be disappointing if the real Shankman was so willing to paint the
entire HN community with a ridiculously broad brush, when he's a professional
and should know better.

~~~
petershankman
Not really sure what's pissing you off, "hopeuarefake," I simply countered
several of the inaccurate assumptions that have been made here. Why is that
such a problem for you?

~~~
hopeuarefake
You painted everyone here with the same broad brush, when opinions were not
unanimous. Hell, most people don't even bother to comment.

Please post to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter if this is really you.

Hard to believe it's real.

------
quadyeast
SF Food critic Michael Bauer says

"Even with items removed, the check totaled $159.05; otherwise, it would have
been more than $200 for two cocktails and practically inedible food."

[http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-09/entertainment/23994311...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-09/entertainment/23994311_1_chicken-
cutlets-morton-ruth-s-chris)

------
juliano_q
I think it is a fantastic story, but is pretty obvious that they did it
because he have a significant number of followers and not just because he is a
regular costumer. And there is nothing wrong with it, they are just maximizing
their gains with this action.

------
pavel_lishin
His evidence that he was treated as any other customer is that ... a robot
retweets mentions of their restaurant, prepended by "Cheers!"?

He gets a steak. I get a retweet. Yeah, boy, Morton's treats all their
customers the same.

------
saraid216
To the people who say that it's about follower count after all,

Uh, think about that. Pick a different celebrity, like @neilhimself has 10
times the followers, and ask what would happen if he posted something like
that. I will tell you: nothing. You know why? Because Morton's would have NO
IDEA what he likes to order because he ISN'T a frequent customer. And do you
really think they'd send a steak without anything to go with it?

That's why it's a customer service story.

------
matthiasb
As a frenchman, I definitively appreciate the customer service quality in the
US. We need more Morton's over there :)

------
larrys
"I don’t think it’s about my follower numbers. I think it’s about Morton’s
knowing I’m a good customer, who frequents their establishments regularly. "

Of course it makes no economic sense for Morton's to do this simply because he
frequents Mortons establishments regularly.

The interesting part is that he believes that there are people who would
believe this. But he's smart enough to think down to that level.

His parent's must not have been critical. People raised by critical parents
(who call them on everything they say) wouldn't think anyone would believe
this.

Being able to think like this is actually very helpful many times in coming up
with schemes to make money.

------
kevinpet
This isn't a customer service story. This is a PR story. If it isn't something
they do for all customers in a similar situation, then it's not customer
service, it's a stunt.

------
giberson
Okay, so this story gives me a new startup idea. Twitter2Deliver

You sign up for the service, associating your twitter account to a real live
person, phone, address and payment details.

Later, you're hungry, so you tweet "@twitter2deliver carls jr. large #6,
criss-cut fries, coke."

Or "@twitter2deliver Big Apple country fried steak, baked potato, green beans"

A little later, and a delivery guy knocks on your door, food in hand.

Technically twitter2deliver is a concierge service, so it can incorporate more
than food delivery.

------
awayand
Looks like a pretty easy to spot "hidden" advertisement to me. Don't believe
anything you read on the internet unless you can and will verify it. Same
applies to newspapers, but I guess the internet being a more dynamic place it
is a lot tougher to sort out truth from lies so you best be safe not believing
_anything_ out there unless, as I said, you verify it.

------
drieddust
As Author said this a good stunt because author had many followers. I do not
see how this stunt can reflect on the general customer service of the company.

I have worked in situations in where management have tried to please customers
by granting them their wish list. This has almost resulted in customer
treating that particular favor as his born right.

~~~
vidarh
It's gotten attention plenty of places other than amongst his Twitter
followers, so they'd benefit from it even if he had fewer followers as long as
it'd get reposted. It seems more important that he's someone they know would
be vocal about it. I'd almost think it'd have done _better_ if he had fewer
followers, in that people would be less skeptical of it being just because of
his follower count.

You're right you can't do this for everyone, though, but giving customers
"treats" now and again would seem to do wonders. I think the key is that it
needs to be a surprise _or_ it needs to be commensurate to what they spend for
regular customers.

If it's commensurate to what they spend you need to budget and plan for it,
and quite possibly should if you're aiming for a high end market, but it may
be worthwhile to make some of the perks for regular customers "surprises" that
makes it seem like you go above and beyond.

An up-market brand might have the margins to set aside say 10% for "stunts"
that makes the customer fanatical about the brand. I don't know Morton's, but
an upscale steak house can easily land you with bills in the $150-$200 range
for a dinner - it doesn't take many dinners at that cost level before the
customer has "paid" for a free steak and a 20 mile drive to an airport, and
even _if_ such a customer doesn't plaster it all over the internet, you can
bet that if my favorite steak house had shown up at SFO with a steak on one
the occasions I had to do regular business travel to California, everyone I
met would hear about it for a long time. I'd repay a $200 cost or more with
extra business for them in a few months at most, probably already on that trip
just because it'd be an awesome story to have (as long as they keep their
surprises fresh and not too frequent).

------
baggachipz
In my experience, Ruth's Chris > Morton's. Assuming neither gives me the royal
treatment (and they never do).

~~~
drblast
And the granddaddy of them all:

<http://www.peterluger.com/>

Peter Luger eats all other steakhouses for breakfast, and I say that as
someone who drools uncontrollably when I think about going to either Mortons
or Ruth's Chris.

~~~
absconditus
Two large chain steakhouses are hardly the ones to beat.

------
huhtenberg
tl;dr - if you have 107522 followers on Twitter, you _may_ get a restaurant
deliver a free steak to the airport if you ask. Obviously in return for free
PR. And, no, it has nothing to do with the customer service.

------
Macsenour
I've never heard of Morton's, but I will look for it now. They have gained one
potential customer at very little cost. I call that a job well done for their
PR and Marketing folks.

------
moses1400
Does he get the steak without his name and 100,000 followers?

------
Ideka
> Do you know anyone anymore who doesn’t have a camera in their phone, or
> anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account?

I kept thinking "ME, ME, ME" as I read that.

------
epynonymous
could it be that his secretary or driver arranged such? if morton's did that
for everyone, that would seem like a loss considering there's no real contract
for the transaction, too many things could go wrong. i think this customer
must be a top spender so received special attention, don't expect to have this
service if you're a regular blow.

------
nickzoic
TIL: There is such a thing as a take-away steak ... and that eating hour-old
steak out of a plastic box can be "amazing".

~~~
vidarh
If it's kept at the right temperature, steak will usually only get better
tasting for a long time.

------
retube
a 24 ounce steak?? Only in the US of A :)

That's literally 3 times heavier than a large steak in the UK.

~~~
jasonkester
Better still, it actually tastes like steak. Unless you go to the US of A (or
at least as far from England as you can get), you might never find out what
that tastes like. You might even want to eat 3 times as much of it!

Sorry for the outburst, but I'm going nuts in the land of British Beef. My
last good steak was over a year ago, and I'm not going to make it back to the
'states until xmas.

    
    
      Day One: Mama's Mexican Kitchen.
      Day Two: Proper 16oz New York Steak from a proper butcher

~~~
DaveChild
If you're having trouble finding good steak, try somewhere other than
McDonalds ...

~~~
jasonkester
It's not the restaurant, it's the beef.

I actually have a friend who's a beef farmer over here, and we've talked about
this at length. There's no UK equivalent of the USDA grades of meat, and thus
no incentive to selectively breed cows for flavor and quality.

You can go to a specialty butcher over here and get the absolute best steak
they have, and it still won't be as tasty as the one you'll find on sale at
any grocery store in the US.

~~~
retube
Hang on, in defence of UK beef: you can buy incredible beef here, you just got
to know where to buy it (probably not tescos).

I actually thought all US beef was pumped full of growth hormones and other
nasties? Your cows are about 50% bigger than ours :)

~~~
joezydeco
I thought the difference was corn-fed vs grass-fed.

------
pbreit
This sounds more like a marketing stunt than a customer service story.

------
raheemm
So how did they find him in the airport? And what do they use for CRM?

------
georgieporgie
Whether it's due to Internet fame or not, this concept of customer service
shifting from private emails and phone calls into a publicly visible space is
very interesting. Maybe the Internet Pitchfork Society (e.g. Reddit) will lead
to whipping notoriously awful customer service into shape. Or maybe it will be
unfair gang-annihilation of small businesses, like victims of unfair Yelp
reviews claim.

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napierzaza
That's not customer service. It's viral marketing.

