HEELS IN THE FAST LANE
CHRISTIAN DIOR RESTORATION
We live in a world where one bad review can ruin your business. Platforms like Yelp and Tripadvisor have literally lit a fire under small business owners worldwide. Queuing them to get their act together and that customer service is golden. In the age of endless digital information, not only are good reviews a rite of passage for service-based businesses, it now spills into successful business sales. Platforms like Yelp, Trip Advisor, and (arguably) Linkedin are the scorecards of the consumer product marketplace. It’s the new standard yellow pages, operating like a blockchain. My experience working with small businesses in the fashion and lifestyle retail space is that Yelp.com is always on the marketing agenda.
“What can we do to increase our Yelp score?” “Can you leave us a good trip advisor review? We’ll give you a free bottle of champagne?” These are legit phrases owners and executives have asked me, all in the name of a good digital footprint. And so it wasn’t a surprise to me that my previous marketing position at a high-end dry cleaner tasked me with increasing their Yelp Score in the first 90 days on the job. According to Yelp officials, an increase in one’s business yelp score by 1 star could yield a 20 percent increase in a given company’s revenue. To this particular company I was working with, that could mean an additional $1M in sales! So on my first 30 days as a Marketing Lead, I logged into their salesforce e and got to work. Here’s the story of how I came to oversee the restoration of a Christian Dior gown owned by the one and only Elizabeth Taylor.
It was a busy day at the factory. Designer clothes were cleaned and pressed to perfection by 9 AM. And by 10 AM when I walked in, they were bagged and ready to be delivered to Manhattan’s elite. I made my way through the chaos to the opposite end of the factory where there were a few offices for the “back of the house” stuff. As soon as I got to the door of my own office, my co-worker informed me he found the lady’s contact information in the company database according to her bad review on Yelp.com. It was haunting the entire staff and so WE were going to call her and ask to restore her Christian Dior dress.
The bad review read:
“I’ve absolutely had it with this company! They ruined my vintage Christian Dior dress! I brought it to them to clean and I am now seeing bleach or dye marks on it! I didn’t even think about taking it out of the bag to examine it, until several weeks later. I’m livid. It is unwearable.”
And so here we are huddled in a conference room about to call “Mrs. Apple” and re-ignite her fashion turmoil. The review was left a few months ago, but only now were we doing something about it. People who truly love their clothes, designer clothes that is, are on another level. Or, well, maybe it’s just Christian Dior because every time I give my Dior over to my own local dry cleaners, I hold my breath — for the entire week. Anyway, back to the story:
“Hello, this is Jason and Melissa calling from Pristine Dry Cleaners. Is this Mrs. Apple?”
“Why yes, it is. You know you all ruined my Christian Dior dress and didn’t have the nerve to call me back until!!!! How rude. No class” said a very disturbed Mrs. Apple.
“And that’s why we are calling you back now. We both just joined the company and following up with valued customers.” Jason said in a baffling sarcastic tone of voice.
With hands ablaze, I stepped into the conversation. This dude was not the best at customer service. “We read your review on Yelp.com and feel awful about it. I know how much this piece means to you and the company wants to restore it back to wearable conditions.” It was only right.
See where this is going? The conversation went on for at least thirty minutes. We scheduled a pick up for the dress that same day. The next morning I came into my office and there was the dress on my desk. A long green dress from like the 1960s. It was heavy with fabric. It wasn’t anything someone would wear these days but let me remind you how conservative the fashion was during that time period. The dress was also purchased at a vintage auction. It was once owned by Elizabeth Taylor. I don’t really know if she wore for TV or for a photo shoot, but it was definitely camp.
The first thing I did was examine it. I took it out of the plastic to take some photos of it. I called Mrs. Apple to update her about the dress and what the artisans intended on doing to it. She was still fuming from yesterday’s conversation.
“Don’t you dare ruin the fabric.” “It fits me to my measurements, so don’t alter it.” Mrs. Apple was very particular.
I reassured her that the dress was not in good hands and that I’ll be thoroughly monitoring the process. Let me be clear, that it wasn’t my job to do all of this. But my goal was for Mrs. Apple to delete her Yelp.com bad review and replace it with a new 5-star review on the company’s services. The marketing aspect of it was clear and I had to do what I had to do to make it work. The company had about 20 reviews and 6 of them were between 1–2 Stars. Mrs.Apple’s was a 1-star and it was the most recent bad review.
I didn’t quite know if my strategy would work. After all, this dress required some major reconstruction. The fabric had to be re-dyed and this required the company to outsource this specialty service to another family-owned dye factory located almost 2 hours away. We also had to replace a rare organza fabric, that was to be ordered straight from Paris. That part alone would take 2 months with customs, communicating with the suppliers, and shipping. Of course, Mrs. Apple wasn’t happy about this timeline. It was the spring and we told her the dress would take only 4- 6 months to be restored.
In the meantime, to get better reviews on Yelp.com, I launched a massive company-wide Yelp contest. Customer service reps, seamstresses, drivers, and sales reps were in competition to get their names mentioned in a new yelp.com review. Every 4 and 5-star review meant an extra $30 to their paychecks. As soon as I set out the internal email announcing the contest, my fellow employees got to work. I also created marketing collateral to hang up around the storefront and factory space, created copy for customer service phone scripts — “Leave us a Yelp.com review. Let me walk you through the process for free AM delivery.” I also created in-store signage about Yelp.com and programmed an iPad for customers to leave reviews during pop - up events. To say the least, my tactic was overexposure. By the way, this was in 2016, so everything needed to happen like ASAP.
By the end of two months, I saw a quarter of star change on Yelp.com but the 3-star score was not changing. How could this company call themselves the best service when Yelp.com, the Bible of hospitality experiences, said otherwise. I had to understand from a platform’s perspective what it was going to take to move the needle. My meeting with a Senior Sales associate at Yelp.com was not necessarily a wake- up call but a queue that it was going to be harder than expected.
The sales associate told me that not only did my company have 6 bad reviews for public viewing pleasures, but that there were more shady “unconfirmed” reviews waiting in the backend. Meetings with platform representatives are also so standard. They tell you about the product features and try to sell you on their services. For Yelp.com that meant buying into their Yelp.com platform management system for business for a few thousand a years. Ah, no! Did I mention I had basically no marketing budget?! Then this sales associate told me that even if I do go about my strategy of personally reconciling each bad review, the algorithm was going to be harder to manipulate!
Of course, I didn’t tell the company owner about the platform’s caveat. Instead, I did reinforce the need to get more validated and confirmed reviews up on the company’s page. I also pushed for everyone in the company to be on their customer service A — game. In the age of technology, it’s expected that the person behind the counter or delivering our goods is supposed to be polite, well — mannered, on time and filled with solutions. Yet, it’s never the case. It does require one to have EQ, as in emotional intelligence. Was I really going to have to teach customer service etiquette classes too??
Following my meeting with the platform, I focused on reconnaissance work and Mrs. Apple’s Dior dress. It was now at the Dye factory. This process took the longest... “Everything’s fine, Mrs.Apple.We are waiting for the fabric to arrive from Paris.” I also informed her the dress wouldn’t be ready for another six to eight weeks. By this time it was almost 4 months we had the dress in our possessions. I could feel she was getting annoyed.
“Ok well. I want to wear it in January to the Oscar’s! So please have it ready by then!”
My heart started beating faster when I hung up the phone. That was in exactly 5 weeks. What the hell was this Dye House doing? I needed an update personally. I had been relying on the Operations manager to give me these design updates. Again, I was the marketing manager so it wasn’t my job to follow up on production. When I called this 75- year — old design house, no one picked up, so I left the message. Then, I called back a few days later. Still no response. An old guy finally called me back and informed me that the dress wasn’t dyed yet. That he was still testing the dye. WTF?! We had 4 weeks to get this dress red carpet ready and this dress wasn’t dyed.
“Well, how long is it going to take?” I asked the artesian calmly.
“It will take 2 weeks.” He responded back to me.
“OK. Well, can we please expedite this process? The client needs it red carpet ready in 3 weeks.”
To speed up this story. We got the dress done in time but not before I sprouted a few grey hairs and a major case of anxiety. At the end of the day, Mrs. Apple got to wear her coveted dress to the Oscars but honestly not without the drama. And that’s just it: it was too much drama. However, she was happy with it. From the pictures she emailed me, it was drowning on her, but that was to her liking, not ours.
A week or so after the restoration was revealed, I called her and brought up the Yelp.com review again. I offered her 20% off on her next service. She hesitated in accepting it. But I needed her to remove her comment.
“I would LOVE… ``’’It would mean so much to me…” “ On behalf of the company….”
I was putting in work. Three weeks later, I logged into the Yelp platform and saw that her bad review was removed and that a new comment was replaced. I was ecstatic. Of course, I told the owner as soon as I had the chance. The company’s Yelp Score was now 4 stars. When I started with the company it was like 2.5 Stars. We gained more business but not solely because of her Yelp review. It was a combination of other marketing campaigns and strategies. Still, to my praises and hard work, it was a successful campaign and became embedded in the company’s sales strategy. I learned that customer service is a priority. Especially in the digital age. One can no longer fully control their reputation when crowd-sourcing information is public and culturally expected.
Overall, the cool thing about this whole ordeal was getting to restore a designer dress once worn by an American legend. The lady who purchased it was equally interesting, but that’s not for me to tell. So New York!
