Sometimes it takes some troubleshooting to approach the right concept. Main Street Hub, founded by Stanford MBA candidates Andrew Allison and Matt Stuart, began as the seed of a great idea–a web-app meant to connect prospective customers to the profiles of small, locally owned businesses. However, after some time spent failing to move forward with their existing concept, the two decided they needed to change things up. While the existing app was perfectly fine from a design standpoint, it failed to acknowledge the very real issue of getting small business owners interested in managing their social media presence. After toying with the idea of simplifying the process for its users, Allison and Stuart stumbled on a realization–if business owners don’t want to manage their online presence, why not simply provide that service for them? Ultimately, Allison and Stuart settled on a new business model with a team of professionals managing all of the social media accounts for their clients, pairing a stellar content marketing approach–great for bringing new customers to small businesses–with an emphasis on CX, or customer experience–a key component in customer retention.
Main Street Hub is Getting the Word Out
Of course, there are ways in which Main Street Hub’s services extend beyond those of your standard issue “social media manager.” Main Street Hub uses its extensive resources to consistently engage with new customers by regularly updating social media profiles (No one likes a restaurant’s Facebook page without lots and lots of photos, after all). They also encourage others to get the word out by collecting testimonials and using posts that directly drive existing customers to share with others. One of the neat tricks in the company’s arsenal, however, is the ability to directly engage with possible customers through social media by using a unique technology that identifies tweets that are both relevant and close-in-proximity to a given business. An example taken from the Main Street Hub site shows one Twitter user tweeting about their hummus. In turn, the Twitter feed of a Mediterranean restaurant in the area (manned by Main Street Hub’s content marketing specialists) responds, touting their own hummus and thus making an unforgettable connection. The end result–a new customer, but a successful model comes down to more than the acquisition of new customers. Main Street Hub’s main strength is in keeping existing customers around.
Turning a Negative Into a Positive With Great CX
Let’s be honest: Social media’s tendency to place so much power in the hands of the consumer has been a double-edged sword. In many ways, services like Yelp have positively democratized the processes by which we choose restaurants, goods and services. However, these services have also provided a filterless pulpit for grudge-bearers to exercise their entitlement–it’s no bold claim to say that many Yelpers operate on a bias, and that the relative anonymity of being part of the internet commentariat can encourage some folks to be their worst selves. For every mom-and-pop taqueria or pizza joint that gets hoisted by great word of mouth, there’s some politically motivated insanity driving irrational hordes to leave one star reviews on the Yelp page of a generally beloved family restaurant. The whole pizzagate kerfuffle is maybe an extreme (though unfortunately increasingly not uncommon) example, but it also goes to show that Yelp can sometimes be an unexpected battleground for ideological warfare. For this reason, many people who run small businesses may loathe to even venture a look at their Yelp pages (and some who do let their own personal feelings get in the way of good business practices, lashing back and making the whole situation even worse).
This is all to say that cooler heads prevail, and that addressing social media accounts like Yelp should maybe be left to others who are not so personally attached to the business in question. Beyond simply managing these varying social media accounts, the community managers at Main Street Hub are in tune with how to make customers happy. That means Yelp reviews, whether positive or negative, are often responded to by an experienced team-member. Responding to negative reviews may not be the most intuitive step for some less-than-social-media-savvy business owners, but in reality it’s one of the absolute best ways to transform a negative online reputation. In a Wired profile, Stuart highlights one such instance: “We received a call from an auto repair shop owner who said that he was getting new customers as a result of a negative review on Yelp because of how Main Street Hub responded to it. His new customers were impressed by how much he cared about his customers’ experience and it shaped how we think about the opportunity for our customers in a response to a negative review.”
This kind of interpersonal company-customer interaction is commonplace in the start-up scene, and Main Street Hub can be seen as effectively bringing smart, tech-world CX practices to the sphere of small business. And responding to positive reviews can be valuable too. According to a Bain & Company study, 60-80% of “satisfied” customers don’t return to the business that satisfied them–and the cause for this is lack of personal connection. Main Street Hub engenders positive and personal customer-business connections through their response strategy no matter what they’re responding to.
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