yelp

Yelp Discovers the Power of the Crowd in Hiring and Firing

February 25, 2016         By: Steven Anderson

It’s a fairly common thread; someone jumps on the Internet to complain about low pay at a certain company—in this case, Yelp’s food delivery app Eat24—and that person is fired for doing so.

It used to be that such a thing would remain internal, but the social media that allowed the complaint allows revelation about being fired over it. As Yelp discovered, the backlash from such an event can be pronounced.

Following the firing of the complainer, Talia Jane, Twitter caught fire in Yelp’s direction, with a host of potential users and customers weighing in about the young woman who wrote an open letter to her CEO about pay too low to do much more than pay rent.

The company responded to the letter by firing her, though it was quick to note that the firing had nothing to do with the letter in question.

Rather the firing was related to a violation of “Yelp’s terms of conduct,” which probably wouldn’t have happened had the letter not been written.

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman took to Twitter himself, noting that indeed the cost of living in the Bay Area, where Yelp is located, is quite high. Stoppleman also appealed directly to the “Twitter army” to “please put down the pitchforks.”

When a company’s CEO is begging users to stop attacking him and his business, something is up.

We all know that customer service is a vital part of the operation, but what happens when those customers want a little more than good customer service, like the people who provide it to be sufficiently paid to both live indoors and eat food?

Normally customers wouldn’t have a say in such things, but when they can have such say—thanks to social media—should we be surprised when they do? Should every CEO be watchful for the “Twitter army” that represents customers or users or readers getting angry and boycotting because someone was fired? That’s a sock in the bottom line, one any company must consider.

Social media is fundamentally changing our lives, and mobile users are a big part of this. While Yelp will likely survive the loss of Talia Jane and the backlash that followed, it may well be the start of a much larger problem: an ever-present Twitter army, weighing silently on every corporate decision.