It is not just ironic that there is the first negative review appearing on the same day as the termination of a disgruntled employee. We would hope that all reviews found here would be honest and related to the customer’s true experience with the staff and products at the Carolina Hemp Hut and not intentional bullying due to one person’s grievances with a supervisor. In fact, based upon this former employee’s track record with other businesses with whom they have worked, we understand now that a slew of negative reviews is now to be expected for a spell.
At this point many small businesses would be in a tailspin. After all, getting negative reviews is what businesses that thrive on feedback and need peer referrals to help business stay alive and thrive in this nutso world in which we live.
As a small business, most people know that daily decisions can make or break the business. The small business known as the Carolina Hemp Hut is composed of only a few wonderfully diverse people. Each of them has a vested interest in the success of the business. If you compare a small business to a large one such as Walmart, you are bound to find that at Walmart, the management loses no sleep over a negative review, an angered customer, or, in fact an angry employee (or in this case, an angry former employee). Walmart stores will stay open with thousands of negative reviews from customers. Small businesses, on the other hand, can be crushed by one vindictive person whose target is one person at the Small Business. Most would label this a personal vendetta.
When a personal vendetta is used to bash a business, apparently with the hopes of ultimately harming the targeted individual by destroying their livelihood, it only harms small businesses. Think back to Walmart again, give them a negative review and to them it is free advertising. Attack a small business and it may lead to staff being let go and business folding. This is what can happen when an unstable or irrationally angry individual becomes vindictive and coerces friends to attack the company.
If you are the type of person who condones fabricating grievances to destroy a company, then it is unfortunate that you are allowing for families who are innocent to be harmed. Employees at Walmart will not lose their jobs because of vindictive falsehoods. They likely will not even notice that you are upset. With a small business, entire families who are completely innocent and not part of the grievance are disrupted and harmed.
Some people will not even have remorse when they learn that their actions are harming people far beyond the scope of one person (the target for the vindictive bullying). We worry over this, but we also know we cannot change other people – we can only do what we can to change ourselves. We spend far more time than what you find among our peers learning more and dedicating ourselves to helping others.
Back to the reviews: Go ahead and read the reviews for Carolina Hemp Hut’s stores. You are bound to learn a lot. It is important for us to live our Vision every day. We strive to meet our set Goals with every encounter, not just transaction. We have very well-defined core values as well.
Our vision:
A world where people seek better health first with better food from nature then medicines from nature.
Our Mission:
To be a pathfinder in the world of botanical health, we will concentrate on learning and expanding the possibilities to improve the health of everyone around us.
Some of Our Core Principles:
We believe in natural health. We know that food is medicine. We know that nature already provides us with the means to cure or prevent so many illnesses. Therefore, we believe in learning more about the botanical gifts we are given and share this education with others.
We believe in elevating our customers. Whether it is education, product matching or simply better than expected display of respect compounding high levels of customers services, the Carolina Hemp Hut staff will treat each customer as a they would a beloved member of their own family – with respect, courtesy, smiles and careful listening. When we discover we are wrong on any topic, we will respectfully admit the error and apologize.
The esteemed Zig Ziglar (you really should look this guy up, he is amazing) taught his audiences: “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” We know we do not have everything in life we want, but we are certainly helping others find theirs and we know that the formula works. This is another reason why we are so steadfastly dedicated to the highest levels of customer service.
At our stores, our team members are instructed to wear presentable clothing such as collared shirts and no sneakers. Every team member is urged to smile sincerely (even with a mask on) because the sound of a voice with a smile is more warming than a neutral or negative facial expression. We provide detailed customers service and cannabinoid health training to further support our mission. All in all, these and other components combine to create a warm and positive environment which people who visit our stores can feel and notice quickly.
We know that to err is human. This is also why our team is also taught to admit mistakes quickly before misinformation is spread and more errors are made. This level of transparency has enabled us to secure a highly esteemed rating on multiple platforms including Google and Google Maps.
Because of our dedication to serving our customers, we also go beyond the normal scope to provide referrals to our competitors or other shops when we are not directly able to assist our customers. We want each visitor to our stores to get the answers they need without a lot of runaround or hassle.
You may already know that Carolina Hemp Hut has a significant e-commerce store of the same name. The online reviews from customers across the country match the nearly 100% ratings of our local market customers. The customer service standards at the Carolina Hemp Hut are exceedingly high. While we cannot meet every customers’ exact needs, we work harder to ensure they are met than anyone. When USPS or UPS make things slow, we still jump to our customers’ queries and needs quickly – every step of the way.
This total dedication to the customer experience really makes these targeted negative reviews very suspect. We have not changed our model of service perfection. What changed was one employee who was terminated.
One of the founders of the small business dedicates significant time to assisting medical practitioners provide better medical care. One of our management team is a frequent visitor to help parents at local NICU centers. The team at the Carolina Hemp Hut care about helping people, not harming them.
An intelligent observer to this novella would quickly gather that the aggrieved party may be better off airing their concerns through legal means instead of social. After all, if you truly feel you were harmed, use the legal process to make your attacks, it is sensible and it does not cause any harm to the innocent parties.
After receiving this first negative review, we knew right away that there would be more. “Hell hath no fury… “came up in the team meeting later that evening. It was appropriate. Since we knew no matter what anyone said or even did, the anger would still be unleashed. Therefore, we spent a considerable amount of time reviewing hours of security footage for the past month.
Reviewing security footage is tedious and mostly boring. You can fast forward through most of down time in the footage from the many cameras in the store. We decided to be more practical in the approach. We learned some amazing stuff!
One fun tidbit, 32% of the customers walked directly to the dedicated Bud Bar in our store. That is a big nod to the appreciation for hemp flower in North Carolina.
Since we are such sticklers for customer service, we made sure to take notes of customer interactions and realized a trend which was disturbing with one employee who was already on probation. When the employee was confronted about this, it led to a dismissal instead of a path correction. The employee displayed vindictive behaving from the start. (You may find videos of similar behavior on YouTube, Reddit and other social sites. However, we do not think it is appropriate to reward bad behavior with fame.)
As a small business dedicated to a high-quality customer experience, we know we are not going to hit perfection 100% of the time but always reach for it. It’ is our staunch dedication to our core values that makes us work to achieve that 100% perfection level. It means people believe in our mission, not just our products or services We are ecstatic that people are able to discover the amazing positive benefits humans have been experiencing for centuries from cannabis plants.
Frankly, we know it is not a bad thing that negative or low-rated review happens from time to time with the businesses who really care – this makes them strive harder. For large companies who’ve already “made it” – think of the Wal-Marts, the Coca-Colas, and the IBMs of the world – they do not worry so much over retail store reviews at all. They can use deep pockets to finance extraordinary marketing campaigns which squelch out the sounds of any small fry Local Business. But small businesses must rely on solid, honest reviews to continue to maintain a reasonable reputation which in turn is conducive to continued business. Think about all the negatives you hear each year about big stores and big companies around you. How many of them were truly harmed because you feel vindictive against them?
This Is very key since at the small business level, continued business means continued coverage of utility bills, insurance, and the like. Take a glance back at the mega big monster companies and they have staff many levels down the food chain taking care of entering the magic characters on their keyboards to make sure the bills are paid.
Therefore, it circles back to how a personal attack against a small business owner is bully behavior. We wish to stand up to this bully. After all, it is our mission to help people.
Our customers are intelligent enough to understand that Carolina Hemp Hut responds quickly to their concerns and their questions. This is why we do not have valid negative reviews. Our aim to provide exceptional products with better than expected service makes the difference. As a customer, if you have a grievance with our products, you speak up about them to us. We make things right. This is always our policy. An smart observer to the reviews posted in store web sites can readily distinguish “fake” negative reviews and even fake positive reviews from bots or review scam operations. We will not condone these practices.
Our customers know the score every day. When they come in to our stores, they’re greeted with warmth and compassion and we listen to YOUR story to help you discover better health options.
We believe that if you find yourself feeling like you need to harm a company because an individual at that company or business hurt your feelings, then you have become the bully that everyone warns us about.
We are eager to greet new customers and assist them with their own health journeys.
As always, we wish you an amazing day!