How smartphone owners have made running restaurants much tougher (INFOGRAPHIC)

Vijay and his team at Sent.ly work to improve how companies communicate with customers in a mobile-first world. His specialities are mobile marketing, customer notifications, and customer support solutions.

For many companies, managing an online presence is a chore, and customers with smartphones can be a pain. A restaurant in New York found to its chagrin that customers in 2004 were very different from customers in 2014. The original post was on Craigslist for only a few days, but it led to this story. It resonated with us strongly here in Singapore, so we did the infographic below to illustrate this more clearly.

The above isn’t the only way in which running a restaurant in 2014 is more difficult than 2004. On more than one occasion, I’ve heard of restaurant owners that learned about their one-star HungryGoWhere rating and started panicking. In order for them to apologize to the irate customer or defend themselves, they have to pay for the privilege. Once they’re plugged into the system though, they have to keep maintaining their presence.

Of course, consumers benefit from knowing what other people thought of a restaurant before they commit to dine there. But now at least, it’s easier for us to have some sympathy for the restaurateur who feels like they just got extorted by online companies where people can post false, uncorroborated accusations anonymously and charge you a fee just to fight the trolls.

See more: Don’t eat at a restaurant, use PlateCulture and eat at someone’s house