Triage and Resolve a Complaint Spike on One Tripadvisor Restaurant Page as CEO

You are the CEO of Tripadvisor. For the past two weeks the company has been receiving a large amount of feedback and complaints, all about one particular restaurant listing. Explain what you would do. ```hint Find out what the complaints actually say Before proposing a fix, establish who is complaining and what about. Different kinds of complaints about a listing call for different owners and different levels of urgency. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Who is sending the complaints: travelers who relied on the listing, the restaurant's owner, or people who have never visited it (for example after a news story or a viral post)? - Through which channels are they arriving (report buttons on the listing, support tickets, social media, press), and how far above a typical listing's volume is this? - Has the listing itself changed recently, such as a sudden burst of very high or very low ratings, or edits to its address, phone number or booking links? - Do any of the complaints raise a safety, health or legal concern? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - The CEO's role: owning severity, accountability and the trust outcome rather than personally fixing the listing. - A structured diagnosis of the complaints (who sent them, what they say, when they started, what the listing's review and edit history shows) before any action. - Responses matched to each plausible cause, handling risks to travelers and to the credibility of reviews first, while treating the restaurant fairly. - A fix for the system as well as the listing: why one listing's problem went unresolved for two weeks, and how the next case would be caught sooner. - Measures that show the issue is resolved, with guardrails such as wrongly removed reviews and unfair treatment of businesses. ### Follow-up Questions - The investigation finds a coordinated wave of one-star reviews from brand-new accounts, posted right after the restaurant appeared in a viral social media post. What do you do with those reviews and with the listing? - The restaurant's owner threatens legal action and claims a competitor is behind the complaints. How do you handle the owner while protecting travelers' trust in reviews? - How would you design the process so that a problem like this reaches the right team within hours instead of reaching the CEO after two weeks?