Negative customer feedback can be positive

All business owners love it when they read positive customer feedback comments. Many of those are genuine and sincere, but can come off as overly promotional, or even completely contrived. On the other hand, negative comments cause us to grimace and go into self-defence mode, looking for excuses and any possible ways to shift the blame from ourselves to an over-sensitive customer.

Customers are the lifeblood for all businesses, large or small. Feedback of a critical or negative nature is actually far more valuable than glowing comments. Sometimes it can be difficult to shut down your defences and try to ascertain if critical comments contain enough objectivity to be taken seriously, but when you consider that few customers will bother to tell you what went wrong and will simply stop using your business, it is worthwhile to examine any transactions that earned minus marks for ways to improve.

The most direct way of applying the technique of turning your negative comments into opportunities is by asking the person or persons responsible to provide input on what would have made their experience positive. This takes more than a bit of courage, because offering your critics another opportunity to unload on you is not going to be pleasant.

Along with the benefit of discovering ways to improve, however, you might learn that it was a minor detail overlooked that was the source of the issue, something that is easy to rectify. You will also discover many instances where your former critic becomes your advocate and because your business was willing to listen, something that seems entirely too rare to many customers, you set your business far above that of your competitors.

In time, you will come to value criticism because it is the most direct conduit to growing your business and it provides a reality check that glowing testimonials can never supply.