The Positives That Come From Negative Feedback

It’s counterintuitive to say that you should love criticism. No one loves it. Not on a review for work. Not on social media. Not from your Customers. Negative comments just make you feel, well…negative.

I was always taught, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions,” and whilst I agree with that, intellectually I sometimes find it hard to put into practice. I have learnt you have to change how you view criticism, however, to create positives from negatives, especially in your Customer Experience.

Here are some tips for managing your negative feedback into positive outcomes:

Tip #1: Be prepared for the inevitable criticism—because it is inevitable.

Avoid saying, “yes but...” or giving some excuse. Listen to the feedback. Thank the person for it, as we know that sometimes it’s as difficult to give feedback as it is to receive it. Then reflect on this. If you don’t do this, you might feel stressed. Stress is often said to be a response when you don’t know what to do about something. Part of the reason the criticism can be stressful is that you might not have a way to respond to it.

These principles apply to you personally but also for companies getting feedback from Customers.

Take for instance, social media. Many companies are still reluctant to get into social media because they are afraid of the negative reviews they might get that could damage their reputation and hurt their bottom line. Recently, I posted about the Union Street Guest House, a wedding venue that fined the bride and groom for any bad reviews posted by any of their guests, calling it the worst social media blunder ever. The owner agreed and removed the policy right after the story took off, claiming it was a joke. The owner said it was a joke, but the staff enforced it, which indicates to me that someone at the popular wedding venue didn’t know how to respond to negative reviews.

Organizations or individuals needn’t resort to ludicrous policies to prevent negative reviews, but instead should just be prepared to address them. Create a process as far as your team goes to handle them. Identify the type of complaint and the possible responses that are appropriate to resolve the issue. Assign a part of the team to respond and create the chain of command for approving any resolutions. It's important to have a way to respond appropriately to complaints, evoking emotions like happy and pleased, two emotions that drive value for any organization.

Having this policy will help you feel less stress and welcome complaints as an opportunity instead of a problem. Read between the lines. Oftentimes complaints are emotional. They are complaining about a late delivery, but the reality is that they think you don’t value their business. You need to peel back the onion and look at what is happening.

Tip #2: Use it as a point of focus to encourage more Customer comments, come what may.

In my line of work, I see behind the curtain at many organizations. What I see is that too many organizations don’t have their focus on what Customers have to say about the experience. They either don’t get enough response from Customers or aren’t tuned in enough to the response they are getting. Organizations need to have an open channel with Customers that gets a regular response. This channel is a critical part of any Customer Experience.

While it’s obvious any organization wants to get positive feedback, the negative opinion is at the very least some feedback. I say using negative reviews as a starting point for focusing on getting reviewed at all is an important first step in turning criticism into a positive for any organization.

Tip #3: See it as an opportunity to show off how responsive and customer-centric your organization is.

When we do a Customer Centric evaluation of our clients, we look at how Customer-focused they are in the policies they currently employ. Specifically, we walk through their process as a customer.

I remember talking with a Vice President of Customer Service. He was apologizing for being late to a meeting with me. He explained the reason for being late was that he and ten other managers were reviewing a Customer complaint that escalated to him. I asked him how much the complaint was for, and he told me it was for $1,000.

I looked at him, smiled, and said, “You do realize that that meeting alone probably cost you more than that?”

He smiled as he realized how silly this was and said, “That's the process.”

Handling criticism is a critical part of the Customer-Centric evaluation. It is important that organizations respond to dissatisfaction in a way that puts the customer first. If you have a problem and a Customer-focused culture at your organization, then problems present a great opportunity to demonstrate that to your customers. For more information about why this is important and how it affects Customer loyalty and retention, you can download, “The Customer Complaints X-ray.”

If you can take a customer from disappointed and frustrated to happy and pleased, then you will present yourself as a Customer-focused organization that is worthy of their business. Not only to the affected Customer, however, but also to all the Customers that see or hear about how you solved the problem.

On the other hand, it can also reveal that you have problems with your Customer-focus. Consider that a gift from your Customers in identifying an important flaw in your system that you can now overhaul your policy and present it in a new and improved form.

Winston Churchill had this to say about criticism:

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

Considering what Churchill had to say, you might think of criticism as a gift. I am hardly the first to say this, but that’s because it has much truth. Another often spouted nugget of wisdom is that, “Nobody is perfect,” and knowing that there is likely something you could be improving. If you never had negative feedback, how would you know what you need to improve, or as Churchill says where your state of things is unhealthy?

How do you deal with negative feedback? I’d be interested to hear your tips in the comments below.

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:

• The Value of Complaints

• Union Street Guest House Commits The Worst Social Media Blunder EVER!

• Customer is Not Always Right

Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world's first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author of four bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker. To read more from Colin on LinkedIn, connect with him by clicking the follow button above or below. If you would like to follow Beyond Philosophy click here

Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX