When you spend your life in the business world, you’re going to occasionally encounter some criticism from your customers. It’s understandable that you want to avoid criticism as much as possible, as nobody wants to hear what they’re doing wrong. However, this criticism can wind up being extremely important to the company you’re representing. As a result, it’s actually important to encourage customer criticism, rather than to shy away from it.
Here are three simple steps that you can take to help turn all of your criticism into a constructive thing for your company:
1. Encourage consumer feedback.
Some companies fork out tons of cash in order to hire consultants to find out what their customers are thinking. In reality, it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out what your customers are thinking. They’ll tell you themselves when they call in to customer support lines. They’ll write their reviews online. They’ll talk about it on social media. Encourage this kind of feedback as much as possible, whenever you interact with your customers.
2. Monitor the feedback.
This is important. It’s great to encourage feedback, but the real value of the feedback isn’t collecting opinions—it’s monitoring those opinions and find out what they mean for your business. This is especially important in your customer service operations. What is it that your customer is trying to accomplish? How can you learn from what they’ve said and apply it to future interactions in customer service? These are the kinds of ways that you can monitor your feedback as a business owner.
3. Track your strengths and weaknesses.
There are going to be some things that your customers love about you, but there may also be some things they dislike. Don’t shy away from what your customers dislike—if you take the initiative, you can learn from their feedback and turn your weaknesses into strengths. Make sure that all customer service representatives are on the same page so that they learn from your company’s weaknesses and know how to address them when dealing with customers.
Once you stop thinking about criticism as being inherently bad for your company, you will be able to learn some extremely important lessons and make improvements to your business that allow you to achieve greater success than ever before. Contact us today at Viral Solutions for more information about making all criticism constructive.
Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer | Viral Solutions LLC