Growing a business can be difficult, especially in New York, where competition is fierce. You do everything possible to ensure that your product is perfect and your offering is right. However, sometimes all these are never enough. There might still be customers who aren’t satisfied with a component of your service.
So, seeing a customer give negative feedback can be hard to swallow. It could make you lose prospective clients if not handled properly. And the process can be draining emotionally and financially. But it’s a necessary evil business must prepare for.
A New Perspective
Customer feedback is a gift and a key driver of performance. Feedback helps drive attitude change and improve leadership effectiveness. Customer feedback gives you a unique perspective you wouldn’t have known existed. It offers a fantastic way to monitor performances and improve.
The goal of every business is to meet and exceed customer expectations, hence the need to take feedback seriously. However, handling negative feedback can be very daunting. Some feedback might be plain biased and leave you upset. Here are four strategies for dealing with negative feedback and making the most of them.
There’s bound to be negative feedback in creative spaces like marketing, branding, and web development, as perception varies. However, it’s important to focus on the problem, not the person. To achieve this, you must listen carefully to identify the source of the negative feedback.
While some clients don’t know how to present negative feedback with constructive criticism, it’s up to the business to not be defensive but to sieve the feedback from the emotions. You must practice active listening, reflect, and provide non-verbal cues where possible. Be open and genuinely interested in solving the problem. It’s easy to sense when trying to make it up, so mean it.
Customers are essential to your business, and your ability to respond timely ensures customer retention. Responding promptly to customer requests makes them feel important. You even score more points if you do so without being reactive. When you master the art of timely customer response, you’d inadvertently increase your reputation and brand loyalty.
When you get negative feedback from unhappy clients, responding on time makes them feel heard. Customers can become your brand’s biggest advocates when they are satisfied with how you handle criticism. You can leverage online platforms like social media and live chat features to improve your response time. Responding on time helps improve your engagement and the probability customers will refer your business to their network.
Sometimes you may not agree with your client’s evaluation of the situation, but you must be willing to apologize. A sincere apology can go a long way in remediating the situation. Other times, clients’ emotions can get in the way and make them give the wrong impression of a situation. No matter how impolite the client is, putting yourself in their shoes helps give you more perspective.
Asking questions helps you decipher the root cause of the problem and lays the pathway to resolution. When you ask questions, you get clarity that shows customers you care about their satisfaction. Having understood the problem, you can then ‌offer help.
When offering help, it is important not to prove your customers wrong. Stopping them midway through their complaints can be rude and make them defensive. Rather, allow them to finish and then correct the wrong facts politely. You can then look for solutions and assure them it won’t repeat itself.
Customer complaints can provide valuable insights that guide business decision-making. It is important to have a CRM system to analyze and easily collate feedback. This way, you can return to the feedback at different times to improve service delivery. This data will help you understand what clients need.
You can determine if your product needs further development by studying customer complaints. It is not enough to collate feedback. You must know how to interpret them into actionable steps. You can then determine which aspects of your business need a facelift.
For instance, if most complaints highlight a poor user interface and slow website, you know you need to improve customers’ user experience. These complaints then become a measuring tool to determine customer satisfaction. Suppose you’re running a marketing campaign targeting the New York audience, and it’s performing poorly. In that case, you read the feedback and determine whether you should consider working with an advertising agency in New York that understands the target audience. This way, you will most likely achieve the desired results when working with a creative advertising agency in New York.
Make the Most of Negative Feedback
Customers can be hard to please, especially those with negative feedback. However, if you take your time to resolve issues, it can guarantee massive ROI through word-of-mouth advertising. The more you listen, respond timely, and proffer solutions, the better positioned you’re to milk negative feedback.
