Prepare To Deal With Negative Customer Feedback Before It Happens

One reason businesses often do so poorly when responding to negative feedback is that they’re surprised and hurt by it. You may have strategies and processes in place for everything else in your business, but are you prepared to respond when someone says bad things about your business?

Sometimes all our good planning goes right out the window when a customer or client — the one person you’re doing all this for, and the one you’re trying to please — says all your efforts have failed. So we respond in frustration and anger.

The reason is lack of preparation.

If you want to be ready for negative feedback, you can’t just wait for it to show up. You have to take the initiative to get a clear, unvarnished picture of how customers experience doing business with you right now.

1. Review the last 10 customer interactions. What went well? What went wrong? How did you deal with the problems that came up? Be as specific as possible. Who said what to whom? Were they satisfied with your response? Did they continue to do business with you? Were YOU satisfied with your responses? Are there any patterns among the situations where things went wrong?

What did your analysis reveal about your relationships with certain customers? Which customers do you and your folks enjoy working with most? Why? Which ones seem to “get” — understand and appreciate — the unique value you bring to the table? What criteria do they share in terms of size, type of businesses they’re in, people they have facing off with your associates, sales and support arrangements you have in place with them?

2.  Ask a few customers to describe what they like about doing business with you? What do they think would make the experience even better?  No, a  “5 = Excellent through 1 = Poor” impersonal survey isn’t going to get you the information you need. What’s driving them crazy? What else do they need that you could provide? How can you do more with those clients? What is one small thing you can do for your best clients right now that would deliver big results? Special concierge services? Introducing them to potential customers for their services? This step may best be accomplished in direct conversations with a few selected clients. Not just your best ones. Maybe in a face-to-face brainstorming session combined with a client appreciation breakfast.

3.  How can you find more like your best clients?  Use the results of your Last 10 Experiences exercise and the brainstorming work you did with your clients to fine-tune your marketing and sales efforts.  Can your best existing customers recommend another potential client?

Customer complaints must be put on the work bench just like any other piece of work you do regularly. The best way to do that is to have a system in place, and the only way to do that is to prepare by taking the initiative to ask customers what they like and don’t like and the reasons why.