Are You Listening Hard Enough to Your Customers?

It does not matter if you have your own business or working your butt off someone else's - we all have the chance to listen to customer feedback.

Almost everyday.

Not all customers will leave a feedback. And not all feedback are nice.

How do you handle negative feedback?

To me, there are essentially 2 types of feedback.

Customers Who Are Really in Pain

Those who are suffering because of the inefficient ways we (our companies) handle things have the type of feedback that we should LISTEN to.

They are the one who will make us see what's outside the jar (from their perspectives). Most companies have almost never taken a look at what's 'outside the jar' - they spent too much time inside the jar, sorting out loose ends, fire-fighting day to day operations and have never taken feedback from customers to heart.

It's not hard to imagine such companies usually close shop within 5 years.

Customers Whose Last Name Are Trolls

It is inevitable that we will get customers who will call and troll the living day light out of us. These people who may be mentally ill are out to making our life a living hell - and while they are only a small minority in most cases, their words are enough to make a good employee quit.

We have faced trolls before, listened to the colorful vulgarities from their very mouth but why are we entertaining them again and again and again? Feedback from these people are never beneficial and most of the time it is a pure waste of time listening to their rants.

We can choose not to heed both types of feedback and NOT learn anything on what's outside the jar.

Or we can choose to listen and filter away the negative ones and learn, rectify and work on what's not working well from outside the jar.

The choice is ours.