Seth Godin Suggests That Complaining Customers Can Help Your Business Reputation Online and Off
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Several weeks ago, Seth Godin posted an article to his blog called, “Please Complain.” He says that asking for customer feedback is a choice we make. You might try to hide from feedback because you might believe that asking for feedback will most likely result in more unhappy customers. You might also believe it’s a waste of your time to listen to a few unhappy customers. And you might feel that the majority of your customers are happy (and quiet), so why listen to a noisy minority.
Or perhaps you believe that encouraging feedback will provide you with a competitive advantage, and you might recognize that addressing the complaints of an unhappy customer will head off negative word of mouth later.
Seth is right! It’s a choice. He suggests that you make a choice of one or the other and avoid trying to straddle the middle. Asking for feedback and then ignoring it will bring you none of the benefits of either plan.
Most business owners I talk to choose the first option. But the most successful business owners I know are choosing the second option — they’re asking for feedback from their customers. The reason this is happening is that it’s getting easier every day for people to leave feedback and more of them are doing it every day.
If you choose any option other than encouraging and listening to feedback, you’ll be putting yourself and your business reputation at risk. Plus you’ll be missing out on valuable business intelligence (from your customers) that could make your business better and more successful.
If you’re listening to your customers, you’ll find that many of them will say good things about you and there are growing opportunities to use online recommendations, reviews, and testimonials to boost your business growth.
If you’d like to discuss how customer feedback could help your business, please give me a call at 979-531-8300.
Related articles
- Book Review: We Are All Weird. By Seth Godin (tomorrowsocial.com)
- Pushback against internet self-help gurus (andrewgelman.com)
