Don’t fear the review

To be told what whatever you did was a failure or had shortcomings is one of the worst nightmares of many people. This feeling is sometimes so strong that some people don’t even do anything that is worthy of a feedback let alone criticism.These are the sheep I talked about in my last post. (Never be a sheep).

Some people still do step out of their comfort zones and try to do something that is innovative and challenges the status quo. Yet a majority of these people are afraid of reviews.

Fear is one of the most powerful emotions of us humans. It at times prevails when even love and passion fail. Being criticized is one of the biggest fears many people have. Although this fear of criticism is harmful for everyone in general, it is extremely dangerous for an entrepreneur to have such fears.

Young entrepreneurs and even brands need to realize that reviews and especially the bad ones are their best friends. A bad review is as good as, or even better than, any metric you might be using to determine how you are performing. Sure you can neglect the bad reviewers labeling them as naysayers and move along the path that you deem fit but that is only going to hurt in the longer run.

Let me clarify here, I am not talking about negative or unfavorable response. I am talking about a proper bad review. Someone used your service/product and then took out time from their lives to write a subjective description of his (dis)satisfaction. In the age where people assume that by not pressing the (Facebook) like button they have expressed their dissatisfaction a review is like a pot of gold. You should be thankful if someone comes to your Facebook page and tells you how unsatisfactory your service was. So what if it is on a public forum. No one can help you improve better than a disgruntled/unhappy customer. At this point all you have to do is pay attention and work on rectifying the problem. A  review by a customer can help you find out the issues which would have taken much analysis and god knows how much time for you to figure out on your own. At this point the worse thing you could do is choose to not do anything. Not only does your inactivity lose you a customer, you will also lose trust in the eyes of other customers and prospects.

Enable the process of review. Cherish the positive review. Embrace the negative review. Thank the reviewer for taking out time for you and make sure that you work on those. In this competitive world when customer loyalty is extremely expensive you just cannot afford to not act on bad reviews.

PS: i blog here https://akhil.me/blog