Dealing with criticism
What do you do when your
business is booming and you receive the first of an inevitable series
of hate emails? Tim Ferriss, author of the 4-Hour Work Week, spoke in Amsterdam about how
to deal with negativity and criticism. I've put a lot of
thought into this myself since customer criticisms are my least
favorite part of our chicken waterer business. Although we
receive ten times as many enthusiastic testimonials as angry gripes,
the criticisms are all that remain my mind at the end of the day.
Ferriss makes the
excellent point that "10% of people will find a way
to take anything personally." I'm starting to realize that there
is a
small subset of our customers who really need to vent their
frustrations on someone, and sending a nasty email to a faceless
company is an easy way to do that. After a while, I began to
notice signs that indicated folks who were uninterested in resolution
and just needed to yell. Customers not worth engaging further
include people who think they deserve
something special because they are a Navy Seal, an astronaut, or [fill
in the blank with reason of your choice], and people who clearly didn't
comprehend the explanation in my first reply and ask the same question
again...and again. My solution is a short, polite email that cuts
the conversation short before it can become a pissing match.
"It doesn't matter how
many people don't get it," noted Ferriss. "What matters is how
many people do." Once you finish emailing back your most recent
critic, remind yourself of the customers who wrote in to say that your
product changed their lives. Then go enjoy your own life, made
possible by your version of Microbusiness Independence!
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