Customer feedback is one of the most important aspects of any business; the criticism and complaints, when handled properly, are capable of taking your business to the next level, while handling them wrongly can as well bring an end even to the most promising business idea you can imagine.
It is a well-established fact that without customers, there is no business, and it would be a terrible mistake for anyone to start something nobody needs. Despite the importance of customers to every entrepreneur, these people we depend on to help our business grow could still be the cause of stagnancy in our business, and this can happen in the least unexpected way.
In the bid to satisfy customers and handle their criticism or complaints properly, many entrepreneurs have made pleasing their customers a habit. Honestly, it's not a bad thing to do, but many times, pleasing every customer that you encounter comes at the detriment of your business. Customers have different tastes when it comes to purchasing products, and this is why complaints are always different when your product doesn't give them 100% satisfaction.
Every customer has one thing they want you to add or remove from your product, and pleasing everyone wouldn't take your product anywhere. I have worked as a sales agent in an open market and can confidently say that this is one mistake many entrepreneurs are making.
I and my wife started the pastry business in addition to our other small sources of income, and I was more focused on the production while she handled the sales. It was her first time taking products to people, and I had different expectations because of my experience in the field. One evening, she called me and started giving me a series of complaints.
A customer said the chiinchin is small in size and isn't worth the price; another said it wasn't crunchy enough; one said the sugar wasn't enough, and laughing at everything she said got her pissed.
"What's the way forward?" I asked her.
"Let's adjust so we won't lose them," she replied, and I love her response.
When she returned from work that day, we sat and drafted out what adjusting to all the complaints would cost us. She was surprised in the end because we will be running as a great loss. I made her understand that customers would always complain, no matter how perfect your product is, because of our difference in taste.
As an entrepreneur, it's important you have a standard, and it must be the best you can do for your business while putting your customers into consideration and vice versa. Falling out of this standard would pose a great danger not just to the growth but the existence of the business as well.
In response to the complaints, I went around to get different chinchin products in the neighborhood, and it would be unfair of me to think that I wasn't giving the best I could. While I chose not to make any changes because I was certain about our product quality, we have experienced an increase in demand in the last few weeks, and it's funny how that happened because the same people who complained are demanding more of our product.
What am I driving at? Allowing customers criticism and complaints to kick us away from our standards as entrepreneurs is a terrible mistake we must always avoid.
It would look like I did nothing about their feedback, but I did. Going about getting chinchin samples and tasting them to compare with my product was my first step, but it ended there because I saw that my product was perfect for my current market.
If my quality was less than the samples I gathered, it would have warranted me to make improvements, but there wasn't a need for that. Unlike my decision not to make any changes immediately, many entrepreneurs jump into making changes at the request of every customer and end up complaining about stagnancy, like I mentioned earlier.
The business not progressing is bound to happen because you are trying to please everyone, which can never happen. You may even be surprised that the person who complained of low sugar in your product will complain of excess when you try pleasing them.
It is important to always check with every complaint that comes in, but don't be in a haste to make changes; reaccess your standards; check if the complaint is a general thing or just from a few people who have a different taste; and doing these things will help you make a good decision.
Regardless of what decision you are making, it mustn't be to the detriment of your business. Creating a balance between your business and customers demand should be your priority, bending in one direction definitely doesn't end well.
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