Everybody received negative feedback related to their, work, projects, or actions at least once in their lifetime. It may be difficult to digest it when you put your 100% effort into a project. Understandably you may not like it, but you will become more productive if you learn to deal with it constructively.
Follow these four tips to turn negative into positive.
Negative feedback isn’t always bad
When handling negative feedback, it is crucial to separate negative from bad feedback. Negative feedback is when customers express why don't they like a certain product or service. In a way, they “vent” about their unsatisfied needs and provide you with insights that you can use to improve your product or service. Bad feedback is when customers don't express why exactly are they unhappy with your product or service, but just give general answers like „I do not like it“. You can't determine what the customer doesn't like from this answer, and it makes fixing the problem much harder than using the above-mentioned negative feedback.
A questionnaire that has been carefully planned and uses to-the-point questions can help you extract valuable data and not just comments that don’t indicate what the actual problem is.
Evaluate the usefulness
As discussed above, criticism in the form of a viewpoint is helpful. Still, this is not applicable in every case. Toxic comments from customers sometimes stem from plain frustration on are unrelated to the root problem itself. If you encounter such toxic feedback, it isn't counter-productive to sometimes push back on some feedback because of your expertise. It is important to explain why some things are done in a specific manner, or to at least offer alternatives to some changes we deem unnecessary.
Although negative feedback can help us to improve our products or services, we have to identify which parts of that negative feedback will get us closer to the project goals, and which ones are going to make things harder for us.
The counterbalancing effect helps you
It is necessary to put your ego aside and welcome positive criticism with an open heart when working. Listen carefully to what your customers are saying, ask relevant questions, and make sure that you are not just building on things that customers like, but also building on things the customers don't like.
Don’t take it personally
It is also important not to take things personally and get very defensive when seeing negative feedback. Try to take a step back, view it from a neutral standpoint and make the best out of it. Negative feedback can spawn many ideas that can be turned into terrific products and services. That's why it's important to learn how to turn negative feedback into positive actions.
