Who Are Your Critics?

There are manyapproaches to handle the critics – mostly people who don’t like your work. Oneway is to ignore them and do the work that matters to you. Keep improving andtake feedback only from a select people whom you trust.

This way, you can keepyour peace of mind. Because most critics are just signaling that they aren’tyour customers. And that’s okay.

You don’t have toconsider them, pay attention or change your way of working for them. You doyour best work possible.

But there is anotherway too. One which involves the hard work of finding the critics who aregenuine and want you to do the change because they are your customers.

You show thetestimonials where you showcase the customers who are loving your service orproduct. They are singing praises and recommending it like crazy. But it willhelp you if you showcased the concerns and how are you improving them fromgenuine customers.

Also, you canhighlight the type of people who don’t like your art and showcase them as notyour customer.

So when someone landson your landing page or location, they can decide if they fall in the categoryof your customers, genuine critics or not an ideal customer.

The advise here isn’tto go and read all your one-star reviews. Just keep an eye on a common theme.If you are getting a lot of complaints regarding the same thing, it isworthwhile to investigate. Is your product lacking in something, or are youtargeting the wrong type of customers?

Here are some of the thingsto keep an eye for and know your critics in a better way:

• Do they have complaints about the same thing

• Are the feedback detailed without any curse words – why they have put so much effort

• Is your retention of customers low, try checking if your product-customer fit is correct

• Are complaints being marked to the wrong department often, how well are you communicating your customer service

• The disappointment emails are in huge numbers, are you setting the correct expectations

• Is the refund rate high, try checking your policies and the reason behind it

• Everything seems fine, but you are not scaling. Did you intend it or is something became stagnant, investigate

• Are you resolving the issue and still customers leave, what is your response timeline. Try to minimize it and make it more effective

• Your new customers’ rate is high but so is going of old customers. It’s a downhill battle, try retaining the current customers

• Can you be reached via a single email or by multiple hoops, why are things like this and can it be better

Most of the criticsare not worth your time. But if things are failing, then it is worthwhile tocheck who your critics are, find the genuine ones and work to make betterthings.