If you’re on the internet you’ve had negative comments.  It’s part of the internet culture, for better or worse.  We looked at responding to negative comments in a previous post.  But are there benefits to negative comments?  Could your brand be improved by receiving negative comments?

Surprisingly yes.

Negative comments give you two benefits.

1.  Negative comments let you address legitimate problems.  Let’s face it we aren’t perfect.  We make mistakes.  Release defective products.  And don’t always have the best customer service.  If you bring your meaning to your work, then you care about quality and service.  Wouldn’t you rather address the problem and have a chance at turning an unhappy customer into a satisfied customer?  Negative comments give us this chance.

2.  Negative comments help set customer expectations.  What?!  How is talking about the bad things good?!  Well let me go back to our old friend the “realistic job preview.”  People are more satisfied if their experience matches their expectations.  If there are some legitimate, but negative comments, then you know what you’re getting into.  Overly positive comments smell like fake reviews.  No comments at all suggest no one uses your product.  Ironically having a few negative comments makes people feel more comfortable with what they are buying.  That is, of course, assuming that negative comment isn’t a deal breaker.

Allowing feedback is a great way to grow your brand.  And as you can see, there are benefits even to negative feedback.  When I bought my car I did a lot of research on the internet.  I read just about every customer review I could find.  Especially the negative comments.  I wanted to know what might be wrong with my car in the future.  The two biggest issues were the road noise from the tires and not being able to see the “corners” of the car.  I decided that those weren’t enough to stop me from buying my car.  So when I bought my car I found out that my two biggest complaints were the road noise and not being able to see the corners.

My expectations had been set, and I knew what I was getting into.  I had already decided I could live with that.  So instead of buying a car for $20,000 and being upset that it wasn’t quiet, I was prepared, and the road noise didn’t even faze me.  8 years later I love my car, and couldn’t be happier.

I owe that to the realistic expectations I developed and negative comments.  What do you owe to negative comments?

image provided by wikimedia