Why Negative Feedback In Your Spiritual Business Can Be Extremely Healthy. Why we should never be scared of negative feedback in our holistic or spiritual business.
Why Negative Feedback Can Be Important
This week I was asked to review a product I was supposed to get from an amazing project that supplies organic food. The service is excellent and they go up and beyond what they need to do for their customers.
I am happy to support this project when I can even though they are still small and can’t always supply everything I need for my very specific dietary requirements. But a week or so ago, there was a small issue with the order. It wasn’t a big deal something had been missing but it wasn’t a big deal so I didn’t report it.
But the company had sent a review request for the product I didn’t receive, so I decided to let them know. And the reply was “we really value and encourage everyone’s feedback, and negative feedback is actually more valuable to us as it highlights issues we need to address”.
This is such an important aspect of running a business. It helps us identify issues we don’t always consider or see, it can help us improve our products and services. It can be easy to assume our clients are 100% happy but if we don’t ask we don’t know. Every business has to learn through mistakes and improvements, and break through perceived illusions of success.
Dealing With Positive And Negative Feedback As A Spiritual Business
If you are a spiritual solopreneur, you may dread the thought of negative feedback especially if you are in many ways the product or service. But negative feedback is just as important as positive feed back as it helps us grow. It is a necessary and very important element about running any business.
It is important to listen to our clients and customers and to consider what could be improved on without taking things too personally. It also can help us identify who is and who is not our ideal clients or soul clients. And where we may need to be clearer on what our product or service does and what it doesn’t.
One common example in the holistic and spiritual sector is where we suggest our product or service can help with everything, but what does that mean 1/% , 10%, 100% improvement, short-term, long-term, temporary, or permanent, there can be huge differences in what we are selling and what we may be implying.
Now that doesn’t mean that you have to agree with everything a customer believes or says. We all can get the unreasonable client or customer who is demanding or manipulative or those with unreasonable or unrealistic expectations.
Feedback From The Clients Or Customers That Matter
That is why it is important to focus on the feedback of your ideal clients and customers that matter and look at the other feedback objectively to see if your marketing isn’t being clear or transparent enough.
remember a new holistic business owner got to beta test one of my business and marketing courses for free. A very specialised in depth course that most business coaches would charge at the very least a few hundred pounds for. She commented on how she felt my course which was l was charging less than £50 for should be free or cost less.
Why No Feedback Doesn’t Automatically Equate To Client Satisfaction
A business coach I know, told me about a situation where a therapist couple who were struggling in their holistic business had tod he they knew all their customers were very happy with their service because they didn’t come back. She asked them if this was the reason their clients told them they hadn’t came back and they said NO we just assumed they didn’t come back because we helped them so much in one session.
Now as she explained the only way they would ever know why their clients didn’t come back was if they asked their clients for 100% honest feedback. And how important it was to never assume anything about your products or services.
A very important lesson on how important it is to get feedback a more accurate view of your products and services especially in the first few years of your business.
Why Most Clients And Customers Don’t Complain Or Give Feedback
I know from my own personal experience I spent years buying products and services that under delivered on their promises where I just never went back. I also used many services over a long period of time when the therapist convinced me that it would take time, to see results.
The issue was most never asked for feedback and I often liked the therapist or healer and felt uncomfortable about telling them the truth because they never asked and being a bit of a people pleaser I didn’t want to offend them.
Just because we have found a therapy, a product or service in our own journey that we found helpful, can make it easy to assume that our client’s and customers’ have similar experiences. That is why one of the things I teach my own therapist students is to never assume anything about a client or customer.
It is important to ask and find out, so you know for sure what your best products and services are, and who is and who is not your ideal client or customer.
How To Get Client And Customer Feedback
One of the things I did for years as a contractor was put out regular customer satisfaction questions asking for feedback on my work or the work of any of the therapists who were contracted by me.
Some of the questionnaires were for the service users and the people or organisations who hired me. The questions were very specific feedback on things like the quality of the sessions, the professionalism of the trainer or therapist, and any suggestions for improvements or other classes, or services they would be interested in. This was invaluable in my business, thankfully we always got great feedback and any suggestions just helped us see what we needed to do more of.
Like everyone at the beginning of my career, the last thing I wanted was any sort of negative feedback. But I learned how quickly this could be valuable in so many ways. Some of it toughened me up, grow up and some of it helped me recognise who was not my ideal clients.
One example was when I went into taking a meditation class a bit stressed because of a whole series of events including my car breaking down which caused me to be late. One client and student rightly so pointed out how it was more important for me to be late and more relaxed than on time and extremely stressed. She highlighted how important it was for me to walk my talk and ouch how right she was. This was negative feedback that was extremely helpful in my own growth. I am extremely grateful for this woman.
There Is Always Room For Improvement In Any Business
When running a spiritual business we have to have a certain level of maturity and be able to keep our ego in check which of course being a human is not always easy.
It is important to look at negative feedback as a great opportunity for spiritual growth and of course an opportunity for healthier business growth.
It is one of the reasons I suggest business owners ask for product feedback when they are beta-testing a product than just a product or service review or testimonial.
Because when you ask someone to try out your product or service you should want that person to be completely honest and transparent.
Just asking for a testimonial often feeds the ego more than actually really getting any accurate feedback on that person’s true opinion of your product or service.
Of course you need both but especially in the early stages of your business or the pre-launch of new products and services it is important to get honest feedback.
A healthy business requires honest feedback so it can improve its products and services. And help us build a business around our business’s strengths than weaknesses. Don’t be scared about sending out a product or service feedback review, especially on new products and services. It can help you find out if your product or service reached the client or customer’s expectations, identify things you didn’t consider.
It can also be a very natural way to get great feedback that you can then ask if you can use as a client or customer testimonial or review.
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