ROI: The Blog

Contributors:

DW: Dave WillmanJG: Jean GoodwynKP: Keith ParnellWT: Walt TaylorSA: Steve AlmbergCH: Cristen Hayes
Stratum - www.stratum.net
 

« WE'VE DONE OUR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING... | Main | Six degrees of Stratum. »

Transparency Redux

Recently, a colleague of mine revealed that while they do allow customer feedback on their website, a member of their web team frequently goes in and deletes any negative feedback. In fact, I found this out because they were asking me if there's anyway they can make the person who posted the comment see it, and not let anyone else see it.

OMG! (that's "oh my god," for all you old-school types)
Why would anyone do this?

Well, just in case you're thinking about doing the same thing, I have an alternative point of view to offer: transparency is good.

We — your customers — KNOW that sometimes things don't go smoothly. We know that sometimes people are disappointed. If we see only good feedback on your website, we pass it over. We know you've screened it, and so it has no meaning.

We'd much rather see both positive and negative comments. When we see that, we feel like we're reading the truth, and not just your company's polished message packaged another way. We feel like your customer feedback is credible - and we feel like you're credible, because you don't try to conceal it.

But it doesn't stop there.
We'd love to see you respond to negative feedback - to show us that when we are not satisfied, you will listen. Better still, we'd love to see that you will take steps to make it up to us, because you want us to be happy with you.

So the next time you're thinking about sweeping the complaints under the rug, think again. Turn your negative feedback into great PR; you might even make the complainers happy enough that they'll become your brand evangelists.

Transparency Redux posted by JG on January 4, 2008 @ 5:28 PM
Filed under: The web in general

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.returnoninter.net/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/78

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, we may need approve your comment and make sure it isn't SPAM. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)