Guest post by Marcel Oudejans.

It’s in our nature to become defensive when we’re criticized – who likes to be told that their work is not up to standard or that they have not met someone’s expectations? In business however, it would be a mistake to take a customer complaint personally: for the most part, that customer is not necessarily placing blame on an individual. But the fear of receiving any criticism can prevent us from realizing the advantages that good, constructive evaluation can give your business.

You’ll agree that becoming complacent about the way we serve our customers is not difficult: an avoidable delay here, a broken promise there, and suddenly your customer says you’re not meeting her expectations. It’s easy to become so focused on other matters of business that we forget to provide great service. Yet, as many leading business gurus have repeated in the past, providing excellent customer service should always be a top priority.

That’s why getting honest feedback from your customers is so important; feedback gives a benchmark from which to improve. Sure, it would be wonderful if we always got positive feedback, but that’s unrealistic. Constructive criticism or a customer complaint should be considered a symptom of a much bigger issue, and give you the opportunity to resolve the problem, particularly if you did not know it existed! Regularly sending evaluation forms to your all your customers, or subscribing to the services of a complaint driver like getclosure!, can give you an early warning and the chance to fix a problem which could impact on your businesses bottom line if left unresolved.

Yes, it’s not easy to be faced with a customer complaint, but avoiding the situation because you’re afraid of taking the complaint personally will eventually impact you directly: negative word of mouth alone could drive away new and existing customers. Rather, see a customer complaint as an opportunity to learn, adjust, repair, improve and prevent that problem from occurring again. One customer complaint is worth more than the praise from ten ‘happy’ customers.

Finally, remember that while you may fear receiving criticism, most people need a lot of courage or need to be really upset to lay a complaint. That customer may fear your reaction so much that they take the easier option: they take their business elsewhere. You can be certain that if one customer complains that many more have experienced the same frustration and disappointment and have quietly taken their business elsewhere. So perhaps it’s time to look at a complaint for what it can do for you and your company: a complaint is the gift of opportunity.

Marcel Oudejans is a Corporate Infotainer who is passionate about inspiring his audiences to deliver more “magic moments” to their customers in their customer service, sales & marketing. Marcel is the author of “The Serious Business Owner’s Guide To Creating Customers For Life” & provides more tricks, techniques & strategies on his blog, http://www.performmarketing.co.za