Kristen Doyle 0:01
Have you ever felt that pang of anxiety in your chest when you see a new notification pop up about customer feedback, whether it’s a review in your store or a comment on social media or a reply to their receipt email? That moment of uncertainty can be nerve wracking for all of us, but it’s something that every single online entrepreneur has to learn to deal with.
Kristen Doyle 0:26
I mean, do you really even own a business if you haven’t ever thought, oh crap, a review, what if they’re mad? Well, today we’re talking about it. The good, the bad and the sometimes downright confusing, customer feedback. Just like any other part of your business, feedback can put us on a whole roller coaster of emotions, but it’s an important part of growing your business.
Kristen Doyle 0:52
So today, we’re going to talk about how to handle it without losing your mind, from accepting that negative feedback is a normal part of business to strategies for handling it in a healthy way, and even how to turn that cranky review into something valuable for your business. So put your big girl pants on or guy, and let’s talk about dealing with customer feedback.
Kristen Doyle 1:16
Are you a digital product or course creator, selling on platforms like teachers pay teachers, Etsy or your own website? Ready to grow your business, but not into the kind of constant hustle that leads straight to burnout? Then you’re in the right place.
Kristen Doyle 1:32
Welcome to The Savvy Seller. I’m Kristen Doyle, and I’m here to give you no fluff, tools and strategies that move the needle for your business without burning you out in the process. Things like SEO, no stress marketing, email list building, automation, and so much more. Let’s get started y’all.
Kristen Doyle 1:57
First off, let’s get real about feedback and how it actually works in the online business world. I want to share three mindset shifts that totally changed how I look at reviews, and they might help you, too. The first mindset shift is that negative feedback is totally normal, and you really should just come to expect it in your business. Average ratings on Amazon range between 3.4 and 4.2 stars, and that’s out of five.
Kristen Doyle 2:24
Etsy recently changed their star seller criteria from getting 95% five star ratings to 95% 4.8 or higher. Both of those tell you that we really just should not expect perfection. In fact, customers are actually naturally suspicious of products with only perfect reviews, because they will assume that you’re either deleting all the negative ones, even if your platform doesn’t allow that, or they’ll assume maybe you’ve hired people to write perfect reviews for you.
Kristen Doyle 2:59
The truth is, even the most successful sellers get negative feedback, and it is just part of business. So shift your mindset around that from I don’t ever want negative feedback to this is just part of being a business owner. Mindset shift number two is that perfection is actually an enemy of growth in a lot of ways.
Kristen Doyle 3:25
First of all, putting that pressure on yourself to expect perfect reviews creates a ton of unnecessary stress, and it can actually even cause you to miss out on sales from what would be happy customers, because you are maybe hesitating to post a product because you’re not sure it’s going to get great reviews yet, or because you’ve pulled a product down because it got a negative review and now no one can buy it.
Kristen Doyle 3:51
Like I said earlier, imperfection in your product reviews actually can make your business seem more trustworthy and make you more relatable. The reality is, your product is not right for everyone, and that is absolutely okay. One or two negative reviews here and there are not going to make the majority of people not buy your product. In my own store, my very best selling product of all time has almost 13,000 reviews right now, and it still to this day, gets a couple of one or two star reviews every single year.
Kristen Doyle 4:30
Now most of those are buyer issues, and I have done everything I can to solve them, from editing the product to creating multiple versions for different software to creating video tutorials, but it still happens. I just get a couple of negative reviews here and there every single year from this product. Which leads me to mindset shift number three, you have to learn to separate your personal worth from product feedback. I know it is super easy to take feedback personally, especially when we have poured ourselves into the products we create. They feel like a part of us in a lot of ways.
Kristen Doyle 5:11
But it is really important when you’re looking at feedback to distance yourself from that product feedback emotionally and know that that person’s feedback on your product doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with how they feel about you. It doesn’t define your product’s value because other people feel completely differently from them, and it certainly doesn’t define your value as a person.
Kristen Doyle 5:38
Feedback is subjective. Everyone has different opinions, different things that they were expecting to see or they were hoping to see when they got your product, and it’s also dependent on the context that they’re in. Maybe it just didn’t work for them because of something super specific that you never would have been able to address. So try to make sure to separate yourself from the product feedback that you’re getting.
Kristen Doyle 6:03
All right. So those are some mindset shifts I want you to try and adopt. Now let’s talk about some of the actual day to day stuff you can do to keep that feedback from ruining your whole day or your week. The first strategy is to take control of how and when you receive feedback. Right now, pause this podcast if you need to go to your apps for wherever you sell and turn off real time notifications for feedback. The truth is you do not need to be available. 24/7 and you shouldn’t be available 24/7.
Kristen Doyle 6:40
When feedback is rolling in constantly, it will grab your attention, take you off track from whatever else you were doing, whether it was product creation or marketing for your business, or maybe you were just trying to step away from your business and do something personal. That feedback alert on your phone is going to grab Your attention and take you off track. And if it’s great feedback, then yay. But if it happens not to be, it’ll derail you for the entire day sometimes.
Kristen Doyle 7:09
So go in your apps, turn off the real time notifications for feedback, and then schedule in specific times in your week to go in and review feedback. Once a week really should be more than enough. This kind of takes on a format of batching where you spend one batch of time every week or every month to go in look at your feedback and deal with anything that needs to. This helps you to still be able to serve any customers who need help but protect your mental space and your peace throughout the rest of the week.
Kristen Doyle 7:44
I would really recommend you create some strict boundaries around when you do your feedback review. Don’t do it on the weekend. Don’t do it right before bed. Definitely don’t do it right before you’re ready to get into product creation mode and you need to be feeling confident and good about things, because you just never know what you’re gonna find. So schedule some time for it that you know you’ll have something good to do after it, to pull you out of a slump, just in case you get negative feedback.
Kristen Doyle 8:13
Reviewing feedback is actually also one of the first things that I would suggest you hand off to a VA if you have one, or you’re ready to hire one. My VA goes in and reads all of my feedback once a week. She sends me any really great ones, so I get those feel good moments, but she also lets me know if there are any issues that I actually need to address. But I never have to see those baseless complaints or the issues that she can solve for me because she takes care of that stuff without me having to see it. It really helps keep me focused on the things I need to be doing in my business and not worried about people who just didn’t like my product.
Kristen Doyle 8:54
The second strategy is you need to give yourself a support system, especially for when you get difficult feedback. Pick a business friend or a mastermind where you can trust these people and you can vent about difficult feedback that you’re getting in a safe place so that you can get it off your chest and then move on. Sometimes you might even vent to someone who doesn’t understand your business at all.
Kristen Doyle 9:21
In fact, one of my closest real life friends doesn’t do anything related to online business, but she’s a close friend. We go on walks a lot, and I have vented to her about feedback more times than I can even count. In fact, we are still to this day every now and then referring back to a customer who bought a downloadable PDF product from me and left feedback that they were really upset that this product didn’t come laminated.
Kristen Doyle 9:52
Now I was annoyed because I got a one star review for something that’s not remotely my fault, not even a possibility. Yeah. Right? I can’t make your digital download become laminated for you. I don’t live at your house, but when I shared this story and my frustration with her, she immediately came back with, what do they want you to do? Make it come laminated out of their printer? Send them a self laminating printer? What are you supposed to do about that? And we had a good laugh about it, and we’re kind of still laughing about it now.
Kristen Doyle 10:22
So sometimes getting perspective from someone else who is totally outside the situation can really help you see a little humor in some of those negative reviews that you might get, and it can help you just to deal with that frustration. So share both the frustrations and the celebrations with someone around you.
Kristen Doyle 10:42
The third strategy is to have a plan in place. As a teacher, I was encouraged by a mentor to start creating what she called a smile file. If you’re a teacher, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s where you take those little notes that students or their parents write you, and you put them in a box or a binder or something, so that you can pull them out on the really hard days and remember that you’re making a difference and you’re doing good things. And yes, people do like me!
Kristen Doyle 11:09
So I would create a smile file of those positive comments you get from buyers and the really good testimonials. Screenshot them, drop them into a folder on your computer. And hey, maybe before you review your new feedback on your batching day, open that up, look at a couple of good ones, and remind yourself that people are really happy with your products overall, and that whatever comes up in negative feedback today, most people really like your stuff.
Kristen Doyle 11:38
The other piece of my plan for dealing with feedback is I have a list in my notion base database dashboard. I’m not even sure what we call them in notion I have too many apps, you guys. I have a list in notion of to do’s and notes. It’s just one spot where I jot down quick things that I want to do, and one of the tabs in there is called my one day list.
Kristen Doyle 12:03
And so as you’re looking at feedback, and you’re seeing things that maybe you can do to improve something, I’m not talking about those urgent fixes where there’s typos or something’s pages are missing or something like that, but those one day ideas, jot those down in a one day list somewhere, like I do in notion.
Kristen Doyle 12:21
Alright, the fourth strategy, and this one is probably the most important one, is to make sure that you are paying attention and recognizing when the feedback is not about you. Keep in mind that we have lots of factors that affect how we feel about the products that we buy, and your buyers are the exact same way. Sometimes feedback clearly reflects their problem, not yours.
Kristen Doyle 12:45
In fact, I have gotten feedback that was five star feedback that says, This is really great. I love it. I hope I can use it next year. But it totally did not work for this year’s students. See, that’s an example of a time when the customer really loved my product, it just didn’t work for her class right then. And things like that can happen. Honestly, getting a five star review that looks like that is pretty rare. Most of the time you’re gonna get knocked off some stars because they weren’t able to use the product.
Kristen Doyle 13:16
But I share that five star one to remind you that people can be truly happy with your product, and it still doesn’t quite work for their situation right now. So make sure that you’re paying attention to those sorts of keywords and phrases in those reviews that let you know that this is really about them, not about me. At the same time, some feedback is constructive. Some is not constructive.
Kristen Doyle 13:38
I’ve gotten feedback that said really just didn’t like it. Well, okay, what am I supposed to do with that? Right? There’s not much I can do to make a product better or to get any useful information, if that’s all they say. But when the feedback has anything constructive, pay attention to that so that you can use it. And we’ll talk about how in just a minute.
Kristen Doyle 13:59
All right, so those are some strategies for handling the feedback internally in your mind. But what about actually responding to these people? Do you reply or not? What do you say? Let’s talk about how to respond without making things worse, or without spending your whole entire day mentally drafting that perfect reply.
Kristen Doyle 14:18
First of all, some feedback does not need a response. That person who just said, I just didn’t like it, they don’t need a reply. What are you going to say to them anyway? Every negative feedback does not have to have a response. People are smart enough to look at feedback and know when someone said something that doesn’t need a response. When it comes to negative feedback that does deserve a response. I would say feedback that deserves a response is when they identify a problem because you want the next person reading your feedback to see that you solved this problem or that you pointed them to a resource to help solve their problem.
Kristen Doyle 14:58
Likewise, when it comes to positive feedback, very early, very new products, you might want to respond a little bit, but there’s typically no need to reply thank you to every single review that you get, because most of the time, the person who left the review doesn’t get notified anyway, and all that does is push those reviews down the page so that people are seeing a whole lot of you saying thank you, and not a whole lot of buyers who are happy with your products.
Kristen Doyle 15:23
So I typically don’t respond to positive feedback unless it’s really exceptional, and I have something special I want to say something beyond just saying thank you. For negative feedback, I respond anytime that there’s something for me to answer. If there’s not, then I don’t respond. Sometimes no response is the best response, because when you reply, that review now gets longer on the page, because now it’s the review plus your reply, and that draws more attention to it.
Kristen Doyle 15:52
So if there’s nothing positive you can say, maybe no response is a better response. In that case, ultimately, responding to feedback is about how the person viewing your product, deciding to purchase it or not, is going to see that feedback, not about replying to the person who has the problem. Now, when it comes to replying, keep that fact in mind and create your responses focused on how a future customer is going to see it, because, like I said, most of those replies are actually going to be seen by future customers, not the original person who left the review anyway.
Kristen Doyle 16:26
So think about how you can solve their problem with something like a sandwich method, where the first thing you say is nice and then you give an answer, and then you close with something nice again. Keep it factual. Keep it solution oriented. Don’t show a bunch of emotion. Don’t tell them how disappointed and upset you are that they were upset with you. Because, like I said, it’s all about how a future customer will see this.
Kristen Doyle 16:53
Think about starting that response with a thank you so much for pointing out this issue, and then move into how you have solved it, or how you’re going to solve it, or how they can solve it if it’s really a problem on their end, and then close with I hope this helps. Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions, something like that. So you’re starting and ending your feedback on a very positive note.
Kristen Doyle 17:19
Now, one big tip for you when it comes to those responses, that feedback that causes your emotions to run really high, is I would really recommend that you read it and wait 24 hours before you respond. Another thing you can do is you can pull out your favorite AI tool, and you can tell it what you really think. Tell chatGPT or Claude what you really want to say, and ask it to help you be nice. Because AI tools, as frustrating as they can be in some parts of our lives, they are really helpful for helping us rewrite something and make it more polite than we would make it on our own.
Kristen Doyle 18:00
And if you’re not sure that the reply you’ve written is a good one, you can always do what I did when I was teaching and send that email you want to send to the parent, to a friend, to another entrepreneur, to your spouse, whoever, to look over it and make sure that it really does sound polite and professional and positive. Keep in mind that your response to their feedback says a whole lot more about you than their feedback says about them, at least in the eyes of a potential buyer.
Kristen Doyle 18:32
Now, when it comes to addressing feedback, I know sometimes we can spend a lot of our time rehashing the feedback, thinking about how to respond, just digging into it over and over, going back and forth. Feedback really should not consume your work day. It is not the most productive use of your time, so when you get ready to address feedback in those little batching blocks of time, give yourself a time limit.
Kristen Doyle 18:59
And I would recommend a two touch rule, don’t go back and forth on what you’re going to say more than twice. Look at it, write something, maybe pause, send it to someone, whatever. Revisit it that one time, edit and send it and be done.
Kristen Doyle 19:15
All right, so that is how to deal with feedback when it comes in. But there is a silver lining even to negative feedback, so we can actually use all of our feedback to make our business and our products even better. And that’s the whole point, right, to have better products so that you get more of the great feedback and less of the bad ones. So when it comes to turning feedback into a good business asset, the biggest thing to do is to look for valuable insights whether the feedback was positive or negative.
Kristen Doyle 19:48
I would be looking for patterns in feedback. So do you keep hearing the same thing over and over, whether it’s positive or negative? One example in my own business, back to that same product. I told you about my best seller with all the reviews, there was a little face where I was getting a lot of negative feedback on it, and there was a pattern in what the negative feedback said. It was all very similar.
Kristen Doyle 20:11
So I took that as an opportunity. Instead of just saying, well, that’s your problem, I took that as an opportunity to find a way to make this product better and easier for more people to use, and that has reduced the amount of negative feedback I’m getting. Is it all gone? No, of course, not, like I said, it’s gonna happen, but I am down to very minimal negative feedback now because I’ve improved the product. So look for patterns in what you’re doing well that you can apply to other products, but also look for patterns in what people complain about so that you can find something to fix.
Kristen Doyle 20:45
And it might be that the feedback actually helps you to identify a gap in your product lines. Maybe it’s something you should add to this product, but maybe it’s an opportunity to create something new. There’s also a difference between one off issues and things that are happening over and over. So that is where really looking at those patterns comes in. Because if you’re seeing something over and over, chances are it’s something you need to address.
Kristen Doyle 21:10
When it comes to the positive feedback that you’re getting. Make sure that you’re showing it off in some strategic places. Show positive testimonials on your website homepage, on sales pages, add them into your product listings, if you can use screenshots instead of typing it out. But even typing it out will be helpful for people who maybe don’t scroll far enough to see the testimonials, or you have some really great older testimonials that they may never make it to if they’re just looking at what’s displayed on your page.
Kristen Doyle 21:43
You can also create carousels of testimonials to post on your social media, share them in emails about your products, so make sure that you are taking that positive feedback and using it to grow your business.
Kristen Doyle 21:58
All right, I know this might seem like a lot, but you really don’t have to do everything all at once. Let me give you three super simple things that you can actually do this week to start getting a handle on the feedback situation. Number one, review your notification settings. Check all the platforms where you get feedback and adjust your settings so that you are not being notified in real time about every single feedback that you get.
Kristen Doyle 22:23
Maybe there is a way to batch your notifications or to have it only send them at certain times, or you can just turn it off completely. When it comes to those emails that you get about customer feedback, you can either create an automation to send them all to a certain folder in your email so that you can just review them all at one time when you’re ready, or you can turn those notifications off in your sales platforms as well.
Kristen Doyle 22:49
Number two is to set up a system and a plan. So create that smile file with some of your best reviews. Start a one day list in whatever tool you’re using to manage all of your tasks – Notion, Trello, ClickUp, whatever you like, and go ahead and draft out some templated responses for common feedback that you get. Check and see if your platform allows you to save those replies. I know Teachers Pay Teachers is allowing that now you can even save replies in Instagram DMs so that you don’t have to rewrite things over and over.
Kristen Doyle 23:22
And then your third action step for today is to pick one piece of feedback from something recent that you’ve gotten that you’re actually going to implement. Pick something small, a tiny improvement you can make this week to make one of your products better, and then let your customers know that you’ve improved your product.
Kristen Doyle 23:39
All right, that’s it for today. I hope that this episode has given you a new perspective on even the negative feedback, so that you’re starting to see it as something you can use to help make your business better, and that you’ve learned some strategies for how to deal with it mentally and emotionally as well.
Kristen Doyle 23:56
And you know what? I bet you have another friend who struggles with feedback too. We all do, so screenshot this episode and share it with them. Sometimes, just knowing we’re not alone can make a huge difference. Tag me if you share it on social @kristendoyle.co and let me know what action step you’re taking this week. Talk to you soon!
