Resolving customer complaints and addressing the initial issue behind those complaints can turn negative feedback into a positive. Listening to negative feedback helps identify areas of opportunity and make improvements that ensure a positive customer experience moving forward.

If you can successfully address customer complaints, your overall customer satisfaction will increase and you’ll improve perceptions of your brand.

How to Share Negative Feedback

There are times when sharing negative customer feedback with staff is crucial to improving the customers’ experience. From time to time, we receive feedback from shoppers who take the CX Survey and call out a specific staff person by name. Frequently, this feedback is positive and a tremendous opportunity to share, praise, and build morale. However, sometimes, the feedback is negative and provides a chance to improve our customer service. Some supervisors might struggle with knowing how to share the feedback, if at all, with the staff person. Unless the feedback is inflammatory or offensive, it is important that it’s shared. 

To start, it’s essential to recognize that the shopper’s experience is valid, even while it is based on their personal interpretation and perceptions. Sharing this feedback with your team, or perhaps just the person called out in the customer comments, is a vital piece of the work that requires the right approach and tone to ensure a positive outcome. 

At the advice of our vendor, SMG, and NCG, negative feedback received through the CX Survey mustn’t automatically translate into disciplinary action or in the review process with your team members. Instead, approach the staff person privately as soon as possible to discuss the feedback received using the following techniques as guidance:

• Be specific about the actions that contributed to this customer being dissatisfied.
• Use coaching techniques to invite the staff person’s perspective on this situation. If needed, ask them to describe a better way to handle the situation that led to the shopper’s dissatisfaction.
• Thank the staff person for their time (assure them that you’ve resolved the concern with the shopper, if applicable), and thank them for helping you explore how you can improve the customer experience together.

Remember, if sharing this feedback with a group, refrain from using the staff person’s name. The goal is not to single a particular staff member, but rather to learn and grow as a team.

Make It a Chance to Learn and Grow

Although these conversations can be difficult, they are also necessary. Acknowledging the customer’s perspective as valid, imagining the situation from their viewpoint, and thinking through how it could be handled differently, creates an opportunity for learning and growth. Receiving feedback can help us be more mindful in our customer interactions and perhaps even learn a new point of view – both of which benefit our team and boosts our customers’ overall shopping experience. 

To read more about ways to resolve customer complaints, check out our other article, Addressing Customer Dissatisfaction Through the CX Survey.

For questions about managing negative customer feedback or to learn more about the CX program, reach out to coop.support@ncg.coop.

Many thanks to Kristy Bowers, NCG Co-op Resource Manager, and Jenn Hileman, Retail Support Operations Manager, for their expertise and contributions to this article.