Welcome to the Business Abundance Podcast, providing
the tools and knowledge to help small business
owners succeed. For additional resources, visit
www .businessabundance .online. Hello and welcome
to the Business Abundance Podcast. I am here
joined with Rowan and Ian. Have you guys heard
of Liquid Death? Before we get into that. That
was a very nice intro. I don't think we ever
give you feedback on how nice that sounds every
time. That's a very good word you've used there.
Nice. That's great feedback. Didn't mean to do
that. Liquid death. Tell me about liquid death.
It is a water. They've named it well then. It's
liquid. It is water. I thought we were going
metal band. I thought that sounded like a metal
band to me. I was very excited. They are a water
company and they're known for... Liquid death.
What happens if they freeze their product? They're
no longer liquid. I mean, I don't know, you got
me stumped there. I don't think it's relevant.
You probably want deaths in the name. So, well,
yeah, is liquid important? They are located in
the US, I think. They're not water. They're iced
tea. My bad. Um, but now they're not liquid at
all. They're ice. They're a solid. They're ice
tea. There we go. But they, uh, famous -ish for,
oh my goodness. Murder your thirst. Liquid death.
Don't be scared. It's just water and ice tea.
Murder your thirst. Death to plastic. That's
the, that's the Google search list. Interesting.
Yeah. Sorry. I'm interrupting now. I'm just curious.
That's all right. Yeah. I'm going to crack at
it. That's all right. No, but it's good. They
are well known for their edgy marketing. So they
take on customer feedback quite publicly. They
faced backlash for a marketing A promo, essentially,
where they got all of their haters from online
to blindfold themselves and taste test their
different products against other competitors'
products. And every time that they got that wrong,
they got a shock to the system, essentially.
They also made - Amazing what you can pay people
to do. I hate that product. I'll pay you money
to get zapped, but you don't like it. They made
a jingle. out of all of their hate comments that
they got online as well. So they, yeah, they
gained a massive amount of attention because
it was a very, that they were labelled as a very
self -aware and fun brand. But it's just a good
example that negative comments are not always
the death of your business. Mona. Yeah, very
popular. The billboard campaign at the airports
last year was incredible and it was just negative
reviews. When people say, no, this art gallery
is disgusting and I would never take my children
there. And that's the billboard. One star. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, the result is that this business
is now valued at over $700 million. Wow. So,
um, yeah, they did particularly well, but we're
talking about customer feedback today. Um, because
one negative. US dollars. Yeah. Yeah. One negative
comment will not necessarily mean the ruin of
your business. That doesn't mean that you as
a business owner has to then promote those negative
feedbacks, but it does mean that you can use
it to improve what you're producing or how you
go about your work. Yeah, what I've found is
when you've got your Google business account
up and you open yourself up to Google reviews
while you want those Google reviews because it
shows that you're an active part of the community
and it's good for rapport. As soon as you get
one Google review, I've had a lot of people ask
for me to try and remove it. Unfortunately, that's
not always possible. Can you remove that bad
review so the 10 reviews I gave myself stand
out? I can understand as a business owner, it's
not nice to see. But what we're talking about
here is how you can turn those complaints into
something better for your team. It's also a learning
opportunity. It's a massive opportunity and how
you respond is, is your brand. Yeah. I think
Captain Sandy from below deck says it very well.
She's like, we want your, we want your feedback.
We want your criticism. Cause if you don't tell
us, we can't get better. Yeah. Um, and that's
a much nicer way to look at something that I
don't want to ask for feedback because it might
be bad and I don't want bad feedback because
then they might tell someone else it's bad. Um,
so, but they're going to tell them anyway, like
the rule of thumb is if you have a good experience
with a company, you're going to tell two people.
If you have a bad experience with a company,
you're going to tell 10 people, whether that's
publicly or not, it's happening. You're better
off that you know about it. because he didn't
go, oh wow, yeah, we really stuffed that up.
We dropped the ball on that one. Let's, let's
find a way to get better. And some interesting
stuff with feedback. I was talking about how
do you get feedback? Um, and sometimes we don't
want feedback and that's actually fine. So there's
some things that, you know, like say in our business,
I don't want feedback on it. We're happy with
it. Um, you know, and some people say, oh, you
do this and you do this and do this. And like,
that's all well and good, but it's task is this.
People aren't going to necessarily get that.
So. you know, and feedback from the right places.
We don't need feedback from everyone. All that
bad review on Google we don't need to listen
to because they're like an ideal customer for
us anyway, for example. So I think there's a
few different ways to look. We don't have any
feedback on everything. We do need feedback on
the things we want feedback on. Domino's did
it. They back early in the late 2000s actually.
So not. Not way back when. Way back in the 2000s.
Jesus, got that wrong. They got ridiculed for
their pizza's tasting like cardboard. They do
taste like cardboard. Consistent with the ground.
Well, they had a crack at changing that and they
did the pizza turnaround. campaign. Just checking
the emails now for the slander. It's not slander,
it's personal opinion. But yeah, they did the
pizza turnaround and they tried to increase the
quality and the taste. And they did see a growth
in sales after that. There's a camera above their
pizzas and sent it through to you. So you knew
that that was your pizza. So you experienced
it? Were you a hater? You are a hater. They stopped
using it very quickly. Yeah. No, so it's interesting,
but it does give you an opportunity to change
what you do. And there's a lot of ways that you
can get that customer feedback. It doesn't just
have to be online reviews. I mean, you can watch
your social media and if you're posting and you
get some unhappy comments, that's also a way.
You can get product feedback. So you'll often
buy something and then you'll get the five emails
afterwards. asking for a product review or letting
them know what you think of it. I've had that
with a lot of clothing. The best places to get
feedback in a business like ours is the initial
meeting. Yeah. When you're talking to somebody
and sometimes a business can be so focused on
what they want to sell the person and they're
not actually listening. And then you come away
from the meeting with different goals and then
you send a proposal and they're like, oh, not
really. Sometimes the feedback can be people
aren't buying with you. There's the point to
that long winded story. Yeah. Um, we're talking
a bit of fear about feedback or luck with something
good or something bad. And you can talk in that
case of the feedback of what they actually want.
So just listening to them, but, um, the feedback
in a business is not just getting reviews from
customers or things like that. It's if you've
got a process, do you want feedback on that process?
So was that a good experience? So you might ask
a few people that you like. clients that have
gone through it that you appreciate. So you might
not ask the bad ones or the ones that complain
all the time. Maybe you would because you want
it to be good enough to withstand the customers
depending on your business. But, and you say,
what did you feel about this part of the process
compared to before? So you can be quite direct
with some of the feedback you asked for and quite
particular. And the other thing to think about
when you're asking for feedback is you don't
want to say, Did you think that the way that
we did this was faster than last time? Cause
then they're only going to tell you the feedback
about if it was faster or not. Like try to keep
it open ended. Don't lead them in the direction.
Don't ask them questions towards the answer that
you want. Um, cause otherwise you're not getting
their feedback. You're getting their feedback
on the bit that you want them to talk about.
There's a, there's a local council that is looking
to implement a new speed limit in the CBD. And
they have sent surveys out to people on their
mailing list on asking for feedback on the reduced
speed limit in the CBD. And every question in
the survey is, what do you like about or dislike?
No, it's not even dislikes. What do you like
about dropping the speed limit? Essentially every...
It's leading one way. It's leading you to that
and every bit of feedback. that they have received
in the comments section is, I noticed that your
survey is just telling us that we like this.
What about letting us give you some honest feedback?
And then their social media channel where the
link was posted, all the comments are, hey, no
one wants to drop to 40 kilometres an hour in
the CPD and you're not letting us give you that
feedback. So yeah, feedback from customers as
far as how you're going and then feedback from
particular things or what you might want is ask
surveys, but try to keep them unbiased and open
to actually let people say what they want to
say for you to look into. I think it's quite
important. It's an art form. So let's just say
someone just leading back to online reviews and
giving a bit of an example of how you deal with
it. Let's just say. I received a negative review
saying that... Impossible. I know, I know, hard
to believe. But it was a case that it wasn't
done fast enough and I wasn't picking up the
phone. And so they felt like the customer service
was not adequate and they've left pretty grumpy.
They've put a two -star review on it. What's
the first thing you want to do? Introspection.
Is it true? Yep. That's the first thing I would
do is go, well, yeah, actually, maybe that's
true. Or no, five minutes isn't too long to wait
for. Yeah. Cause I've had customers that have
had negative reviews, but it's actually not from
people that they've dealt with. So it happens.
The trolls are out there. Yeah. It's quite sad.
Don't be the jerk in that situation, especially
on the public forum. Address it. Uh, I used to
do some social media. work in the early 2010s,
way back in the 2010s, and managing comments.
And a lot of people shied away from a negative
comment. And a lot of the times they're just
trolls. Feed the trolls, especially at the time,
because the algorithm wanted lots of comments
on your posts. And every time someone commented,
more people would see the initial post. So if
that person's got a genuine Complaint. Fair enough.
Address it in a genuine way. If they're being
a troll, also address it, but keep the conversation
going. Because if there's one thing trolls want
to do is keep sitting on that keyboard and being
a keyboard warrior. As long as you are taking
the high ground and engaging in a positive way,
most people reading that are going, actually
that person is genuinely just being a jerk to
this brand and they're starting to have a bit
of fun with it or they're keeping the conversation
going. If you're doing it in an entertaining
way, like your liquid death, like your monas,
people actually enjoy a little bit of negativity
bias. Unfortunately, that's the way the brain's
wired. But if you continue to feed that troll,
it's only going to be good for your brand as
much as you can maintain. There's a lot of people
that say that they want their brand to be professional
though. Yeah. So they're going to find that quite
difficult to engage. Professional version would
be. Hello. Thank you for your comment. Appreciate
feedback from our customers. However, we can't
find you in our system. So you might be mistaken.
Thank you very much for your efforts. That would
be a professional response. And if they continue
down that track. But we're only talking about
one side of that then. If someone leaves you
a bad review, we can get back to them and whatever.
And it continually happens. So, okay. Well, no,
I think on my service level is fine. I am getting
back to you within what I said, but we've had
five people complain about it. Well, we probably
need to take that feedback on board and how do
we change how we're interacting? So we don't
necessarily need to get back sooner. We need
to make the part where we're getting back to
you within 24 hours way clearer. or communicated.
Are you over -promising and under -delivering?
Yeah, or are they not seeing it because they're
looking at different parts. So they're not listening
when we're talking about it. So I think sometimes
people are too, oh, they're unreasonable, they're
unreasonable. Well, not necessarily. And if you're
in a business where you're dealing with the general
public, you probably need to err on the side
of, well, we need to actually take on this stupid
feedback and be better. Whereas if you're dealing
with a more niche side of things, you can be
more full. or a smaller segment, for example,
liquid death, that's going to appeal to a certain
type of person. Obviously Ian would love to be
a drinker of that. And they can afford to sort
of ostracize groups and stuff like that because
there's actually, it's feeding the people they
like. So they're a disruption of the status quo
in their field. They're not selling iced tea,
they're selling a bit of an experience in a culture
that goes with it. So they're doing an apple.
Yeah. See, bad feedback in your example is I
think the main thing is to actually respond to
it in whatever way is appropriate. Don't ignore
it. Don't just leave it there, you know. But
how you do that probably just requires a little
bit of common sense. Yeah. And don't be afraid
to, again, look in the mirror. Yeah. Whoops.
Stuff that one up. Yeah. Cause people will respect
that if you take ownership for your mistakes,
it's not your mistakes. It's how you respond.
I have a little checklist that I use and so like,
Oh, do I actually want to listen to this person?
That's first one. Cause if there's no point following
down the checklist, if you don't value their
opinion or you think they're a NimWit, then number
two, number two, do I actually want to change
this? Yes. No. Yep. Am I okay to change this?
Yes. I'm okay to change it. Okay. Well, what's
the feedback? Does this fit in what we want to
do? Yes. Okay. Let's do something about it. If
you go, yes, I'd like to change this process.
I haven't changed the process, but this feedback,
I don't want to implement. That doesn't fit in
with what I want to do. No, fine. Okay. Thanks
for your feedback. Appreciate it. You know, it
is valued. You might give them a call and explain,
hey, this is what we do, why we do it, so they
understand. Or you might just go, it's not a
customer. Yep. Yeah. So a bad review is not the
end of your brand's reputation. Bad feedback
is not the end. It's actually an opportunity.
But yeah, make sure that you don't ignore it
and you do do something about it and you should
be on the way to a bit of business improvement.
But we'll leave that there. Speaking of feedback,
if you do have feedback, there is a comment section
below your podcast episode. So leave us some
and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye.