Embrace, don't avoid, negative feedback

So about a month or so ago, I started a new blog to write about my growing interest in food.  It's a fun blog, something for me to do outside of work, and cultivate a hobby.  Overall it is a combination of writing about my cooking experiences, and providing restaurant reviews when I go out to eat.  I don't have a lot of readers yet, but there are a few that have checked it out. 

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to promote my other blog, but to respond to something I found a little disheartening.  A couple weeks ago, I posted about an experience that really wasn't that good.  I was disappointed in the food and the service.  I didn't write a scathing review and say that it was the worst place ever, but just offered my opinion saying that it wasn't one of my favorite places, and I wouldn't recommend it.  It's your typical detractor response; every company has them.  After posting, I included my review on Urbanspoon and Yelp to try and get some more readers and reach a broader audience (this is what bloggers do).  Within the next 24 hours, I received 4 comments to my post, which excited me until I read them.  The first 3 were profanity laced attacks on my review, one of which was signed by the restaurant itself.  Comments like "who gave me the right to give a negative review" and "we don't need a customer like you" shocked me. 

Here's the thing.  I don't expect everyone to agree with me, I'm offering an opinion.  And, I offered my opinion as respectfully and critically as I could.  For someone from the restaurant to respond that way is not only inappropriate, but incredibly poor marketing, and sadly something we see all too much.  No one likes hearing that they didn't do a good job, or receiving negative feedback in general.  But it's this negative feedback that helps you get better and make improvements.  Running and hiding unless you are getting a pat on the back encourages you to simply maintain the status quo and avoid the change that is inevitable. 

I've run into that problem in my work life as well.  I've been trying to encourage social media as one avenue to provide information to our customers.  On many different occasions, I would be stonewalled because "we don't want people to say negative things".  So rather than providing information to potential customers, they would rather hide from customer feedback.  Rather than take the feedback that could help us get better, we are hiding from it and maintaining the status quo.  Rather than listening to people that really care (because if they didn't care they wouldn't take the time to write), we avoid them completely.

I wasn't expecting anything from the restaurant when I wrote that review.  I didn't expect them to read it and say, "We're sorry you had a bad meal, come in again and it's on the house because we want to prove ourselves" (though let's be honest, that's what they should have done, and what I would have done to try and turn a detractor into a promoter).  But, they are wrong if they think they don't need a customer that will tell them when something wasn't good.  Everyone needs customers that care enough to offer their opinion, even if it is just on a blog.