Hi Brooke,

I wanted to say thank you and ask a question on a model as well.

Thank you for the advice about “clean drinking water” and everything else (good and perceived bad) as being bonus in life. This has been really helpful for me to accept things as they are and be grateful for the opportunity to experience life.

I don’t normally look at online reviews, but today looking myself up for unrelated reasons, chose to look at a negative review that had been posted on a webpage. Long story short, customer was unhappy with customer service provided by me and my office. I don’t think I did anything wrong, and in hindsight there is always room for improvement, but to be honest know I was doing my best and probably wouldn’t change anything except better train staff for the future, to interface with customers so that they are helpful to customers and always creating as positive an experience even when I can’t directly interface. I say this as I recognize I am not perfect and my staff are not perfect and we did the best we knew how at the time. In any case, this knowledge of the review of course led to many negative thoughts, denial of my true feelings, then acceptance of how I felt and resolve to approach this in a way that would serve me.

C: customer wrote a review online
T: people will think I’m horrible at my job, this will kill my reputation, my colleagues won’t want to associate with me, I’ll never be able to get another job, etc.
F: defeated, defensive
A: in next interaction with customer, come off defensively, or very passively, and this will reinforce the idea that something went wrong (which is not fact, just the customer’s or my perception if we let it be)
R: unhappy customer, neither of our problems solved, possibly more negative reviews from customer

C: as above
T: 1. I am human and doing the best I can, 2. There are ways I can better serve my customers
F: 1. Confident, happy, at peace, 2. Compassionate and curious
A: I approach the conversation with the customer from a place of finding out how to help them and address their concern, stay true to my professional duty in my compassionate interaction with the customer
R: I know I did my best to help them, while still remaining compassionate with myself. What happens happens, but perhaps they may even feel compelled to take down the review

Do you have advice on the model?
Any thoughts on how reviews should be addressed with real customers (not anonymous people online)? Should you bring it up directly with the reviewer that you read their comments?

Thank you!