Just spotted this wonderful little bit from Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, Inc.:
Your biggest critics are often your best source of advice. In fact, I always tell folks that your critics are basically giving you high-priced consulting for free. You should be thankful for their effort in helping make you a better person/company/service/etc.
One thing that’s great about the blogosphere is that there’s virtually no turnaround time between an event and the response. Organizations should be searching blogs like mad for this kind of precious data, cataloging the numbers for study, and engaging directly (as in high-level people responsible for execution) with the critics. Not to win arguments or score points or anything like that, but to listen and ask probing, open-ended questions. This is better than any focus group could ever be (you’re still using focus groups? Please…).
Read Jason’s post: it’s like a mini-lesson in how to deal 2.0.
