If you are going to ask your customers for feedback on your business, you need to be able to review the information objectively, openly and most importantly be willing to act on it.
I have worked on a number of market research campaigns for businesses that wanted to gauge their customers' perceptions of their business. The results that came back were less than complimentary and, in some cases, downright terrible. When I reported on the findings, the business owner found every excuse in the world to justify the poor levels of service. Statements like "Our customers are too demanding" or "We are too busy to pander to every customer's needs" and, one of my favorites, "If they don't like our service they should go somewhere else". Generally, they do.
Very often businesses embark on the road to improving their level of customer service only to find it too confronting. They take negative customer feedback as a personal insult instead of a perfect opportunity to rectify problems that they may not have known existed. One way to avoid this is to have a plan in place that outlines what will be done with information collected. This can prepare the business for the possibility of negative feedback, but rather than giving up in despair they will make changes according to the plan and work towards the desired outcome.
Often customers will want to know how the information they provide will be used. From my own experience, letting customers know that their responses will be used to improved the level of service encourages them to participate and makes them feel good because their opinions are considered important (which of course they are).
Every time someone gives you feedback that is less than positive, stop and think about how this individual is helping your business. Thank them for their honesty. Take their advice on board. If you have difficulty doing this because your are too close to the situation, get help from someone who can step in and resolve any customer satisfaction issues that your business may have.
I spend a lot of time going into businesses looking for ways to improved their over-all level of customer service. When I meet proactive business owners and managers who are open to and very accepting of customer feedback, I always breathe a long sigh of relief. These people are smart and I know that their business will benefit enormously from their customers' feedback. Their willingness to take this feedback seriously and to act on it to improve the level of service they offer is a one-way ticket to profitability and complete customer satisfaction.