Servants of surveys
The first time it happened was after I dropped my first smartphone into a small body of water (ahem!) and had to buy a replacement. The nice fellow at the store had a little acrylic stand with the key survey questions written on it. He reviewed the questions carefully with me.
The next time was buying our car. Our helpful salesperson told us she wanted to get 10 out of 10 on the feedback survey, and also helpfully reviewed the questions we could expect to see. Was there any reason, she asked, that we would not give her a 10?
This scenario used to be remarkable, but has become a more frequent event, whether it's coffee or hotel bookings. The dealership's service department is also in on it, providing helpful tips on giving them a high rating. These are not any old organizations either -- these are all big time brands; big enough to have linked their performance ratings and bonuses into the survey tracking. In every case, the staff person has taken the time to review the importance of giving them a very high rating.
"You know it needs to be all 10, right?"
These ubiquitous experience surveys are clearly creating a degree of focus on delivering the desired service standard, but I suspect the information itself is no longer rooted in what customers actually experience.
And sometimes it IS just socks, as my spouse recently complained to me, after buying some socks. "It's not an experience, it's just socks. I can't answer these questions."
It's one number, not "the one number"
Sometimes we have to take a flinty-eyed look at our numbers and see them for what they really are: a metric, not a fast track to essential truth. It's a bit like taking your Twitter subscriber numbers too seriously. I've got something like 1100 followers on Twitter. I would guess that maybe 20 people actually see anything I tweet. If it was as high as 50, I'd be surprised. I subscribe to some 400+ feeds, but rarely scan more than a handful of posts WHEN I open my reader.
I know these service metrics aren't going anywhere, but neither are they going to help you make a big impact in the marketplace. To do that, I firmly believe we must go much deeper than rolling feedback studies. Even if your feedback has not been compromised by employees gaming the system, they won't give you your next big idea, or get you closer to your customer journey.
Fortunately, there are many ways to get behind that 8 out of 10 and peel back some insights. And qualitative methods have proven themselves over and over for their power to inspire game-changing innovation.
October, 2015
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