Customer Surveys - "Give me a 10"

[DottyG]

There's a discussion in the "Never Shopping There Again" thread about customer surveys and being asked to rate the store/server/whatever with the highest rating.  Many times, it appears, this is done per company policy, and if a score less than the highest is given, there are repercussions.
 
Although it does seem that this discussion fits that thread, there was a request to move it to a spin-off.  Since it's an interesting topic, in my opinion, I thought I'd start one.  I'm interested in hearing more from those who know more about this from the "inside view" of it.
 
 

[Amara]

Not from the inside but I won't fill them out. Albertson's, a grocery chain, gives them to you with your receipt. They have the cashier's number on it and you are supposed to go online and rate the interaction. They try to tempt you with the chance to win a $100 gift card.

I still won't do it. I hate companies that spend so much time and money to check up on their employees. Just pay them well, treat them well, and the customers will benefit. Why is that so hard for management to understand?! (I sometimes wish I could rate the management on the number of stupid ideas they institute. I would definitely fill out a form for that--and heading the list would be "fire the piece of rot who decided that I should donate to your corporate donation."  )

[zyrs]

Since the surveys do absolutely nothing, I don't fill them out.

[nutraxfornerves]

There is a discussion of surveys on this thread from Customers Suck. Language warning.

Posters agree--less than a score of 9 or 10 and the employee's performance rating can really be hurt. They also note that there is often only one question that the business cares about "How likely are you to recommend this place to someone else?"  The answer to that may be the only score that is used for employee evaluation.

[Slartibartfast]

I only do them for smallish businesses (i.e. places where someone might actually read mine), and only when they actually offer ME something.  Not "a chance to win a $100 gift card [out of the 2.5 million people who get these surveys]," but something like a free item or a few dollars off my next visit.  I also will tend to rate "customer service" lower if I get explicitly told to give them a perfect score.

[MariaE]

Disclaimer: I've actually only ever encountered this once. I work with IT and had to raise a support case with Microsoft. They did ultimately solve my problem, but it was clear along the way that the case handler had serious communication problems. After the final call, she asked if I would mind doing a survey with her supervisor. I agreed to this, but it very soon became obvious that he was just there to groom me for the official Microsoft survey that's always sent out as a result of these support cases (standard procedure and until now has always been in a non-aggressive automated email, so I've never minded them). He asked me how I would rate the call handler, and I explained that I hadn't made up my mind yet, but that we had had some communication problems.
"We've been having some problems with our phones, so that's probably why." (No... the problem wasn't that she couldn't hear me). "Please do rate her high - a 9 or a 10".

When the survey came, I filled it out, rated her a 7 or an 8 (because she did eventually fix my problem, even though it took a LOT longer than it should have!), but rated my overall satisfaction only 5 and explained, "I would have rated this higher, but I was prompted very forcefully by the call handler's supervisor to rate the call high. I did get a solution for my problem, but I did not appreciate being pressured in this way."

They'll probably ignore it, but if possible I'll leave such a comment whenever I'm pressured to leave a high rating.

If the survey is just "dumb" ratings with no means of leaving a comment, I just don't fill it out.

[DottyG]

I did a Chick-Fil-A one the other day and got a free entree the next time I went.  It was worth it to do that one.  (Plus, they were going to get all 10s from me anyway - I didn't have to lie.  I've never had less than a 10 there!)  I should also add that I wasn't told what to put on the survey.  Plus, there was a lot of room to add actual comments in as well as just the numbers.  So if something needed to be elaborated on, it was possible to do that.
 

 

[nuit93]

It seems to me that whichever grand high muckety-muck came up with the idea to instruct employees to tell customers to "give a perfect score!" needs to go back to school and learn about how surveys and feedback actually work.

[Ginger G]

These surveys seem pretty pointless to me.  Here are two examples from two completely different businesses I've dealt with recently:

The grocery store nearest my house has pretty bad customer service, so I rarely go there, usually choosing to drive a little further for better service.  I did break my rule and went there a year or so ago and, as usual, the employees were surly and acted like having to ring up my groceries was some kind of burden to them.  My receipt printed out one of those survey invitations.  I completed the survey the next day and expressed my opinions, that I usually avoided shopping there due to the unfriendliness of the staff.  I have been there on an off a few times since when I just needed something quickly and nothing has changed.  Not that I expected my one survey to make a difference, but it does make me wonder if anybody even looks at them.

The other is related to my job.  I work in HR/Benefits and we have one insurance company for one of our benefits.  Every year we renew this policy and in my 9 years of doing this, not one representative of that company has ever contacted me to offer assistance or just to let me know that they know we exist.  It's a benefit that is thankfully rarely used (Accidental Death insurance), but it would still be nice to have a specific contact person there.  The couple of times I've had to contact them, it took many phone calls and transfers to find someone who could actually help.  A couple of years ago, they emailed me a survey and I was very happy to fill it out and let them know I was disappointed that we didn't seem to have an assigned account rep, that no one there ever contacted me, etc.  Once again, my responses seem to have had no result whatsoever.  I'm going to look into switching to a new company when we get closer to renewal time.

[Twik]

It seems to me that whichever grand high muckety-muck came up with the idea to instruct employees to tell customers to "give a perfect score!" needs to go back to school and learn about how surveys and feedback actually work.

I doubt it was the grand high muckety-muck who decided that. S/he decided "all surveys must give a perfect score, OR ELSE!" Then the mid-level muckety-mucks passed the word on, "do whatever you can to get that perfect score, or we're all in trouble."

[Diane AKA Traska]

A gentle reminder... when you give a less than perfect score, you're not sticking it to the company.  They don't care, by and large.  You're sticking it to the cashier, who has no input in corporate policy and no choice in how to present the survey.  If corporate says "ask the customers for 10s" that's exactly what they'll do, because if they don't, corporate will stand someone next to the register that will.

If you don't like the idea, please just don't fill it out, or else you're punishing the person who is the least responsible for the decision.

[Outdoor Girl]

I will never fill out one of these surveys again unless I can truly give them maximum marks.  I always filled them out truthfully and never knew that less than perfect scores affected the front line service personnel until I read it on here.

However, if the FL person were truly awful, I might fill it in so it does affect them.

[Thipu1]

We fill the surveys out on ships because we've been spending at least a week with the cabin stewards, waiters and bar staff.  We do get to know these people to a degree and want to let management know that X gave especially good service. We also know that employees can benefit from good passenger reviews. 

We don't bother with them in retail establishments because, since we dealt with the person for a maximum of five minutes, there's no way to evaluate performance. 

[CakeBeret]

In general I refuse to fill out the surveys, unless I have a particularly awesome experience (in which case I give all 10s) or a particularly bad experience (in which case I give well-deserved low scores).

I really hate the corporate BS that goes into "if it's not a 10, it's a fail".

My husband's workplace plays these games. The employees get bonused if 90% or more of the surveys are perfect 10s. Mid-management gets bonused on selling 95% or more of their stock during a time period. So management purposely orders low levels of stock and over-sells pre-orders, so that they will sell out quickly, which leads to huge $$$ bonuses. And then the employees get screwed because customers are giving poor ratings on the surveys, because their desired product is never in stock or their pre-order is worthless. It's a sick, vicious cycle.

[Desdemona]

I used to work at a store that did these surveys but they really twisted things as I'm sure most stores do. They really only looked at the responses that came from people who had a store credit card. And then anything less than  an "outstanding" ranking didn't court towards the store benefits. I'm not sure who decided we should do it but the store manager always told us to tell customers about the survey and then say we needed an outstanding rank for every category.

Now I usually don't fill out the surveys just because I feel like corporate sets them up to hurt the actual retail employees. Since from my experience corporate people don't want real feedback it's not worth it to me to give it to them. I also don't want to risk having generally understaffed places even more understaffed because corporate cut payroll because people gave honest feedback instead of unearned perfect scores. If I do have a perfect experience I will fill out a survey but that does include not being told how I should be responding.