Customer Surveys - "Give me a 10"

[MariaE]

I'm the opposite.  I love doing the surveys!  They're asking for my opinion, and I give it.  I'm truthful about how I felt my visit went.  If I felt it was a good experience*, I give a good review.  If it's not a good experience, I try to give a constructive type of feedback so, if the company truly is looking to improve in some areas, they have some ideas from this end of the transaction.
 
HOWEVER, tell me what to rate you as, and my score will drop.  You don't get to tell me how to fill out my survey.  If you want my opinion, I'll give it, but don't dictate it to me.


*  And, by that, I mean in a reasonable way - not in a "you must cater to me, because I'm the customer and you should be honored to have me here" type of way; I'm not over the top in what I want as a customer, and I do make allowances for real life type issues such as a store that's swamped and doing the best they can at the time.  I know that there are times when service might not be 100% for a legitimate reason but that the store/restaurant/whatever is handling it the best way they can.  I don't hold that against them.

Thing is, corporate offices very rarely actually take into account the *content* of the surveys. You can leave a constructive, well-though-out comment about how your needs were adequately met, and rate them a 6-7 out of 10 for not going above and beyond because you didn't need them to, or give them a chance to, or whatever... and all the company will see is a non-perfect score and scold the employee for it.

That's not your fault, but a perfectly nice, hard worker will still pay for a lack of a perfect score.

That last sentence is the key, though. You've given me the opportunity to give you feedback that you can choose to use in order to rise above your competition. Whether you do so is up to you. But if you don't want to get responses, don't provide the means for people to give them to you (all "yous" meaning the business, of course).

What use is a bunch of surveys with 10s on them? If that's all you want, pass them out at your company meetings or hire a department within your company to get your own workers to do the busy work of circling 10s on some sheets of paper and paste them all over the building in some delusional "rose-colored glasses" attempt to pat yourselves on the back.

OR actually read your surveys from the people you want money from and see if they have some merit. Not all will. Some people will complete them in a way that's not true. Learn how to cull those out and get to the ones that have some honest words about where you're succeeding or could improve.

But the choice as to which of the above you take is not my problem. And I'm not going to pacify you by lying in order to make it my problem.

Well said, DottyG. I agree completely.

Somebody else mentioned that they'd never give out 10s anyway because 10 = perfect. I don't see the scale going from "Awful" to "Perfect" but from "Hopeless" to "No need for improvement". So a person doesn't have to go above and beyond to get a 10, they just have to leave me with nothing to complain about So higher than "Adequate" but lower than "Perfect".

[DottyG]

I don't mean that to sound as harsh as it appears. I understand that there's a problem. And it lies with Corporate and their misguided ideas.  But how do we get that fixed?

[Sophie Jenkins]

Thing is, corporate offices very rarely actually take into account the *content* of the surveys. You can leave a constructive, well-though-out comment about how your needs were adequately met, and rate them a 6-7 out of 10 for not going above and beyond because you didn't need them to, or give them a chance to, or whatever... and all the company will see is a non-perfect score and scold the employee for it.

That's not your fault, but a perfectly nice, hard worker will still pay for a lack of a perfect score.

That last sentence is the key, though. You've given me the opportunity to give you feedback that you can choose to use in order to rise above your competition. Whether you do so is up to you. But if you don't want to get responses, don't provide the means for people to give them to you (all "yous" meaning the business, of course).

What use is a bunch of surveys with 10s on them? If that's all you want, pass them out at your company meetings or hire a department within your company to get your own workers to do the busy work of circling 10s on some sheets of paper and paste them all over the building in some delusional "rose-colored glasses" attempt to pat yourselves on the back.

OR actually read your surveys from the people you want money from and see if they have some merit. Not all will. Some people will complete them in a way that's not true. Learn how to cull those out and get to the ones that have some honest words about where you're succeeding or could improve.

But the choice as to which of the above you take is not my problem. And I'm not going to pacify you by lying in order to make it my problem.

The employees who have to ask for all tens know that they're useless, believe me. And they know that people hate being asked for a particular score. But they aren't the ones who are seeing those surveys and "learning" from the feedback. Corporate is.

And corporate rules are corporate rules, usually made by people who haven't worked directly with customers in years.

If you want to be heard, surveys will not do that. Contacting corporate directly will.

If you had a bad experience, by all means express that. If nothing was wrong but it wasn't outstanding, think twice about filling out the survey at all if you can't give it top marks honestly. How would you like to get written up because you did a solid job without any mistakes but someone who only saw you for two minutes felt like you were just okay?

[Sophie Jenkins]

I don't mean that to sound as harsh as it appears. I understand that there's a problem. And it lies with Corporate and their misguided ideas.  But how do we get that fixed?

You fix it by talking to corporate, not taking surveys that get perfectly good employees in trouble.

[Slartibartfast]

I don't mean that to sound as harsh as it appears. I understand that there's a problem. And it lies with Corporate and their misguided ideas.  But how do we get that fixed?

You fix it by talking to corporate, not taking surveys that get perfectly good employees in trouble.

Or you fix it by giving honest and accurate reviews, letting corporate make their mistakes, and when enough people do it, corporate starts to realize that penalizing employees for things out of their control is a stupid way to run a store.  Yes, it means that employees get caught in the middle - but I refuse to spend time giving false evaluations just because some corporation chooses to hold their employees' welfare hostage.  I will - maybe - spend some time giving an honest evaluation if I actually do want the company to improve or I want to commend a job particularly well done.  I won't bother wasting my time on any evaluation at all if I have to lie on it.

[Sophie Jenkins]

I don't mean that to sound as harsh as it appears. I understand that there's a problem. And it lies with Corporate and their misguided ideas.  But how do we get that fixed?

You fix it by talking to corporate, not taking surveys that get perfectly good employees in trouble.

Or you fix it by giving honest and accurate reviews, letting corporate make their mistakes, and when enough people do it, corporate starts to realize that penalizing employees for things out of their control is a stupid way to run a store.  Yes, it means that employees get caught in the middle - but I refuse to spend time giving false evaluations just because some corporation chooses to hold their employees' welfare hostage.  I will - maybe - spend some time giving an honest evaluation if I actually do want the company to improve or I want to commend a job particularly well done.  I won't bother wasting my time on any evaluation at all if I have to lie on it.

How would you feel about an employee describing to you how the ranking system works? Like, if they said that corporate sees 5=pretty good or better 4=neutral 3=bad 2=very bad 1=worst ever, would you see that as telling you how to rate them, or as informing you of a system you might not be familiar with?

Because that's really what's going on here. They give a 1-5 or 1-10 scale, but they don't actually consider the numbers in an intuitive way. It tends to be very binary, with 1-9=0 and 10=1. In fact, binary was exactly how the Borders system of surveys was described to me by my general manager.

[Slartibartfast]

I don't mean that to sound as harsh as it appears. I understand that there's a problem. And it lies with Corporate and their misguided ideas.  But how do we get that fixed?

You fix it by talking to corporate, not taking surveys that get perfectly good employees in trouble.

Or you fix it by giving honest and accurate reviews, letting corporate make their mistakes, and when enough people do it, corporate starts to realize that penalizing employees for things out of their control is a stupid way to run a store.  Yes, it means that employees get caught in the middle - but I refuse to spend time giving false evaluations just because some corporation chooses to hold their employees' welfare hostage.  I will - maybe - spend some time giving an honest evaluation if I actually do want the company to improve or I want to commend a job particularly well done.  I won't bother wasting my time on any evaluation at all if I have to lie on it.

How would you feel about an employee describing to you how the ranking system works? Like, if they said that corporate sees 5=pretty good or better 4=neutral 3=bad 2=very bad 1=worst ever, would you see that as telling you how to rate them, or as informing you of a system you might not be familiar with?

Because that's really what's going on here. They give a 1-5 or 1-10 scale, but they don't actually consider the numbers in an intuitive way. It tends to be very binary, with 1-9=0 and 10=1. In fact, binary was exactly how the Borders system of surveys was described to me by my general manager.

Personally, I would go by what the survey says instead of what the employee says.  I don't think I've ever seen a survey that didn't give a written scale (like "From 1 to 10 where 1 is "not very good" and 10 is "excellent"").  If the company lies on their survey - asking for a 1-10 scale and really only wanting true/false - that's their issue to fix and not something I want to have to correct for.

[MrsJWine]

I don't mean that to sound as harsh as it appears. I understand that there's a problem. And it lies with Corporate and their misguided ideas.  But how do we get that fixed?

You fix it by talking to corporate, not taking surveys that get perfectly good employees in trouble.

Or you fix it by giving honest and accurate reviews, letting corporate make their mistakes, and when enough people do it, corporate starts to realize that penalizing employees for things out of their control is a stupid way to run a store.  Yes, it means that employees get caught in the middle - but I refuse to spend time giving false evaluations just because some corporation chooses to hold their employees' welfare hostage.  I will - maybe - spend some time giving an honest evaluation if I actually do want the company to improve or I want to commend a job particularly well done.  I won't bother wasting my time on any evaluation at all if I have to lie on it.

This went on for at least ten years at the restaurant I worked, and nothing ever changed. It's still doing well business-wise, and they still have the stupid surveys.

You can't give honest and accurate reviews because you're speaking a different language than they are. You're speaking normal person English, and they are speaking a twisted version in which "good/neutral/fair" = "fail" and "perfect/exceptional" = "pass". Either speak the same language they are, or don't fill out the surveys. Corporate isn't getting the message; lower-level management and local employees are.

[DottyG]

Back to my question I posted above then. If they're this useless, why have them? Why ask customers to do them instead of hiring a new department in the company to sit and complete some fake surveys for you?

[atirial]

I really dislike these, because so few companies actually do anything about the feedback. The only one I will fill out for a local chain store doesn't have a 1-10 scale, just boxes for comments and has been known to act on them.

[zyrs]

Back to my question I posted above then. If they're this useless, why have them? Why ask customers to do them instead of hiring a new department in the company to sit and complete some fake surveys for you?

The reason they have these surveys is so corporate management looks good and get their bonuses.  If your survey isn't all 10s, they can cull perfectly good employees and show that they are "taking care of problems".  If your survey is all 10s, they can point to that as proof they are doing their job. 

This is why I will not fill out any survey unless the service was so horrible that I think the employee should not be employed.  Because anything less than a 10 is going to have that result.

[Outdoor Girl]

If they are are considering 10 to be the only acceptable score, why don't they just have:

0 - did not meet expectations
1 - met or exceeded expectations

And then give you a box to provide comments.

If they are going to treat it as a binary system anyway, they might as well have you answer that way.  I bet it would vastly improve their scores.

[Thipu1]

If they are are considering 10 to be the only acceptable score, why don't they just have:

0 - did not meet expectations
1 - met or exceeded expectations

And then give you a box to provide comments.

If they are going to treat it as a binary system anyway, they might as well have you answer that way.  I bet it would vastly improve their scores.

That suggestion makes excellent sense. 

Apart from restaurant comment cards, I haven't come across evaluation forms in a retail situation. 

[siamesecat2965]

Or you fix it by giving honest and accurate reviews, letting corporate make their mistakes, and when enough people do it, corporate starts to realize that penalizing employees for things out of their control is a stupid way to run a store.  Yes, it means that employees get caught in the middle - but I refuse to spend time giving false evaluations just because some corporation chooses to hold their employees' welfare hostage.  I will - maybe - spend some time giving an honest evaluation if I actually do want the company to improve or I want to commend a job particularly well done.  I won't bother wasting my time on any evaluation at all if I have to lie on it.

Unfortunately, I don't think this will ever happen. Corporate will continue their charade with the surveys, and nothing will change. I agree with everyone else who says contact them direclty if you have either an issue or want to compliment then. I can tell you it WILL get passed down to store level. esp. if its negative

[Sharnita]

Or you fix it by giving honest and accurate reviews, letting corporate make their mistakes, and when enough people do it, corporate starts to realize that penalizing employees for things out of their control is a stupid way to run a store.  Yes, it means that employees get caught in the middle - but I refuse to spend time giving false evaluations just because some corporation chooses to hold their employees' welfare hostage.  I will - maybe - spend some time giving an honest evaluation if I actually do want the company to improve or I want to commend a job particularly well done.  I won't bother wasting my time on any evaluation at all if I have to lie on it.

Unfortunately, I don't think this will ever happen. Corporate will continue their charade with the surveys, and nothing will change. I agree with everyone else who says contact them direclty if you have either an issue or want to compliment then. I can tell you it WILL get passed down to store level. esp. if its negative

Not always.  Go to the facebook page of a lot of companies and you will see people posting about a problem they had.  The company responds "Contact us by ..." and a good percentage of the time the person has contacted them and has hear nothing more.