I recently took my wife’s mobile phone in for servicing. At the service center, the waiting room was packed with people, but like a well-designed ant farm, there seemed to be a method to the madness. A well-groomed clerk handed out numbers to waiting customers and the lines seemed to be moving. The newly-designed service center was decked out with a slick showroom, showcasing the newest phones and other products. Some lucky marketing consultant had certainly made a killing on this facility.
I waited about 20 minutes in line, when I was received by a smiling young man who seemed more than overjoyed to help me. I emptied the contents of the bag I brought with me on to the counter. My wife’s phone was in several pieces, the result of an unlucky drop. My smiling service man took it all in stride, I am sure he had already seen several similar cases the same day. It took him about 10 minutes to figure out the best way to repair it (without me getting locked in to another two year contract).
So far, there was nothing unusual about the service call. - not even the guy standing next to me, screaming about what a lousy phone he had, how sorry he was he ever started service with this company, etc. etc.. As an aside, there seems to be a lot of these folk out there. Regardless of the mobile provider (I currently work with 4 different providers), I have had the same experience with everyone I have ever worked with.
What was unusual was the following – just as I was about to walk away from the counter, my smiling companion asked me how I would rate the service he gave me, on a scale of “1 to 10,” with “1” being terrible and “10” being superb. Now, I thought this was odd. Is this how the company wanted to gauge customer satisfaction? It took me a minute to recover, but I finally said, “8.” To which the now “not-so-smiling” young man, said, “But I gave you an extra battery on your warranty and I added in a new back cover?” Feeling ungrateful, I said, “OK, 10” – upon which he wrote a big red 10 on the service record and circled it. No, I have no idea whether a new back cover or the battery is actually covered in the warranty or not. Should I have been grateful? What I do know is that I have to go back in several hours to pick up my phone. Do I really want to “tick off” the clerk so my phone is not ready on time?
This process is either the process of some sloppy setup, or more likely, the company service folks are just trying rig the numbers. How could they really be interested in what customers think when they collect data this way?
In contrast, my garage uses a much better method. On the morning following a visit to the garage, I get a call from someone with whom I did not interact with during my visit. The cheery young lady (usually) asks me a series of questions about my experience at the garage. On the rare occasion where I did have some issue, I always got a call from one of the managers on the same day to “make it right.”
Customer surveys, telephone follow ups, even comment cards are all good ways to get honest feedback. To have the person who gave you service badger you in to giving high marks for services, is a royal waste of time and effort…..
I wish I would have hung around long enough to hear what my screaming neighbor thought about the service when they wouldn’t do anything to fix his broken phone. Other than lock him in to another service contract…that he is dying to get out of. I would guess that they wouldn’t ask him, or pass off his “0” off as an "outlier"….
My advice – if you aren’t interested in knowing how you are really serving your customers, don’t ask. If you are interested, give them a chance to answer honestly. Fishing for a perfect score creates false responses, and probably angers your “perhaps” satisfied customers…
Related Stories: | Topics:Innovation, Technology, Leadership, Management, Marketing, product management, startup, Work/Life balance, Business, Consumer Protection, Product Guarantees |
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
Recent Comments | 6 Total
June 25, 2009 at 3:07pm by Aprille Byam
Typically, at car dealerships, I get the "The manufacturer really values customer service. So much so, that if we're rated anything less than 10 we'll get in big trouble." spiel "So, just think of us when your survey comes and be sure to fill it out" - Something is wrong with that incentive structure - and that's what I say on the survey.
June 30, 2009 at 9:05pm by Marcia Conner
Great post, David. Thank you. This is advice many companies would benefit from. Reminds me of the story a collegue tells about her time at a very large [to remain unnamed] insurance firm who initiated a large customer feedback survey and when they'd sent out to ~1/4 of the customers, they handed the results to the training department. When the group there began implementing suggested changes into their materials (provide more detail when asked a question, for example) the survey team pushed back, saying the just didn't know who else to give the results to, not that they ought to be acted upon. When the training team pushed back on that, saying they could really help the customers now that they had the data, "why else would you ask, if you didn't want to know?" and all, no more surveys were sent out. No more data collected. So much for listening, or for learning, or for attempting to meet the customer's stated [let alone, implied] needs.
--
Marcia Conner > www.marciaconner.com > @marciamarcia
June 30, 2009 at 9:05pm by Marcia Conner
Great post, David. Thank you. This is advice many companies would benefit from. Reminds me of the story a collegue tells about her time at a very large [to remain unnamed] insurance firm who initiated a large customer feedback survey and when they'd sent out to ~1/4 of the customers, they handed the results to the training department. When the group there began implementing suggested changes into their materials (provide more detail when asked a question, for example) the survey team pushed back, saying the just didn't know who else to give the results to, not that they ought to be acted upon. When the training team pushed back on that, saying they could really help the customers now that they had the data, "why else would you ask, if you didn't want to know?" and all, no more surveys were sent out. No more data collected. So much for listening, or for learning, or for attempting to meet the customer's stated [let alone, implied] needs.
--
Marcia Conner > www.marciaconner.com > @marciamarcia
July 2, 2009 at 10:42am by Rob Loach
Great writing!
July 2, 2009 at 11:22am by David Lavenda
This post seems to have struck a chord. I will try to build on this theme of how companies want to be seen as doing the "right thing" but are actually doing the "wrong thing" - in this particular case, if you don't want to know the answers, better not to ask the questions.
Just as a follow on to this story -I actually went back to the phone center and asked to speak to one of the managers. I asked him what they were trying to accomplish with this "survey" and he said that they just wanted to make sure that people didn't walk away angry (I could barely hear him over the irate customers in the store) and that someone would likely be calling me to do a follow up survey.....Guess what - although I have been back to that center about 4 times in the last month - I have never received a call from them. In fact, in the 15 years or so that I have been a customer, I don't think I have ever been called about my customer satisfaction. Gives you something to think about. Maybe it is time to move on....
July 2, 2009 at 11:22am by David Lavenda
This post seems to have struck a chord. I will try to build on this theme of how companies want to be seen as doing the "right thing" but are actually doing the "wrong thing" - in this particular case, if you don't want to know the answers, better not to ask the questions.
Just as a follow on to this story -I actually went back to the phone center and asked to speak to one of the managers. I asked him what they were trying to accomplish with this "survey" and he said that they just wanted to make sure that people didn't walk away angry (I could barely hear him over the irate customers in the store) and that someone would likely be calling me to do a follow up survey.....Guess what - although I have been back to that center about 4 times in the last month - I have never received a call from them. In fact, in the 15 years or so that I have been a customer, I don't think I have ever been called about my customer satisfaction. Gives you something to think about. Maybe it is time to move on....