Scientific Ink

Dunrie Greiling Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI 48105

Life

Gaming the System: have we reached peak customer experience survey?

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Surveying the customer seems like a good idea to find out ways to improve. Yet, I’ve been on the receiving end of customer experience surveys that show me we’re doing it all wrong.

Anyone who has purchased a car or who has had their car serviced recently by a car dealership is likely aware of the 10-point customer experience survey that arrives, via email, after the dealership visit. Other interactions with their customer service (say to troubleshoot the connection between said new car and the proprietary little app system that runs the electronics) also trigger a “rate our customer service” email. All these chances to provide feedback are good, right? Nope.

When each interaction with your service creates more work for me, the customer, I wonder. Also, the sales operation doesn’t feel open to actual feedback, it seems they’re only interested in the goal – getting the top mark. They show this in unsubtle ways. Visual cues for how the dealership would like to be rated are on the back of the salesman’s cubicle and on the wall facing the seats in the service department waiting area.

Coaching poster about the customer experience survey in the dealership.

Before I switched to a Chrysler product, I had a car with another brand name. And that dealership sent very emotive letters ahead of the survey, essentially saying if you cannot give us a 10, please let us know so we can correct it before you fill out the survey. Basically, let’s keep this between us, don’t tell Papa Franchise/OEM about any frustration.

Please give us a "5" rating on the question with a 5-point scale. (The 0-4 scores don't count and we want your rating to count!)
Please give us a “5” rating on the question with a 5-point scale. (The 0-4 scores don’t count and we want your rating to count!)

Earlier this year, I got this form stapled to my receipt at the drugstore. It says that I may receive a survey, and if I don’t answer a 5 (top score for them) my response “won’t count”!

This pharmacy’s assertion that a rating below “5” won’t count cannot be true, and this note is the opposite of customer service. It’s just forcing the customer to be involved in gaming a corporate system. Yuck. With the people who are the subject of the surveys (sales and customer service folk) specifically asking to subvert the intention of the survey….how can we take this data seriously?

We know from online ratings that people really don’t bother to review a company or an experience unless they’re thrilled or torqued off. Yet, most of the experiences we have with brands, stores, and car dealers are somewhere in the middle of horrid to spectacular. It’s unrealistic to expect they’ll be spectacular 10.0 across the board all of the time. And it’s particularly silly to ask your customer to enable this charade.

Don’t bother your customers

Bothering the customer to give you top marks on a survey isn’t a good customer experience.

I’ve started a new behavior in response to this: I won’t fill these silly things out.

If I can’t give the customer service top marks, but it isn’t the agent’s fault (e.g. the issue is mechanical or technological) I have a hard time rating the interaction at all. I can’t give it a 10 because I’m still unsatisfied. But the agent was nice and at least sympathetic to the weirdness of the [insert technical or mechanical issue here]. So, should I be honest and say they’re eroding my faith in their brand but they hire friendly people to take the hit? That’s not an option in the survey, so I just delete the customer experience surveys now.

 

Customer Service: A Name, My Name, is Important

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I have a difficult name – the first and the last names are unfamiliar. I haven’t met another Dunrie, and the only Greilings I have ever met are relations. People mess up the spelling, they don’t know how to hear it, they think Dunrie is my last name a lot and ask for my first name.

I’ve developed a few patterns to try to avoid certain common misconceptions about my name. It’s often misheard as “Dumrie” instead of Dunrie, so when I spell it out, I often say “N as in Nancy.”

Well, I went to a neighborhood coffee shop last week, after the morning rush. I was the only person in line and the cashier (who, I believe, is also the owner) asked me my name to keep with the order. She started to write “D U” on the slip, and then when she heard “N as in Nancy” she crossed off the D and the U and said, “I’ll put it under Nancy.”

rose teacup and saucer
I like tea. I also like my actual name.

What I should have said was, please don’t. People have special sense for their name. I would have heard Dunrie when the barista called it into the noisy coffee shop. I had to listen for Nancy. Besides, there was no one behind me, so I’m not sure what the personal or professional loss would have been to attend to the last four letters of my actual name.

What did I say? Nothing. I moved along, listened for “Nancy” and took Nancy’s fancy tea latte. I felt cross and misunderstood. Efficiency 1; Customer Service 0.

It’s a Dale Carnegie truism that almost nothing is more melodious to a person than her name. Maybe the shop owner was having a bad or busy moment that wasn’t obvious to me. Yet, it’s hard to make me feel more unwelcome in your shop than refusing to get my name right.

Next-Generation Goals

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I’ve been swimming to get my cardio and to strengthen and stretch.

I used to swim laps for exercise in college and grad school, and I got back to it in the last few years as a way to work on my back and get in better shape. When I started swimming laps again, I gave myself a goal of swimming continuously for a certain number of minutes.

Laps
Laps, made available via Creative Commons by maxtm on flickr

 

I worked up to 20 minutes. In the beginning, it was a good enough goal. It kept me swimming through the time when a single lap would wind me and I’d have to swim a lap, then rest for a bit, then do it all again. Eventually, swimming for a set time just got boring.

Swimming laps to reach a particular time goal turned into a clock-watching exercise. I was counting down until it was over.

Am I done yet? Nope. Am I done yet? Nope. Am I done now? Argh, no. 

Distance, not Time

I asked a friend what she swims, and she gave me a distance instead of a time. I knew I wanted to increase my effort, and setting a distance goal seemed like a great way to reset my mindset. Instead of counting down the seconds, I could instead count up the laps, feeling an increasing sense of accomplishment rather than waiting to be dismissed.

When swimming for distance, if I want to get it done more quickly, I have to increase my effort. There’s an incentive to try rather than coast.

This simple goal shift reinvigorated my practice – I extended the time I’m in the pool and increased the fun. Now if only I could count laps without losing track…(I am currently refusing the purchase an electronic lap timer watch or ring. Right now I count by moving a flip flop around like the hour hand on a clock.)

Part II: Expand the Concept of Distance Beyond a Single Workout

I was thrilled to see the Pool Challenge at my Fitness Center. They provided three options for swimming or running between February and the end of 2015.

  1. Swim to Lansing: 64 miles
  2. Swim the length of the Huron River: 93.5 miles or 3366 laps
  3. Swim the distance of the Port Huron to Mackinac race: 235 miles.

I did the math, and the Huron River is within reach. I know committing to swim the length of the Huron River will get me to the pool more often, and I’ll feel better and be happier with myself as a result.

Huron River, winter morning
The Huron River on a still winter morning.

 

Postscript:

Although I never swam competitively, the urge is in my genes. Family legend has it that grandmother tried out for the Olympic team in her youth, which would have been in the late 1920s or early 1930s. I hope that story is true. I imagine her in one of those modest old-time swimsuits, tweaking tradition as a female athlete. I never met her, and this is one of many stories I would have loved to hear from her.

Lesson learned, again, data is helpful

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A little data is a beautiful thing.

Princeton Archways
Nested archways on the beautiful Princeton University campus, made available via creative commons by Rob Shenk on Flickr

I’ve been on the Board of Directors of the Princeton Club of Michigan for the last several years. Although I live in Ann Arbor, I’ve traveled to Birmingham, Novi, Detroit, and elsewhere for meetings. In my time on the board, we have not held an event in the Ann Arbor area.

Well, the Princeton Alumni Council shared some basic demographics about the club with us. It turns out that about one-third of all Princeton University alumni in Michigan are here in Ann Arbor.

So, we planned a happy hour right before Halloween in downtown Ann Arbor. Halloween is also the best time to wear orange and black Princeton gear.

We were pleased with the attendance, and it could not have been easier for me to attend. I didn’t have to cross I-275 or take 696. I just had to dig out my orange beer jacket and find a place to park downtown.

For a membership organization, locating events near our membership helps encourage attendance. It sounds like a “duh” but because most of the leadership was from the Birmingham area…that’s where we put most of our events. We just didn’t have the data and were basing our decisions on habit and our personal preferences. Hard data helps decision-making.

 

Ever wondered why the theme color of this blog is orange? Now you know ;).