I stayed last week at a hotel near a major airport. Following an efficient check-in, I went to my room and began to unpack.
As I began to set up my laptop, I noticed on the desk a rather large white card with bold blue lettering, propped against the desk lamp. It read “On a Scale of 1-10 it is our desire that your stay be a perfect 10. When you receive your survey after check out, we would like you to give us a 10. If we fall short of this score during your stay, please stop by the front desk or dial zero and allow us the opportunity to make it right.”
Also on the desk was a letter personally addressed to me (I am, after all, a gold member of their frequent guest program) from the hotel’s General Manager. Following a most cordial welcome to the hotel, an offer of a 20% discount at the restaurant, information about the fitness center and business center, the GM ended his letter with a repeat of the request that I rate the hotel a “10”, in this case on all attributes in the survey. He went on to ask that I contact him personally if there was anything about my stay that would prohibit me from providing such a score.
This experience was notable in part because it was the second time in a few weeks that I had been asked directly to provide the highest score on a customer satisfaction survey.
I had bought a not-inexpensive new car. In turning over the keys and instructing me in how to manage my way through the gadgetry, the salesman also kindly filled out the customer satisfaction form for me. He said “You will be getting a survey and we’d like you to complete it like this.” He had checked all “10s”. He went on to explain that a great deal was riding, both for him and the dealership, on whether I gave them top box scores.
So, what’s actually going on here? What lies behind these blatant requests of customers to provide the highest scores on customer satisfaction surveys? Well, when your bonus or access to inventory depends on your success in the customer satisfaction “survey”, apparently you will stop at nothing to get the scores you need.
But, let’s stop and ask why companies started doing customer satisfaction research in the first place. I can remember when they were genuinely interested in knowing what customers thought of them, so they could make improvements, and hopefully receive higher scores next time.
Things began to go sideways when firms started to link bonuses and other incentives to scores received on customer sat surveys, and were able to connect the customer’s score to the person who actually served her. Over time, I’ve seen the objective of customer satisfaction research in many firms shift from a genuine interest in making service better to a focus on getting the highest bonus possible. Scores are eagerly awaited, not so that managers can see how much improvement has been made, but to see how much of a bonus they will receive this quarter.
So, just how useful is customer satisfaction research when employees are blatantly asking customers to give them “top box” scores? Nothing short of a 10 will do. Such behavior is organizationally sanctioned because the auto dealer and the hotel GM are also rewarded or punished on the basis of their customer satisfaction score. Research purists among us are crying “foul.” There was a time when such attempts to influence research results would be considered bias in the extreme. There is no way that results from such research can be considered to represent an accurate reflection of how customers really feel.
So, let’s think long and hard about why you are measuring customer satisfaction in your firm. Is it so that you can really listen to customers and make improvements in how service is delivered? Or, is it simply intended to be your way of injecting a customer-based measure into how you evaluate your sales personnel and managers? If it’s the latter, and if your employees are out there begging for 10s, then don’t pretend that you are getting a true picture of what customers think of you.