Peter Leppik

Consumerist has the latest example in a long string of companies bribing customers for good survey scores. A Pizza Hut franchise taped a note to a pizza box offering customers a $1 discount if they bring in proof that they took the survey, and noting that "Only 5's count."

[To be fair to the Pizza Hut--it's not clear that customers would only get the discount for giving the restaurant perfect scores. But the flier could certainly be interpreted that way, and I'm sure many customers did.]

This kind of thing will continue to happen as long as companies keep setting up incentives to improve survey scores without also having strong controls on the survey process. There are a zillion ways to manipulate customer surveys, from blatant (telling customers that "only 5's count") to subtle (selectively reminding the happy customers...

Vocalabs has several healthcare-related clients, so we are used to dealing with the privacy and security requirements of HIPAA. Some recent changes to the regulations will mean significant new requirements for what a company like us needs to do to remain HIPAA compliant after September 2013.

Since Vocalabs itself is not a healthcare company, we are not what's called a "covered entity" under the regulations. Rather, we are a "business associate," which is basically any company which a covered entity hires to perform some work which may require sharing protected health information.

Many non-healthcare companies hired by a covered entity would also be considered business associates--for example: accountants, IT services, lawyers, business process consultants, etc.

Under the old rules, a business associate had to sign a contract with the covered entity that basically promised to keep protected health information private and secure. Business associates had to...

Via Techdirt today, a mildly amusing recording of a customer taunting a Time Warner Cable CSR by saying he's recording the call.

In the recording the customer begins by telling the CSR that he's recording. The CSR, no doubt following TWC's written policies, says he doesn't consent to the recording. The customer asks how that can be given that TWC is itself recording the call.

Unfortunately the CSR is caught in the middle--as everyone (except maybe TWC's lawyers) understands, the policy is absurd. But the CSR isn't allowed to deviate, and can't think of a rational reason why the customer shouldn't record the call, and there you go.

What this really points out, though, is the sheer nuttiness of these "We will record you, but not give permission for you to record us" policies. Anecdotally, I know...

Closed Loop is a popular buzzword for customer feedback programs today. It means implementing a formal process whereby customer feedback is used to drive change in the company in order to improve customer feedback.

This kind of cycle is a powerful tool--in fact, I would argue that it's pretty much the only way to build an effective and useful customer feedback process. After all, if the customer feedback isn't being used to drive change in the company, then what's it good for?

But most advocates of a closed loop process aren't really closing the loop. That's because most supposedly closed loop customer feedback processes don't formally consider the customer survey as part of the "loop" to be "closed." In other words, the company never reconsiders whether the survey is asking the right questions of the right people. It is just assumed that the survey should keep doing the same thing no matter what.

In fact, some of the proponents of closed loop...