This past month has been a pretty interesting one for me. I have heard and witnessed some things that just make me think, “Do you really mean what you just said?” I am seeing a trend that is making question the overall importance of gathering feedback. I believe that I have had over 5 different occasions of someone that was providing a service say that you will be receiving a survey and please make sure to give me good scores. At first, I just thought maybe the first person, was just trying to be cute and is really warning me that I will be getting a survey (email or call). This happened time and time again… What gives?
Does the company really use the feedback? If their employee’s are already asking or telling to make sure that they get good feedback. What does the company get? Do they really get the right level of feedback from the customers? Is this really a good indicator of the service level? There are so many questions that my head was spinning thinking about this post. Since I was a manager and feedback to me was important on the employee side, my first thought was to that any feedback that was solicited this way is really void of meaning.
What does that employee get? Does the company reward their customer service reps by the quality scores? Maybe that is how the bonus or salary structure is for the employee. Hence, part of me, would definitely see why they may want to solicit positive feedback. Again, putting my manager hat on, I would have hoped that each customer service rep would be doing the utmost best work with each client. Insuring that a positive experience was had by all. So, that when the survey does come out, the client would remember that experience and share in their feedback.
What if no survey is submitted back? My first thoughts now when I hear, “make sure that you provide good feedback on me from the upcoming survey?”, is to not fill out the survey at all. Why would I? Seems like a waste of time. Then I think back to the person that did this and see if they really did provide a positive experience? No shame in filling out a positive survey, if a positive survey is warranted. Maybe that is tied to the pay of the rep! If that person has done an outstanding job, both the company and rep should know that.
Are we setting up a quality system to fail? Seems to me, if I am getting a heads up on the survey and how I am supposed to respond, then that particular system is broken. Don’t you think so?
Here is my plan from now on…
- I promised to fill out all survey’s. With the information from my experience.
- If the rep uses any phrase that highlight’s how I am supposed to react to the survey – they will get the scores from the experience. With one big comment at the end, the fact that I was asked to respond positively toward the survey.
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