Recently, I had a customer service experience that left a bad taste in my mouth. After the service, the person helping me said I was going to receive a survey and to rate them “all fives” because anything less than a five was considered a failure. They never asked me how my experience was, if I was happy with my service, or if improvements could be made.
The experience didn’t sit right with me, especially since I believe in the power of measuring. Ultimately, the numbers should be an outcome of the experience and service delivery. If those numbers are inaccurate, the company is not benefitting from the survey. At Service Express, we use the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Every year, we send our customers a survey for them to complete. We then take the ratings, sort them and then dig a bit deeper.
If you’re looking for a real indication of how you’re performing, you can’t manipulate the numbers. I’ve heard about companies providing bonuses to their people who meet specific survey metrics. This becomes dangerous because you can end up messing with the data. We do not bonus on survey metrics at Service Express. I believe this creates a horrible environment for everyone in the company since you’re not receiving the real story.
When we receive our metrics, we always look behind the numbers and find the story so we can better understand what is going on behind the scenes. This helps us improve processes and discover any system issues that are getting in the way. Having inaccurate numbers isn’t going to help you build your business. If you’re currently using this practice in your business, change it!
