How to Cheat at Customer-Satisfaction Measurement
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Thu, Aug 14, 2008
I had the chance to catch up with Esteban Kolsky yesterday. Esteban is an industry visionary (more on that in a future post), and I was fortunate enough to be a client of his when he was a Gartner analyst. He's now a vice president at eVergance (more on them in a future post!) and a passionate blogger. I've added him to our blogroll.
One of his recent articles really caught my eye:
How to score a 90% or more in customer satisfaction
To my surprise, Esteban is so strongly against customer-satisfaction measurement that he gives four tips on how to cheat at customer satisfaction:
- Know who to survey.
- Select the words for your questions carefully.
- Change the scale for your metrics.
- Coerce higher scores.
Check out his blog post for the details, where he provides a how-to for manipulating such scores. He did leave out method #5...
Last weekend I was shopping with my wife for a new couch at a local furniture store. (When she says its name, I think "hero of the Republic of New Connecticut", not "furniture".) After we had completed our purchase, the saleswoman said, "Now when you get the survey, make sure to answer a 10." She did not say why we should answer a 10, but had an apologetic smile when she said this. So, there you have it, the fifth method to cheat at customer-satisfaction scores is "5. Compensate staff based on customer satisfaction scores."
I've seen the corrosion that staff incentives have on customer-satisfaction measures at automotive dealers, office equipment stores and -- now -- furniture stores. My wife loves their furniture, but I'm not sure what I will write when that survey arrives. I do know what I'll be sitting on, though.