Thoughts on Customer Satisfaction Surveys

"Close to the Customer" has become a mantra of many companies ever since Tom Peters and Bob Waterman introduced the phrase in their book, In Search of Excellence. And often, our attempts at being close to the customer involve taking their temperature on a regular basis via customer satisfaction surveys.

That's a good thing. However, at some point, some executive takes it one step further and thinks: "We'll hold our (employees, partners) accountable for customer satisfaction by basing part of their (compensation, promotion, renewal) on the results on these surveys."

I think that's the wrong move, for several reasons.

It skews the results, and in the totally wrong direction. People don't like to get bad news anyway, but if their salary or bonus or other compensation depends on how little bad news they get, they'll do everything that can to avoid negative feedback.  "Good," you might say, "They'll please our customers so they won't get negative feedback." No, they'll game the system.  For example:

• They'll hint or even downright tell customers how to respond.  "If my service isn't a perfect 10, let me know so I can fix it."
• They'll cherry pick, only sending surveys to customers whose projects went well and "forgetting" to send the survey when they went bad.
• They'll avoid risky engagements, such as new products and sensitive customers, delegating them to less experienced colleagues. So paradoxically, the most experienced people withdraw from the places they're most needed.
• They'll avoid being heroes and parachuting into existing projects that are not going well, because their name will be associated with the low-satisfaction project.
• They'll prefer to do the safe and reduced-to-practice services that they know well, instead of innovating or being willing to take on tasks they haven't done before. This leads to stagnation and boredom.
• In rare cases, they'll even cheat and file bogus surveys themselves to raise their scores.

On the customer side, the problem with customer surveys is that customers get so many of them already, and when survey scores influence compensation the company has to send one for every interaction, not just periodically. Even though a survey may claim to require only "a few minutes of your time," most are far too long. This discourages response rate, or worse, encourages down the middle lukewarm responses that are easy to give but reveal little.

The net effect is to reduce corporate learning. It's unfortunate, but true: you learn from the bad news. It's hard enough for even the very professional to seek out bad news over compliments because they know it will help them improve. Add a monetary disincentive, and even saints can turn into sinners.

A lot of this is unconscious, of course. Though a few bad apples will play the system consciously, customer be damned,  I believe most folks really do care. The unconscious motivations are corrosive.

The bottom line: if you want to get feedback from customers, great! Encourage them to not hold back and tell you everything you could have done to make it better. Then act on that feedback. Just don't hold a gun to people's heads and hold their paycheck hostage.

Most expensive training vehicle?

I was listening to the replay of a webinar by datango AG and Neochange about trends in end user adoption of IT applications. One comment really grabbed me:

"With the average cost of a help desk call hovering between 35 and 45 dollars, that's your most expensive training vehicle."

It reminded me of the Fram oil filter slogan quoted often by David Allen:  "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later."  If companies don't invest in training up front, they'll pay more on the back end in help desk calls. But one way or another, there will be a training cost. It's not optional.

Overall, the survey question, "% of Application Budget Spent on End-User Programs" revealed that most of the money spent on end users was skewed to new users (End-user training for new hires) and "laggards" (Help desk support).  Power user support for other users and a self-help knowledge base were second, and Perodic Refresher training for all users was last.

But companies that had a higher than average investment in end user training also had the highest adoption rates - go figure!

The survey can be downloaded from the Neochange link above.

Planning: Top Down, or Bottom Up?

Training professionals, like all knowledge workers, need to plan their time. There is always more to be done than time available, and choices have to be made. These choices become commitments -- and once made, these commitments need to be tracked to ensure we follow through on them.

What city am I in next week? Has the venue been prepared? Did I send the course materials ahead? Which course is it, so I can pack the right Instructor Guide?

Two popular approaches to planning systems are top-down (or values-driven) and bottom-up (or action-driven).

An example of the top-down approach is the Franklin-Covey Planner. Their process starts with writing a personal mission statement that embodies your personal values. "Begin with the end in mind," says Steven Covey, and work backwards from that. The mission statement leads to long term goals in the various roles in your life, such as spouse, parent, worker, church member, etc.  These long term goals in turn lead to shorter term projects, and eventually, daily tasks which are tracked on the pages of the Planner. Your purpose becomes a compass that guides you in daily decisionmaking.

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, works from the bottom up. You start by itemizing every "open loop" or unfinished commitment in your life, and taking them one at a time, determine if there is a next action to be performed. Any action that takes 2 minutes or less is done immediately, and longer actions are either delegated or scheduled on a calendar or action list.  Allen contends that as you gain control over execution, your mind will become freer to strategize what's important to you.

So which system is right: top-down, or bottom-up? The answer for me is "both." (Your answer, of course, may vary.)  I have done some work identifying my personal values, and I use a paper-based Franklin-Covey Compass planner. (Classic size, wire-bound, weekly format, in case you're interested.) But I don't use it the way that Franklin-Covey says to use it: instead, I use it as the calendar component of an overall Getting Things Done (GTD) filing system.

I've been working with planning systems for over 35 years now, constantly refining and adapting as my needs change.  And I still miss things occasionally. But my systems help me do the best job I can of fulfilling my commitments, both to others, and to myself.