Customer Satisfaction Surveys - Are they fair to the staff

JacenSolo

I recently switched jobs and previously I have never worked in the job that had customer satisfaction surveys. I find the systems grossly unfair to staff. The customer is given the ability to negatively score someone they've spoken to when that person has given the right answer and provided good customer service. The customer is still unhappy with that answer and negatively scores the agent. How is that fair?

seamus

Unfortunately customer service is more than just giving the right answer.

Your call centre agents might always give the right answer, but if they're curt and rude about it, then your customers will hate you.

The art of customer service is having a customer satisfied that they've been heard and understood, not just that they've been given accurate information. The two aren't always the same thing.

JacenSolo

seamus wrote: »

Unfortunately customer service is more than just giving the right answer.

Your call centre agents might always give the right answer, but if they're curt and rude about it, then your customers will hate you.

The art of customer service is having a customer satisfied that they've been heard and understood, not just that they've been given accurate information. The two aren't always the same thing.

That I understand. My issue is when you are 100% polite and give all the information but still the customer doesn't like the answer they get. So say they wanted a refund and you are unable to do so. The answer I give is the right one but they are unhappy with the answer. They leave a survey being anger at company policy but I still get negatively marked on it. It doesn't make any sense to me

petes

Some people are just like that. You can go above and beyond and still get a negative response unfortunately.

AnRothar

A survey is often a blunt tool.
A simple yes/no answer is easy to calculate.
But once you start to seek a more detailed/nuanced answer people tune out or give up.

as indicated in post 2 often business will use a mystery shopper to try fill in the more nuanced aspects.

Where a business has a high turnover in staff for various reasons improving staff training can be difficult

OMM 0000

I think they can be fair or unfair.

I agree with Seamus.

I think you have to assume every customer is in a bad mood, so it's not just about giving them the information they require, but it's also about doing it in a way which makes them like you.

Dealing with the public is a pain in the ass, and is underpaid.

Xterminator

Its not 'unfair' intrinsically because all of the agents will be dealing with the pool of customers. If 90% of agent 1's customers give him a high rating but only 40% of agent 2's customer rate him highly, then you can see its not just the message but how the message is delivered.

scheister

It can depend how they are set the the Net promoter score (NPS) is the worst. IIRC 1-5 is negative 6-8 is neutral and 9-10 is positive. So you have a case where you are nice, deal with the query and help the person. They think you did an average job so give you a 5 as the middle ground but its a negative in reality which is not what they meant to do.

banie01

Quite often the right answer and good customer experience on the surveyed interaction are not what the customer actually scores.
The customer may have had a poor experience with the company that was ongoing until the agents intervention.
This could be due to previous interactions and the end result usually is that the despite the surveyed agent doing everything right and resolving the issue, the customer is actually responding to their overall experience with the company and this tends to hit agents as negative scores.