Voice of the customer, looking green, or feeling green?

‘Are you trying to fool the customer?’ ‘You have rated yourself a five, and now you are trying to get me to put the pin so it gets submitted’

‘No maam, that is how it is designed, the default is five, check when the next delivery comes’ pleaded the delivery man.

Not one to be convinced, I selected a one star, put in my pin and submitted the rating. My son was livid at what I did. He believes that here is a poor delivery guy, to whom the rating matters, and here is his mom, who deliberately gave him a one rating, while it was probably not worse off than a 3 on a five at worst.

But me being me, this was the second delivery guy from this very popular on-line grocery delivery outfit, where the five was the default rating as per the delivery boy.

The first time, being our first purchase from this outfit, my husband put in the pin and then realised that the rating was submitted – without him having an option to select.

Smelling a rat, the second time around today, I decided to rate the delivery. And just as I had guessed, when the boy handed the phone over for me to key in my pin, I saw five bright green stars – rating his own service as superlative. When I confronted him, he flat out refused any attempt to fool me and insisted it was how the system was designed.

Let us take two possible scenarios.

Scenario One

The design was truly one (hard to believe) where there is a default five and the customer has to select a lower rating if he/she is unhappy. That is poor design indeed. When you combine it with the fact that the pin is put in by the customer AFTER the rating is selected, the design ensures the service look green, because most customers are going to make the mistake of putting in the pin without checking what the rating is, assuming the pin comes BEFORE the rating.

To continue the same thought forward, if this is truly a design error, simple solution, with two changes.

1. Keep the rating field, as is the normal practice, a blank. The customer has to choose the number of stars he/she wants to give. A default five is bizarre, and something I encounter (if true) for the first time.
2. Get the pin BEFORE selection of rating, rate, then hit submit. Re-sequence and thus ensure that the customer can see the rating, choose the rating and submit.

This will ensure that the organization is able capture TRUE feedback, and not just capture rating to look green. It will also eliminate any opportunity for the delivery boys to game the system.

But even this is suboptimal. If the customer has to give a completely unbiased score, without any pressure of coercion from the delivery person, it can easily be done by him, on his phone or tab.

I love the way Ola has designed their customer feedback system – the app allows me to book my next cab only after I have rated the previous ride. Simple!

After all, capturing customer feedback, the so called ‘Voice of the customer’ is a critical element of ensuring service excellence. The purpose? To build feedback loops, to ensure that we are delighting the customer, to correct issues, to continuously improve and stay close to what the customer desires……………………

Scenario 2:

Even with the change, there is always the challenge of the service delivery person wanting to game the system to look green. That is a different challenge, one of the culture that is being built, to be tackled.

Why do the service delivery folks make such attempts to capture an extra-ordinary high rating? Why do they attempt to either cheat (as is what I believe has happened with this online grocery delivery outfit) or plead and coerce – as happened when my son took a cab of a popular service in Bangalore? The cab driver requested him to submit a full five – he said he would get a bonus if that happened; if the rating went to a two or below, he would be severely penalised.

If we want to build a culture that promotes high quality service, and openness to feedback from the customer, we need to start with the service delivery person.

After observing the behaviour across multiple industries, where linking serious punishment or reward to these ratings drive the wrong behaviour, such as with the cab service or the grocery delivery outfits, I am not a big fan of reward or punishment – bonus or penalty, linked to these scores. They reinforce in these frontline people, a desire to game the system. After all, at their pay levels, they really want to make every additional rupee, and anything that can help, they do it. Who are we to stand in judgement?

A better system would be to build non-monetary, non remuneration related, system of rewards and reinforcement. Some examples would be gifts, training programs, holidays, movie tickets, family outings, public recognition and praise; make him/her a hero! But stay with anything which does not add to or subtract from his take home pay, so he does not see it as something he wants to earn at any cost.

Also, to avoid individual rewards and punishments where the scores are poor – very often, the delivery person is the last man in the entire service delivery chain and what others before him did or did not do impact his ability to serve the customer well. For example, the central hub in the grocery delivery chain – did they load on time? Were the delivery vans in good condition so they did not break down? Was there traffic on the road – this was after all Bangalore? Was the customer’s order filled correctly and in full or were there mistakes? Was the quality of the veggies up to the mark?

Now the score, we will argue, is for the outfit and not the delivery man. But does he see and experience it that way or does he see it as HIS score – reflecting on HIS performance? How do we build ownership of this score on the entire chain – and stay careful of not promoting any behaviour that gets unethical practices in place to obtain a high score?

And lastly, in the case of both scenarios, where is the system of checks and balances? If I were running the customer care function, or the quality function, a consistent five rating from all customers will trigger an alarm, not send me into raptures!

I would also ensure I built some audits and dip-checks to see that the customer feedback is live, accurate, and therefore valuable to me!

It is easy to design feedback system, and sexy to design app based, instant feedback.

But deeper thought into why we want the feedback, and deeper consideration in creating a culture, through right communication, reinforcement, rewards and recognition, as well as leadership behaviour is important.

Else, the organization will look green, but customer may not be feeling green. And for every big basket that is swimming successfully in front, the sharks like Grofers, Peppertap, Zopnow, are closing in…….

So whether you are Big Basket or Grofers or Peppertap or Zopnow, watch out – not knowing what your customers REALLY feel about your service is a bad place to be in!