I first started realising the need for accurate feedback when I was a staff development trainer for a large company. At the end of the training course, usually at 4:00pm on Friday when the delegates just wanted to get away, we had to hand out ‘happy sheets’ asking how the course and the trainers were. We always got excellent feedback – probably (if I’m honest) in part because the trainer was in the room collecting the forms as they were being completed. So they were useless.
And then I would eat out and the waiter would usually come over and ask if everything was OK. I am British and we Brits tend not to complain – so I would respond with a polite “yes thanks”. Then, when friends asked how the meal was, I would recall a few things I didn’t like – usually a bit enhanced. And then they, in turn, told their friends, and the experience typically started with something like “the service was a bit slow” and ended up with “you’ll have to wait for hours to get served and then the food is cold and dry”!
Verbal messages change as they go from one person to another. Remember the apparently true story from the trenches in WW1? The message started as “send reinforcements I’m going to advance” and ended up at the end as “send three and fourpence I’m going to a dance”.
As a rule, if I get bad service, I just don’t go back…. EVER.
And the service provider is completely oblivious to all this.
With the training courses I did away with the post-course happy sheets and replaced them with a feedback request a few weeks after the course – offering anonymity. I was after less-than positive feedback and I got it, but it gave me an opportunity to do something about it – both in content and delivery.
I then devised a clever system so the likes of restaurants can acquire accurate feedback and then a confidential report that only they will see.
And this can be used in any business or activity that relies on customer satisfaction.
Ever since I ran customer service training courses many years ago, I have become hyper-sensitive to poor customer service – almost to the point of being pedantic about the small things. But that is not a bad thing as I see things that others perhaps do not, but which they do see, and dislike, at an unconscious level.
I bring this extensive experience to the party.
Martin Richardson
Founder – WWT.com