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An average of nine
I have never been keen on filling out customer satisfaction surveys. I think it might be because I’m egotistical enough to resent my finely developed opnions being reduced to a choice between “Satisfied” and “Very Satisfied.”
But every now and then I relent. Case in point: the other week I went into my car dealership to have some warranty work done. I have (or did have) a good rapport with the service personnel. I spent a few minutes chatting amiably with them about crankshafts and alternators as if I knew something about them, which I don’t; and left with the feeling that I was in safe hands. When I got home, I found the usual customer satisfaction survey waiting on my computer, and decided that this time I would complete it. I knew that if I didn’t, I would still receive two or three more reminder messages, so completing the survey seemed at the time like the benign alternative.
Such experience as I do have with satisfaction surveys tells me that if I am given a range of satisfactions to choose from—in this case, one to 10, one being “utterly disgusting” and 10 being “transcendent”—I am usually going to rate my experience as a six or seven. For me, the experience of having my car dealer replace a piece of equipment does not rank up there with my truly extraordinary experiences (such as being stuck in an elevator with Fats Domino, which would earn a nine rating) or my transcendent ones (such as listening to J.S. Bach’s Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, which would earn a 10). However, since my service experience had been so positive, I decided to rate it at somewhere between eight and nine. When I finished the survey and clicked the “send” button, I felt the warm glow that came from knowing I had shown a generosity of spirit that would improve the lives of countless others.
That feeling was not to last. The next day I received this self-flagellatory missive from the service rep I had dealt with. “Dear Mr. Simmonds” she wrote, “I take full personal responsibiliy for whatever it is I have done to disappoint you with the quality of our service. I am deeply ashamed and want you to know that I will personally do whatever it takes—be it round the world air tickets or your own personal parade float—to bear the cost of making you smug and self-satisfied again.” Or words to that effect.
I did toy with the idea of the float for a minute. The camel on the Shriners’ float in this year’s Santa Claus parade did not look particularly seaworthy; and it occurred to me that I might ‘re-gift” my windfall. But after that minute passed, a sense of horror set in. The service advisor was now going to lose her job or be sent to some re-education camp as a result of what I thought were my reasonably generous ratings! What was I to do?
I did the only thing I could think of. I phoned the dealership and asked to speak to the manager, immediately. I started blubbering on about how he had to stop whatever disclipinary action he was about to take and instead pin a bouqet on her. He quickly put me out of my misery, telling me that a rating that came in anywhere lower than an average of nine causes a computer in the automotive company’s head office to request the apology and receive a full report on how the customer was eventually satisfied.
An average of nine? Surely there is something wrong here. I’m now scared of taking any more surveys for fears of the havoc I will wreak. I now know how to game the survey to produce the result we want; but at the very least a lot of the survey is padding. Surely it’s silly to pretend in the first place that a relatively banal automotive maintenance transaction can be rated as equivalent to meeting Fats Domino or listening to Bach. Let’s leave superlative words for superlative experiences: the English language is already rich enough to employ words adequate to the task of rating automotive service.
adequate to the task of rating automotive service. I feel most sorry for the dealership employees, who, having been given a bar set far too high to clear, are required to grovel to customers in order to mollify the head office computer. As small compensation, perhaps they should at least allow their staff to rate customers in the same way. I would expect to be rated as a six or seven; in fact, I would worry if I were rated any higher. I don’t purport to be anybody’s transcendent experience.
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