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When a teacher asks a class of 150 first-year students a question, it’s unlikely that she’s going to get an answer. You need a lot of courage to raise your hand.
There are many reasons why people don’t dare to ask. These are some:
They feel terrified about asking a question in public.
They’ve had a bad experience before.
They can’t think of anything interesting to say.
They want to grab lunch.
They’re not interested.
When we ask our customers for feedback, similar processes are happening.
Asking for feedback requires courage, and providing it should be a generous and honest exercise of caring.
Messages like ‘Please rate your experience of the service provided by Jamie’ are not about feedback and customer service, they’re about ratings, giving points and rewarding those who follow the script.
There are a lot of things that I might want to say about Jamie that cannot be squared into a rating from 0 to 10.
When customer experience is designed as a number we’re wasting an opportunity to create a human connection with our brand.
How do you rate your conversation with your daughter today, from 0 to 10? And with your boss? And with your customer?
What matters is not the number, but what we got out of that interaction.
‘I felt supported and guided in my conversation’ is far more relevant to your brand than ‘I give you 10’. What you’re measuring is as important as how you are measuring it.