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Illustration by Drew Shannon
Recently I went to my local bank and used the teller service instead of the usual ATM to buy a crisp $100 bill to insert into a birthday card.
Soon thereafter I received an e-mail to ask, based on this complex transaction, how likely was I to recommend this bank to friends and relatives. Huh? Hit delete.
But the electronic survey mechanism was persistent. “David, we would really like to hear from you. Please take a moment to fill out the brief survey.” Delete.
As a further provocation, I went more recently to the biggest national hardware store in Canada to buy a sponge for $3. That was it. Easy. Direct. No complications.
But sure enough came the question: How did we do today? Thank you for shopping with us! We hope you’ll write about your sponge while it’s still fresh on your mind. Click the stars to get started.” I hit delete again.
This company does not give up easily and I was told that they would really like to know how they could improve my shopping experience. The e-mail was titled: David – How Can We Make Our Store Better for You? Delete.
By now you have the idea and no doubt you are experiencing many similar experiences with this new affliction.
Imagine, say, 50,000 customers a day being asked to give a score from one to 10 or stars from one to five, and 1,000 customers across the country give a rotten tomato score. Do alarm bells go off? What does a score of five really mean – good or bad? And having become so personal with me in asking for my opinion, what are the chances that the “Experience Response Team” will actually get back to me with a promise to make amends and do better next time?
A good friend told me to ask her daughter about it, since she is responsible for data analytics worldwide for a large brewing company. Who better to explain this menace? She responded by referring me to an article in the Harvard Business Review that describes the Net Promotor System.
The report tells me that about 20 years ago the Net Promotor System was created to measure how consistently companies turn customers into advocates and this metric soon became universally popular. It catalogues customers into three segments: Promoters, passives and detractors.
Promoters: customers who are so pleased with their experience that they recommend your brand to others. Passives: customers who feel they got what they paid for but nothing more and who are not loyal assets with lasting value. Detractors: customers who are disappointed with their experience and harm the firm’s growth and reputation. Promoters give a score of 9 or 10, passives a 7 or 8 and detractors a 6 or less. To calculate the overall Net Promoter Score, the percentage of customers who are detractors is subtracted from the percentage who are promoters.
Unfortunately, with self-reported scores, misinterpretation and gaming, the NPS has lost some of its shine. It has suffered from pleading (“I’ll lose my job if you don’t rate me a 10″), bribery (”We’ll give you free oil changes for a 10″) and manipulation (“We never send surveys to customers whose claim was denied”). In my experience, car dealerships deserve the highest score for pleading.
Along came Earned Growth Rate and Earned Growth Ratio as new metrics to reinforce the effectiveness of NPS, but, unfortunately, this did not reduce the stalking of customers.
I feel that we are being suckered into believing that someone somewhere really cares about our consumer experience, but in reality, it’s all about trending and nobody gives a hoot about individual transactions. Only when enough customers complain about sponges does someone somewhere then decide to take action. And that action has nothing to do with the buyer, only the seller. Customers are the proverbial herd of sheep that are expected to take the time to answer these annoying surveys and feed the system. We get virtually nothing in return. Nothing that is unless your response makes you eligible in a lottery for a measly $100 gift certificate.
I have been well served by my bank since entering university some 65 years ago. But seriously, how likely am I to be socializing today with a group of friends, and based on my recent transaction, suggest that they all need to transfer their accounts immediately to my bank so as not to miss out on supremely superior service? They would probably think that my mental decline is well under way.
About a hundred years ago, humour writer Stephen Leacock wrote a famous short story about why he hates banks. He was so rattled by his first encounter that, having opened an account and deposited the sum of $56, he immediately made a withdrawal – requesting fifties and sixes. I often wonder what he would think of banking today in this new world of impersonal trend analysis. I am sure he would join me in hitting delete and in encouraging others to do the same.
David Caulfeild lives in Ottawa.