The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Could They Cheat?
Monday - April 10, 2006 03:36 PM in
A recurring theme over the last weeks has been the built in bias related to surveying callers at the end of a customer service contact. Understand that VocaLabs service is a premium product with a relentless focus on delivering accurate information about what callers really think about a contact experience. So it is not uncommon for us to encounter a competitive situation in which we find ourselves up against some survey entity selling their services based on low price, and whenever possible avoiding any mention of the accuracy of the data they deliver. Negative marketing is never a good approach, and so we miss some business when I fail to bring home the "you get what you pay for" argument.
Over the weekend, I had another thought. Since our research clearly shows that the end of call survey overstates customer satisfaction scores in the 20-40% range; I wondered whether a prospective client couldn't just do the cheapest end of call survey possible, and then lower scores by perhaps a 30% average. That way they'd have data closer to reality for less expense.
Peter doesn't think this is a likely problem. His logic is anyone with that mindset isn't overly concerned about truthful information anyway; that the percent of bias error can vary widely with only minor changes in conditions, and so using averages can still make the data wildly inaccurate.
All true, but since my own experiences suggest that buying decisions are frequently made on emotion over logic; I'm not entirely convinced some won't try it. Just know this. If you do an end of call survey, the odds are it is wrong by a significant margin but there is no way to know specifically where and by how much it is off.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Peter doesn't think this is a likely problem. His logic is anyone with that mindset isn't overly concerned about truthful information anyway; that the percent of bias error can vary widely with only minor changes in conditions, and so using averages can still make the data wildly inaccurate.
All true, but since my own experiences suggest that buying decisions are frequently made on emotion over logic; I'm not entirely convinced some won't try it. Just know this. If you do an end of call survey, the odds are it is wrong by a significant margin but there is no way to know specifically where and by how much it is off.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Posted at 03:36 PM by | | | |