When Your Agents Influence Respondents' Answers
posted by: Nick Roman on 1/29/2010
A few months ago, I bought a new bed for the family from a well known retailer. The sum total of my customer experience with the retailer, from the service I received from the sales person in the store, through to the actual order and delivery, was terrific.
After the bed was delivered and installed, and I had signed the acknowledgment receipt, the installers pointed to a Web address on the receipt and reminded me to provide feedback on the service I received. I happily told them that I would gladly fill out the form for them and describe, in detail, the terrific service I received.
“No, you won’t,” they replied. “You didn’t receive terrific service, you received outstanding service. We’re paid on the comments that we get, so you’re going to write the word ‘outstanding.’”
This behavior doesn’t seem to be specific to any country or culture. While this happened in the US last year, when I bought my last car in the UK the dealer told me that she was compensated based on her feedback scores. And since she gave me a great deal on the car, she expected great feedback in return.
In a recent blog, Research Rockstar addresses this issue. They suggest some interesting approaches, including adding a survey question asking whether anyone influenced their response.
Technology also helps mitigate this problem. If agents don’t know when customers will be surveyed, they won’t know to influence the response. For example, in a contact center you can set up the IVR system so that before the agent even answers the call, it asks the customer to stay on the line afterwards to provide feedback. The agent is out of the loop, and therefore can’t tell the customer how to respond. An added bonus is that the agent also can’t bias the results by determining that only happy customer calls are routed for feedback.
Have you run into this issue in your Voice of the Customer programs? How have you handled it? Do you compensate staff based on customer feedback? Does that compensation generate unintended consequences?
Let us know.