Rate Your Toilet Experience
Survey fatigue is a customer experience problem
Two days into my holiday, I got an email from the hotel I was staying at with the subject line “Rate your satisfaction and help us improve your stay”. A rating of poor, acceptable or excellent was requested; with an optional choice of adding a comment.
— “This is a really nice touch and these guys are taking the right approach”, I thought to myself. The request was timely, specific, quick and easy to complete.
Little did I know that Pandora’s Box of customer survey hell had been opened.
A wonderful week in a tranquil island paradise came to an end far too quickly and upon checking out from the hotel, a new customer survey request hit my email inbox.
I had been distracted by too many Pina Colada mocktails (or is it really just an expensive pineapple juice?) as by now I had already forgotten to complete the first survey.
Anyhow, this second survey will also need to wait. Things are a little busy as I need to make my way to the airport and it looks like storm is about to make landfall.
Bracing myself for a bumpy flight home 😐
Once safely back home, I had arrived just in time for the third customer survey email. This version looked more detailed and corporate-looking:
“How likely are you to recommend us to a family member, friend or colleague?”
The rating scale is conveniently reversed this time, with 10 (very likely) presented as the first option and 1 (very unlikely) as the last option. 🙈
This type of survey design leads to something called primacy bias which is a form of cognitive bias. It refers to that people are more likely to recall and choose information that was introduced early on.
It’s been said that you can never over communicate. I’m going to have to disagree on this, especially when it comes to speaking with customers (which in the context of customer surveys also form a part of the broader customer journey).
It’s not just a question of what companies say and do in this space, but how they do it.
I’m now officially a non-responder to this survey.
What is interesting about all this is that this outcome had absolutely nothing to do with the hospitality experience, which was really good!
Ironically, the main challenge that the survey performance is up against… is the survey itself.
Best practice for customer satisfaction surveys
Here is a list with some of my suggestions for running customer surveys effectively:
Do’s
Make it easy to complete
Capture feedback at the right time
Limit response options to force clear choices
Targeted and specific questions
Understand that your survey request is also a brand touch-point
Don’ts
Cherry-pick respondents who are likely to give a positive rating
Ask leading or biased questions
Use long or complicated surveys
Ask too many questions or very detailed questions
Request surveys too often
At this point, I started reflecting on whether there had been any other recent customer survey requests recently?
You bet!
It didn’t take me long to fathom the review burden that consumers are facing:
Booking the hotel: an earlier survey had also been sent a while back, asking to share thoughts on the hotel booking experience.
Rental car: two NPS survey requests - one upon returning the vehicle, and a follow-up reminder email.
Airline: one survey request - including a prize-draw and a detailed questionnaire to fill in.
Airport & parking: one survey request, highly detailed. “How was your experience travelling through the airport?”.
Local restaurants: a single written request to provide a review on Google, printed on the back of a business card that was handed after settling the bill (nice idea!)
Including the initial trio of terror, all of this adds up to 9 customer survey requests in total… in relation to one week’s holiday.
From the company’s perspective, sending out a survey and a reminder for a high-ticket purchase is not an unreasonable ask of a customer.
Although it is important to consider this in the wider market context of customer survey request overload. Requesting feedback for every single interaction and simply repeating the same request over and over again if there is no response is not a good messaging strategy.
Most people who are not responding is doing just that for a good reason.
Companies need to smarten up their approach in this space, as there is a very little differentiation in the survey outreach and customer communications.
Customer survey fatigue is real.
An innovative approach to customer experience surveys
As I was heading towards departures for my flight back to London, I recall seeing a small white stand outside the entrance to the toilets. It had four face emojis on it and there was one simple ask:
“Please rate the toilet cleanliness.”
OMG! 💩
You have got to be kidding me…
Once the initial surprise had settled, I started realising that this type of physical customer feedback terminal is actually quite a smart solution for collecting customer feedback.
There are a few different reasons why I think this is the case.
The lone customer feedback terminal is physically eye-catching and tactically placed right outside the exit to the toilets. It’s almost impossible not to spot it!
The way that customer feedback is collected ticks many of the boxes for what I previously described as best practice in customer satisfaction surveys:
Specific objective in mind
No selection biases
Just in time
Fast and simple: it’s one-click and go
One consideration for operating this type of solution would be to consider the hygiene aspect. This might be addressed already through regular cleaning and disinfection of the surface. I believe I also saw a QR-code on the terminal, for those wishing to complete the survey digitally instead.
This type of customer survey is practical and effective because the customer insights from the ratings that are captured are directly actionable.
If the toilet cleanliness ratings were to drop (and assuming that we are looking at “live data” here), this will presumably alert the cleaning staff to quickly address the issue.
The other customer survey requests we covered earlier in this article relied on collecting customer feedback via the “push” email channel.
In contrast, the unassuming four face emojis on the customer feedback terminal which “pull” people in to rate is a most welcome point of differentiation.
The key take-away from today’s article is as follows:
You must give equal consideration to how your customer survey is developed and how it is executed.
The customer survey itself is also a brand touch-point and forms part of the overall customer journey and customer experience.
Keep collecting honest customer feedback.
Just stop pretending to be something you are not.
MUSICAL CODA