On the eve of this election, let’s play a game.
You are the mayor of Anytown, USA. The US government wants to know how people really feel. To do so, it asks people to take a voluntary, anonymous survey.
This survey would consist of many types of questions like, “Do you enjoy life in the USA?” “Do you feel that your opinion matters?” “Are you given the resources and training you need to be successful?” “Are you able to do what you do best every day?” and so on.
The surveys would be administered at the local level—each mayor would be responsible to give out the surveys and “invite” people to take it—remember, it’s voluntary, and anonymous.
Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? After all, how can the government know what to fix if we don’t tell them?
But then things start to turn strange. The governors start to compete to see which state has the highest percentage of citizens take the voluntary survey. Because they want to look good to the federal government, the governors put pressure on the mayors to “strongly encourage” their residents to do the survey.
Although the survey is anonymous, in order to track results each mayor is told how many (but not specifically who) of the people in their town haven’t taken the survey. As mayor, you know of several people who have told you that they don’t believe the survey is truly anonymous, so they don’t want to take it. They point out that because you, as the mayor, know people haven’t taken they survey proves that it’s not truly anonymous.
Finally, the time to take the survey ends. The results are tabulated, and then broken down to the local level.
As mayor, you are given the results for your town, and how it compares to the rest of the nation.
And what does the US government then do with the information? It tells the mayors to “make an 'action plan' to fix any issues that their citizens scored low on.”
Does this seem as silly to you as it does to me? So, why did I make this up?
Confession time: this is actually quite a common way corporations handle employee feedback.
The US government is the corporation, the governors are the district or regional managers and the mayors are the department managers.
I’ve been the “mayor” in this scenario for three different companies. I thought it was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve been a part of.
When I raised my concerns about this process, I was told, “It’s your job as a manager to make your employees ‘buy in’ to whatever the company decides.” That would include cutting paid time off, reduced or eliminated raises and higher demands on productivity without an increase in resources.
After all, if the employees aren’t happy, it certainly can’t be the fault of the corporation.
I've noticed as a consumer that there has been a bigger focus on customer service surveys recently. I guess it makes sense. In an economy where jobs are hard to get and money is tight, businesses are doing whatever they can to make sure they retain their customers.
I'm all for receiving excellent service. If I go somewhere, I want to be treated nicely, not talked down to and certainly not treated like I'm a nuisance.
However, just like many things happening in corporate America, things can be taken too far. Think about the last time to went to your bank. Now, if I were to ask you the following questions, how would you rate your experience on a scale from 1 to 6 (6 being the best):
1. They went out of the way to please
2. They did things right the first time
3. They treated you like a valued customer
4. They made your business their top priority
5. They followed up and kept their promises
All right, have you figured out what you would have rated them? How many of you gave a perfect "6" in all the categories?
Now, did you know that if you scored anything less than a "6" in any of those categories, the person you "graded" would have a black mark given to them?
Now, let's take it to the next step. Let's say in any given month, 14,000 people go to a certain bank location. Of those 14,000, 10 people are randomly called. Of those ten, the minimum goal is 80%, or 8 out of 10 have to grade their visit with all perfect 6's across the board.
Any math whizzes out there that can figure the margin of error with those numbers?
I, sadly, have worked in such an environment. In my opinion, it is completely unfair--especially when the employee is held accountable for the non-perfect shop, even if they did all they could to take care of the customer.
Need more proof? Here is a true story that happened to me:
I was at a training class for a couple of days. When I returned to my store that I manage, I'm told that a customer came in while I was gone. He was very upset because another store, a good hour away, had messed up his accounts and caused him fees. My team fixed the issue, refunded the fees, and escalated the issue to the area manager--because the man was that upset. I was contacted by the area manager and asked to buy a gift card for the customer to "make it up to him". I was also told at the time that I needed to update the man's zip code in the system.
So, I did as was asked. I even called and left a message for the customer apologizing for what he had gone through and told him the gift card was on the way.
When out next surveys came in, this customer had been called and scored us very low. What was worse? The survey pinned me as the person who got the bad survey. How could that have happened? I had never even seen or spoken to the man. The survey was triggered when I updated the man's zip code in the system.
The result? Not only did I lose a big chunk of my bonus for that month, but I was also written up for the low survey--because it was policy that anytime that low of a survey is received, the person had to be written up.
