Surveying the Crowd

How surveys impact workers or at least my limited experience

Many companies ask customers to fill out a survey at the end of a transaction. These can be helpful, or hurtful without the customer even knowing.

As a retired teacher I know how important it is to get and give feedback. Unfortunately for many companies this feedback becomes punishment sometimes about things that the folks in the trenches have no control over. My former job thrived on these surveys. You see the end of year bonus for all employees revolved around how the store scored. This was on display in the back room- where we stood for the week, the quarter, and the year.

The actual survey isn’t as important as the very first question. Everything relies on that. It would be like a teacher giving you a 10 question pop quiz, but basing your grade on your answer to the first question. I know this does happen in classrooms - if you don’t put your name on your paper it’s a zero. For this survey the first question was “How likely would you recommend the store?” with a scale of 1-10. Then an open response as to why. A score below nine is bad. Someone recently put down a 1. Their reasoning - Something along the lines of they don’t ever recommend stores to people. Honest, but what could the workers impacted by this score do to change this? Nothing. Other low scores had things to do with the location of the store compared to the parking lot. The location of the mall - it’s not a high class mall so affluent shoppers don’t like going there. The issue is- it’s the only official store for this brand in the state. The store is too small… you get the idea. Again, this is the only score that the company looks at- this one score 1-10. You can say whatever else you want, but this one number is it. This is why you are hounded by the folks working to fill out a survey. The law of averages comes into play.

I’m not saying you should not score low- if the employees deserve it. Just remember that score impacts everyone who works there. If you are ignored, or get bad service- sure. If something isn’t in stock? Ummm… The people working at the store (even the manager) have nothing to do with what is shipped. The store is told what to display, but then doesn’t get sent any of that product to put on the shelves. People get frustrated, including the folks who work there. They can’t do anything to change it. The people who can, aren’t reading the survey. The folks working there do their best, but can only control, what they can control. They aren’t allowed to break the rules, some set by the company, some set by the store management, some set by whoever is in charge of the sales floor for that shift.

Once again, that pesky Russian Judge always messes up the scores.

So if it’s only one score should I do the rest of the survey?

Sure, sometimes (rarely in my experience) employees get called out for good service. We might get tickets to spend on a prize of some kind, or whatever. Do we get actual feedback or know what is said in surveys that mention our names? Not in my experience, or maybe rarely. I think in my time working I may have heard once, that I was mentioned in a survey. I did hear almost every shift about some bad survey that focused on something no one had control over.

I’m one to look at solutions not just grumble about the problem. If I ran the world, the lowest survey each week would be dropped, along with the highest, then average the rest. Or maybe *gasp* have someone actually look at the surveys and not punish the staff for things they have no control over. Maybe throw out those surveys that the score is based on things beyond the control of the staff. Then again you could also look at other metrics in the survey, and add those to the way you calculate the score.

I was told of one time when someone scored the store an 8 (You would think not bad, but actually not good) and then went on to gush about what a wonderful experience they had, and mentioned each team member present by name. Unfortunately the score of 8 dropped the percentage and made it so we wouldn’t be getting that year-end bonus.

In this day and age with the world filled with “Karens” and people expecting special treatment, retail is difficult. Not understanding how a simple survey impacts actual people makes it even more difficult. Frankly, a faceless multi-national corporation doesn’t care, they have rules that as far as they are concerned work. It seems that the only people who actually look at the survey to try and improve are those at the local level. They will actually try to change things for the better (if they can). My time at this store was great, with a few exceptions… things that made me go “huh?” One of the big ones was the reliance on the store survey.

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For the record when I fill out a survey I go back to an early Calvin & Hobbes Cartoon- the punchline was “I like to make everyone’s day a little more surreal.” First, if my experience was awful - I won’t fill out the survey. If it wasn’t awful, I’ll score high across the board and then in the written portion (which only the store management usually reads) I’ll tell a story, or make things up. This started when I scored a store high on keeping wombats away from the products which made me feel safe while visiting. Now, it’s expected from the stores I frequent, even though when asked I use a pseudonym usually related to whatever I have written. Ex. I signed a survey “Doug Corrigan” after going on and on about how helpful the staff was in helping me find what I was looking for… IYKYK