It makes more sense with restaurant reviews. The business environment is so intensely competitive that any restaurant actually deserving of 1-2 stars would be much more likely to eventually go out of business.
So, over a long enough period of time, you’d wind up with mostly 3-5 star places, with some exceptions existing for restaurants that can survive without the benefit of repeat customers. (tourist trap places, places operated as some kind of money laundering operation, etc)
I once got a call from a telecom marketing department because I rated a customer service agent with a 9 out of 10. When I told them it was not for anything the agent did, just that the store the support was in was extremely difficult to find, the caller got a bit aggressive. Like they expected me to shit talk this poor lady who had been so nice to me, just hard to find, and it was all corpo’s fault. The store wasn’t properly branded and signaled. She couldn’t take any comment that was negative on the company, just on the employee. So I told her how ridiculously stupid that system was. That I wanted to change my score to a perfect ten, comment, the best employee this company has, even better than the CEO. The caller got obviously upset. Told her to write down that if they ever call me again I will immediately cancel my contract. She went with, is there anything else I could help you with? Which is call center code for “I want to hang up”.
I once worked for a call center. Customers like you who rate an agent based on things the agent has no control over are the worst. Guaranteed they took employment action on them.
Then they should ask that. The question was redacted as a blanket statement for the entire support experience, which was really good overall. Everything else I rated a 10, including the quality of the attention received. We don’t need to make this excuses for bad management practices.
I don’t know how the survey question was phrased, only how you wrote your comment, which indicated you rated the agent poorly, not the entire support experience.
9 out of 10 is not poorly. And that is exactly the core of the comment. They saw a 9 and acted as if I was beaten with a bat and verbally abused by this poor lady. This perception is their problem, they are completely out of touch with reality.
but as a customer i can’t be expected to know that a less-than-stellar review of my customer service experience (which i only contact if i already have issues and therefore am predisposed to be irritated at) will reflect badly on the person who fielded my call unless they explicitly tell me that beforehand, which they won’t because that’s not information that the customers need and they don’t really want to be known for treating their personnel badly.
i may have rated the experience a 9 because the phone tree to get to a human was confusing, or because the hold music was shit, or because the agent had to look things up in the company’s slow-ass system so i had to wait. there are a million ways to have a bad time when calling customer service, and if you ask me to rate the experience with one number i would never in a million years give it a 10 unless everything is solved the instant i call.
I hear you on that, and your position makes much more sense now that you’ve explained their survey wasn’t asking the questions well or you misinterpreted them.
Mine had portions for my performance and the overall company’s performance separately, but I still received poor ratings (and written comments) for actions other people took that I had no control over, like giving your new dentist a bad rating because you broke a tooth skateboarding before your first visit with them.
“How are your teeth doing?” “Bad.”
Versus
“How was your dentist appointment today?” “Good” + “What is your dental history?” “Bad.”
This makes me think of those retail surveys where any scores less than perfect get the employee a talking to by management.
That happens in Google maps too. A 4 star restaurant is not good. But in Japan, 3 star is the norm, and 5 means exceptionally good.
It makes more sense with restaurant reviews. The business environment is so intensely competitive that any restaurant actually deserving of 1-2 stars would be much more likely to eventually go out of business.
So, over a long enough period of time, you’d wind up with mostly 3-5 star places, with some exceptions existing for restaurants that can survive without the benefit of repeat customers. (tourist trap places, places operated as some kind of money laundering operation, etc)
I once got a call from a telecom marketing department because I rated a customer service agent with a 9 out of 10. When I told them it was not for anything the agent did, just that the store the support was in was extremely difficult to find, the caller got a bit aggressive. Like they expected me to shit talk this poor lady who had been so nice to me, just hard to find, and it was all corpo’s fault. The store wasn’t properly branded and signaled. She couldn’t take any comment that was negative on the company, just on the employee. So I told her how ridiculously stupid that system was. That I wanted to change my score to a perfect ten, comment, the best employee this company has, even better than the CEO. The caller got obviously upset. Told her to write down that if they ever call me again I will immediately cancel my contract. She went with, is there anything else I could help you with? Which is call center code for “I want to hang up”.
I once worked for a call center. Customers like you who rate an agent based on things the agent has no control over are the worst. Guaranteed they took employment action on them.
Then they should ask that. The question was redacted as a blanket statement for the entire support experience, which was really good overall. Everything else I rated a 10, including the quality of the attention received. We don’t need to make this excuses for bad management practices.
I don’t know how the survey question was phrased, only how you wrote your comment, which indicated you rated the agent poorly, not the entire support experience.
9 out of 10 is not poorly. And that is exactly the core of the comment. They saw a 9 and acted as if I was beaten with a bat and verbally abused by this poor lady. This perception is their problem, they are completely out of touch with reality.
I simultaneously disagree with them considering a 9 a failure and your rating the agent less because of something outside of their control.
but as a customer i can’t be expected to know that a less-than-stellar review of my customer service experience (which i only contact if i already have issues and therefore am predisposed to be irritated at) will reflect badly on the person who fielded my call unless they explicitly tell me that beforehand, which they won’t because that’s not information that the customers need and they don’t really want to be known for treating their personnel badly.
i may have rated the experience a 9 because the phone tree to get to a human was confusing, or because the hold music was shit, or because the agent had to look things up in the company’s slow-ass system so i had to wait. there are a million ways to have a bad time when calling customer service, and if you ask me to rate the experience with one number i would never in a million years give it a 10 unless everything is solved the instant i call.
I hear you on that, and your position makes much more sense now that you’ve explained their survey wasn’t asking the questions well or you misinterpreted them.
Mine had portions for my performance and the overall company’s performance separately, but I still received poor ratings (and written comments) for actions other people took that I had no control over, like giving your new dentist a bad rating because you broke a tooth skateboarding before your first visit with them.
“How are your teeth doing?” “Bad.”
Versus
“How was your dentist appointment today?” “Good” + “What is your dental history?” “Bad.”