HOW TO GATHER GOOD FEEDBACK
The Beach House in Kauai
...and by "good" feedback, I mean "useful" feedback.
I recently got back from a vacation to Hawaii. While the weather didn’t cooperate as well as we would have liked, it was still better than the winter weather we left at home.
One of the more enjoyable moments was a dinner my wife and I shared with another couple at The Beach House in Kauai.
Near the end of the dinner, the maitre de came by our table to confirm everything about our experience was fine. His specific question was “How was everything tonight?”
We, of course, gave him the obligatory “everything is fine” and shooed him away so we could enjoy what remained of the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean, the real reason people go to this restaurant.
But did he really walk away with the answer he wanted? Was he just looking for superficial validation or was he really trying to discover opportunities to preserve or improve The Beach House dining experience?
What if he had simply chosen different words and asked the question “what could we have done to make your experience tonight even better?”
“Fine” doesn’t answer that question.
In fact, I would have answered that question completely differently. I would have shared the fact that I don’t care for frozen butter (and how difficult it is to spread on fresh bread), and that the waiter appeared overly obsessed with keeping our water glasses full (even after we politely declined his offer to top them off several times).
By asking a slightly different question, the maitre de would have actually learned something of possible value…something he could actually choose to act on.
Are you making the same mistake with your business?
Are you tracking and trying to maintain a high satisfaction rating? Or are you asking your customer to tell you what’s wrong? Are you trying to discover sources of dissatisfaction so you can fix them?
What action can you take based on the pie chart below?
Does a simple 5-point scale really tell you anything useful about your shopper's satisfaction?
Or does the graph below prove far more useful when trying to understand satisfaction?
While this data is mocked up, I've seen very similar results in real life. Shoppers can simultaneously claim fairly high overall satisfaction and still easily identify areas that missed expectations.
It is nice to feel validated that people like us, but it is far more valuable to realize where we can make improvements.
As they say, “feedback is a gift.”
May your customers be particularly generous to you.