I took this photo in a Milan electronics superstore. “You will receive an e-mail containing our satisfaction survey about your buying experience: if you are satisfied, remember that – for us – ACCEPTABLE is a score greater than 9”. Why do businesses do these things and what consequences do they bring?

 Apparently they have forgotten the main reason for these surveys, which should be to listen to the sincere “Voice of the Customer”, as a way to improve the Customer Experience, not to obtain high scores. This usually happens when customer-facing employees are given economic incentives linked to the NPS results. Such conduct is extremely dangerous, because the entire organisation will start to beg for top scores, pressing customers for a 9 or a 10 since anything lower would be considered a failure. The use of colours or faces transforms a scale of 11 into a scale of 3 and suggests how customers should respond. These are ways to “trick” the system. Customers will be induced not to give a 6 (which they might have done without being pushed) in order to avoid damaging the employee they met, giving instead a higher score. The main objective of this poor practice is to inflate the score artificially. The danger is to give useless and misleading data to management, that will be used to make strategic decisions. In itself, the score is unimportant! What really matters is the REASON hidden behind the score. Understanding WHY is the only way to learn how to organise, opening the path towards real improvements in the Customer Experience. Sagres adopts proper methodologies and the best AI-based technologies to measure and analyse the CX, identifying the real reasons behind customer perceptions of their experience with your business.   Understanding, improving and/or correcting the Customer Experience are the best ways to generate healthy and lasting profitability.