Sylkfire

This sucks – a blog by technology strategist Paul Lewis
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Flavourful, well balanced, cooked to my exact request, however a little sloppy on the presentation. Pleasant surroundings, recently refurnished, and one less-than-spotless water glass. Polite, friendly, bordering on confused wait staff. Overall quite a reasonably expected experience. Submit.

I managed to have a satisfactory experience and I have been granted an ability to provide balanced feedback in real time, which in turn has made me more satisfied that I have participated in the future betterment of the eating establishment. Well….at least I feel better….and full….and a little gassy.

Do I believe the manager intends to immediately correct his obvious negligence negatively impacting my recent dining experience? Of course not (unless than entails some sort of meat-based discount on a future visit). Do I expect him to collect this feedback and evaluate for trends and correct systemic and reoccurring problems. Absolutely (unless of course I have received the previously stated meat-based discount).

Whether or not my comments are taken seriously, or added to the cork board of annoying clients who will be received a little “extra” in their next entree, or simply thrown the trash, at the very least there is a perception that my input as a user of the restaurant is needed to assess the heath of the establishment in real time.

Imagine if my feedback was requested less frequently. Imagine if once a year, every person who has every had a meal was asked to rate the quality and service of the restaurant, knowing that a significant portion of the guests eat there less than 1 time a month, potentially only once or twice that entire time.

What’s the likelihood that: 1) they remember, 2) they care, 3) they think it will make a difference, 4) that an insignificant problem like a dirty glass will have any impact in the results, 5) that their specific say matters among the thousands of voices responding at one time?

The simple answer to every question is “very very very little”.

People understand that the purpose of an annual survey is to assess the “current” state of satisfaction, and compare aggregate and average percentages to a previous year’s “current” state’s looking for trending, positive or negative, over time. With the macro information, organizations can create customer satisfaction programs or make large strategic decisions knowing what might be the potential impact to customer satisfaction.

In other words, the valuable data collected is would be used as an organizational heath metric, not actually for the purpose of making the service better.

As annual surveys are the prevailing determination of client satisfaction in technology offerings, I bet we could take a page out of the service industry and implement a software-based “comment card.

Let’s just pretend for a moment that we are more interested in fixing systemic problems with our applications, which will lead to higher satisfaction, versus just understanding the current “gut reaction” of satisfaction across our client mix. How can our clients leave comments? How can we collect more and interesting data about that comment? What can we do with that data to fix problems?

Imagine we can even make it better by also collecting all of the environmental factors affecting the problem (ie that the kitchen staff was down two people that day, and they ran out of dishwashing liquid the night before, and the waitress resigned an hour ago).

Imagine an unassuming and unobtrusive control at the bottom of every single page. It contains two buttons: “This sucks” and “That is cool”. A user would click either button if they ever felt compelled to do so. It’s never mandatory, but works in every context. When they click either button lets them type a couple words or a simple phrase, again, only if they feel compelled to do so. Once their comment is saved (or empty), the application then saves the entire context of the user behaviour prior to the button click (server and desktop environmental factors, time/date stamps, current screen/data, screen path since last transaction, screen response times, etc) and saves the entire package in separate data store.

Then what does the system do? Who is informed of this problem and/or positive experience? Absolutely nothing and absolutely no one. That’s not the point.

What will happen over time however, is diagnostic and analytical tools will grind through the raw data of actively logged user experience looking for trends of reoccurring problems or deficiencies in the system. It will find circumstances of dissatisfaction due to complex workflow paths, or confusion over data entry field order, or increased search screen response lag in certain times/dates of the year.

Specifically it will find real client satisfaction problems with real possible solutions, and will receive all that data in real time, as each user experiences them.

In other words, the valuable data collected is used as means to actually make the application better, and not as an organizational heath metric.

I have to think all that problem solving would make my next dining experience move from “reasonably expected” to “almost lives up to my expectations”.

Eat well.