Via Slashdot, Buzzfeed News published an article about how "
That tablet on the table at your favorite restaurant is hurting your waiter". Which is Buzzfeed speak for 'waitresses and waiters at chain restaurants are being assigned shifts based on the voice of the customer scores they are given at the end of the check out process'. For those that have not worked in customer service before, only a score of nine or ten are considered passing on a Voice of The Customer (VOC) survey. Everything else is considered either a "passive" or "detractor" score.
The simple secret to getting a 9 or 10 on a VOC is to ask for one at the end of the transaction. Tell the customer that anything else is considered failing and if there is anything you can do for them, have them contact you first.
Obviously, only tell the customer the positive outcome of you getting a good score, not the repercussions of a bad score. We also inexplicably kept the handout from already disgruntled customers. At Penske Truck Rental getting your named mentioned (positively) in a VOC review got you a $100 American Express gift card. I made sure to give my card and mention the spiff to any happy customer at the end of the check out process. It got to the point where we were stapling handouts that explained the VOC process to the rental contracts. The managers stopped the spiff after I had gotten three cards in two months.
I understand this process skews the VOC numbers, but the reality is that for someone who works the front line in customer service, just about every element of the VOC score is outside of your control. Your attractiveness, ethnicity, the weather, management, inventory, staffing for the day; all of these and more are going to effect your VOC score, which is going to effect your pay directly in many cases. We all know that at the end of the day managers are certainly more inclined to blame you for a bad score than take responsibility for their poor management and processes.
