Widespread incentive offers and guilt trips strongly affect the accuracy of customer satisfaction research
Customer-service representatives are pressuring consumers to the point of dishonesty. That’s one of the findings from a new study by Callvu, the industry-leading Digital Customer Experience, or CX, platform. The study also found that almost half of consumers admit to shading the truth when giving their own responses. For the customer experience and customer care leaders tasked with monitoring and continuously improving the true state of service delivery, inaccurate data poses a major challenge.
Satisfaction surveys have exploded across the consumer landscape, and many companies now rely on this customer feedback to manage and improve service operations. These metrics play a critical function because, according to a Microsoft study, 96% of consumers say customer experience is important in their choice of loyalty to a brand. To understand the validity of satisfaction survey data, Callvu surveyed 625 Americans in December 2023. The study sample reflects U.S. census data for gender, age, race/ethnicity, income, and home location.
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“Companies are spending a lot of time and money to collect this feedback. However, internal incentives are often at odds with collecting accurate service quality and satisfaction data.””
— Ori Faran, CEO of Callvu
Most customer satisfaction surveys ask for ratings of specific recent experiences. When those experiences involve live agents, much of the data collected is about the agent. This data is frequently used to evaluate individual agents and can affect their compensation and job prospects. The survey results indicate that this focus encourages team members to pressure customers to provide artificially high scores.
Consumers are more likely to respond to customer feedback surveys under specific conditions, which can also skew insights about what’s happening on the front line. Among the findings:
64% of respondents said they were more likely to supply a rating if the service was good; 32% said they were more likely to provide a rating if the service was bad. Only 51% said they give an honest rating if the service is ‘mediocre’ – others either don’t give any rating or give one that is higher than they felt the service deserved
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“More than half of American consumers say they have been pressured to give a company’s customer service a better rating than it deserved,” said Callvu Founder and CEO Ori Faran. “Almost half say they were offered some kind of perk in exchange for a high rating, and more than 40% of consumers have been told that their rep would ‘suffer consequences’ if they gave them anything but the highest rating. Companies are spending a lot of time and money to collect this feedback. However, internal incentives are often at odds with collecting accurate service quality and satisfaction data.”
The study suggests that gathering accurate satisfaction data requires a focus on improving the overall customer experience versus identifying and penalizing individuals who deliver sub-par service. When asked what customers believe would deliver real improvements in their service experiences, interest in digital service options was high:
79% of consumers want companies to offer more live chat tools
75% want customer-service reps to be able to share in order to help them resolve issues more quickly
70% want companies to build more self-service digital tools
48% want more AI chatbots to help get them answers
46% want companies to offer proactive services that automatically alert them to potential issues or opportunities