How much do positive surveys help customer service reps?

[CrankyJay]

Whenever I have a call or online chat I always like to help out the person who helped me, especially if they were great.

I was just curious how much these things help get them recognition from their manager or company.

Anyone with firsthand experience?

Alternately, has someone screwed you with a bad review? Do they matter at all?

 

[entremet]

Never. Too impatient.

 

[super-famicom]

As someone who worked in retail for a couple of years, they absolutely do help in getting recognition. Bosses like that and if they like you a lot, they'd be more willing to give you a schedule you want. If you get bad surveys, you'll get called out on it.

I always do a survey if I have to call customer service and they were nice to me.

 

[Fat4all]

during the short period when i worked at gamestop i remember the manager being a huge stickler about those surveys getting pushed, he'd say that the higher-ups valued the shit out of them

getting less than a perfect score would be brought up as well

"hmm, you only got a 4 instead of a 5 on this, what do you think you could do to improve in that area?"

to me it just seems like a lot of bullshit

 

[Squarehard]

They matter a ton, as, if the score is not the best in every category, they actually will get asked about it or brought up by a supervisor.

Best scores across the board, they'll help, but it's going to take a lot more of them to actually matter.

Anything that isn't perfect, it'll immediately affect them, even if it's like a 4 out of 5, the supervisor, manager, or whoever will question them why they didn't do better, or what they can do for improvement.

 

[Border]

They help a whole lot. Don't bother unless you intend to give them a 10/10 on everything.

Many many call centers regard anything less than a perfect score as worthless, and employees are only rated by the number of perfect scores they receive.

 

[CrankyJay]

They matter a ton, as, if the score is not the best in every category, they actually will get asked about it or brought up by a supervisor.

Best scores across the board, they'll help, but it's going to take a lot more of them to actually matter.

Anything that isn't perfect, it'll immediately affect them, even if it's like a 4 out of 5, the supervisor, manager, or whoever will question them why they didn't do better, or what they can do for improvement.

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Do they read the comments?

 

[TaterTots]

Places I worked at would give you candy or a gift card if you got enough positive reviews. Negative surveys can be really damning at some places.

I use to work for a large insurance provider and they took those surveys super seriously. I remember there were a bunch of us that were new and when we got our first negative survey we got verbal warnings, even if you were super nice on the call and did all you could. If you got another one within 90 days you got a write up and the next would be termination. A ton of people, myself included, quit eventually because the whole system was ridiculous. If you got 3 calls within a certain amount of time from pissy people in bad moods they could get you fired for nothing.

The bad far outweighed the good at that job. The majority of places aren't that crazy about it and will just talk to you about it or look at it as a coaching opportunity.

 

[super-famicom]

They help a whole lot. Don't bother unless you intend to give them a 10/10 on everything.

Many many call centers regard anything less than a perfect score as worthless, and employees are only rated by the number of perfect scores they receive.

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Yup, my manager only cared about 9s or 10s, and anything below 5. 6-8 was meaningless.

 

[Fat4all]

Do they read the comments?

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yes

 

[iWannaHat]

Depending on the job, it is one of the metrics that their job depends on. Especially for warranty centers or things like that.

 

[Squarehard]

Do they read the comments?

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Yep, comments are always the best actually, along with perfect scores.

If you get comments on a perfect score survey, it basically will stand out more than one without comments.

 

[Undeniablybiased]

Depends on the company I guess. One I worked for had a lot of good bonuses tied to it. Some other I worked for didn't, so...

The one thing is will say. Don't bother doing one if you aren't gonna give it a 10/10. Every place I've worked for that had something like this heavily scaled their scoring system so anything that wasn't like a 9 or 10 shot everyone's score down like crazy and prevented bonuses and stuff. Like, if you have a real complaint, go ahead, but if you're doing it as a favor to the employee, don't waste anyone's time with any 8/10. It'd be better to not have the review at all so it wouldn't hurt their average.

 

[Tatsu91]

Whenever I have a call or online chat I always like to help out the person who helped me, especially if they were great.

I was just curious how much these things help get them recognition from their manager or company.

Anyone with firsthand experience?

Alternately, has someone screwed you with a bad review? Do they matter at all?

Click to shrink...

gives me a 100 dollar bonus per check if i get enough good surveys and less bad surveys.

 

[Deleted member 19533]

A company I worked for did this. Scale 1-10. Anything less than a 10, you'd get in trouble for. Yes, people used to get in trouble for getting 9s.

 

[Teh_Lurv]

They help a whole lot. Don't bother unless you intend to give them a 10/10 on everything.

Many many call centers regard anything less than a perfect score as worthless, and employees are only rated by the number of perfect scores they receive.

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My local supermarket had, for a time, small flyers on the checkout aisles that nudged customers to please, please, PLEASE give all 10s on the survey. I have no idea what higher-ups see in those surveys, when employees and managers skew the numbers and anything below a 10 is horrible.

 

[Slayven]

They help them keep their jobs, that is about it

 

[Sinistar]

Yup, my manager only cared about 9s or 10s, and anything below 5. 6-8 was meaningless.

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Thirding here, worked in a call center for a major ISP for 4 years a long time ago, every survey was important, and anything less than a 10/10 was held against you.

 

[Give]

I manage a customer support team for a tech company and I can say that these absolutely matter. We outsource this work to one of the big BPOs, but even we can see individual customer satisfaction scores down to the agent level. Internal recognition at the BPOs relies heavily on these kinds of metrics as well as handle time and volume and eventually they bubble their way up to us. Most scales I've seen run from 1-5 and anything <4 gets scored as bad, so even a neutral interaction isn't good.

*Edit* I forgot to mention that comments are really important too. They read these fucking things out loud in like end of quarter award ceremonies.

You see pretty low survey responses in general so any extra good rating will definitely help, similarly just a few bad ratings can send you over the edge. Since I've started working in this field, I take every opportunity I get to leave good feedback.

 

[Hecht]

A lot of little bonuses are tied to getting 10/10 scores. For individuals and the store/branch. But if you aren't gonna give a 10, don't bother.

 

[RedMercury]

They matter a bunch, zendesk shows satisfaction metrics along with stuff like time spent on each ticket and % resolved at first touch. Seems like a part of working in the customer service field in tech is just accepting the micromanagement and heavy emphasis on metrics. Satisfaction score plays into both my personal and our division bonus.

Our company just does good/bad so it at least does away with the room for nuance, but people can mark even favorable outcomes as bad or stuff you had no control over so positive feedback is really important to help negate that, especially when people are way more likely to give feedback on a negative experience.

 

[Renegade King]

Customer Satisfaction Surveys can have a huge impact for representatives. Any additional comments or information you give in those, we read them through and through.

Also, be aware of the actual survey questions. Sometimes the survey will give you a different score to give to the rep, as opposed to the overall company. Depending on the company, the rep won't get into any trouble if you give them a great score, and comment about how they were still professional, or did a great job and then comment about the over all poor policy being crap or something. If enough of those get sent, changes can happen.

Also, its not unheard of, to get called back from survey. I've made call backs, when a change was made, that would have fixed their issue, or even with correct information that would have helped the caller.

People say to vote with your dollar, but man, I'd say filling out those surveys can have a much quicker impact.

 

[HylianSeven]

Yeah, they do because basically they lose hours or get in trouble if they get anything below a perfect score. Just put perfect score no matter what. It's really stupid.

I make it my personal mission to always put a rant on those things under the "comments" about how those surveys are dumb.

 

[totowhoa]

They help a ton! Director of Customer Success for a B2B company here. I can't speak for B2C but I'm sure it's similar!

Every day do we a short debrief in small group formats across the team to talk about our day. It involves multiple topics. But part of it is humble bragging about great scores and why you got them, and also sharing negative scores to the group so that we can all provide ideas on how to make a customer like that happy next time - even if you gave them right information and got a bad score. The point isn't to dwell on the scores - it's to learn, grow and improve! Long term trends of high or low scores do have material impact on an employee's standing and compensation, but it's only one of many inputs.

These scores are really helpful for both boosting confidence for employees and signaling that they're doing something right, and providing real feedback to them that might impact the whole CS team!

 

[Cloud-Hidden]

Hi. I manage a large CS team.

CSAT surveys, at least for us, are absolutely vital. They matter. They're recorded. Comments are read and used to direct future training and remediation. Positive scores are one aspect of an agent's qualification for monthly incentive, which can net them a few hundred extra dollars at the end of every single month.

If you have a good experience with a CS agent, and you have an opportunity to leave a survey, please do so. It's a small gesture that makes their lives better. Keep in mind... They generally spend 40 hours a week trying to help people who are upset with them before the conversation even starts. It's hard work.

 

[Deleted member 4852]

I would recommend actively not responding to any surveys. Companies indirectly emotionally blackmail customers into giving good reviews to help out the low level workers and then use those reviews to downplay issues of company policy that low level workers don't control. It's totally a personal call though, as my suggestion only works if most people follow it

 

[Renegade King]

These scores are really helpful for both boosting confidence for employees and signaling that they're doing something right, and providing real feedback to them that might impact the whole CS team!

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This is also a big one. I know there are a lot of business that provide the comments customers made to those agents. If you want to make someone's' day better, putting in a compliment in feedback can be great.

Had an agent with a top 10 feedback, with current month and all time. With the number one being along the lines that the customer would let the agent fuck his daughter because of how good the service was.

 

[SABO.]

Customer Service Reps need to meet an Average Handling Time, and are QA'd on their calls.

Surveys are cool and its nice if a Rep gets amazing feedback from a customer, but nobody is going to get a promotion or sacked based on customer feedback unless its a consistent and constant theme.

Keeping calls within the AHT and getting an almost perfect QA score is more important. Call Centres main focus is meeting Service Level Agreements which can be a combination of various things. Customer Satisfaction is usually not a significant player because you can't really bill for Customer Satisfaction.

I utilize our companies call centre to run outbound campaigns to drive revenue. The reps that pull in the most revenue, I make sure to flag it with the Call Centre Director and my Director. I've seen some of my favourite agents move on to senior rep roles or team leader roles as a result.

Internal is more important than External. A Customer Service Rep doesn't really give a shit if a customer thinks they're amazing if the leaders within the organization don't even know they exist.

 

[oni_saru]

My sister worked as a service advisor at Honda and surveys mattered a lot to the point that people would get fired if they had an average of 85% or below.

She worked in one place that wanted at least 92% 😬

Also survey scores affected pay

 

[totowhoa]

I would recommend actively not responding to any surveys. Companies indirectly emotionally blackmail customers into giving good reviews to help out the low level workers and then use those reviews to downplay issues of company policy that low level workers don't control. It's totally a personal call though, as my suggestion only works if most people follow it

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I honestly don't know understand what you're saying here. I've worked in CS for years. Companies give incentives for good reviews...?

 

[TRS8088]

My friend worked minimum wage at a grocery store and getting the very rare one filled out would result in a gift card, so I try to remember to fill these out using the receipt code. But uh I probably don't remember the person at all, 99% of clerk interactions are exactly the same, and I'm only ever filling out effusive praise or the highest marks, so I'm not really sure how useful that information is to the company.

Feels like a lot of it is a way to artificially keep wages low by having a ridiculously high standard tied to raises when the reality is most customers barely remember anything about their interaction. I'm not sure what the person at the Verizon store could really do to make my experience AMAZING beyond giving me the winning lottery numbers. I dunno, the whole thing is side-eye worthy for me.

 

[Darkmaigle]

They 100% matter most companies use Net Promoter which is why 9-10 are all that matter. Anything less and somebody is prolly gonna get talked to and yes comments also get read. We often used those to dispute our scores if the CX was way out of line.

Net promoter score - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[blame space]

they definitely matter, and you should do them positively if you're so inclined, but they're also just another thing for them to be held accountable for. just know that if you do it it should be positive, and if you have a bad experience and want to talk to a manager about it maybe be better at social interaction.

 

[totowhoa]

This is also a big one. I know there are a lot of business that provide the comments customers made to those agents. If you want to make someone's' day better, putting in a compliment in feedback can be great.

Had an agent with a top 10 feedback, with current month and all time. With the number one being along the lines that the customer would let the agent fuck his daughter because of how good the service was.

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The software we use actually makes it difficult to see negative scores / comments and easy to see positive ones, which I love. It's still important to view critical feedback, but it's best to do it when you're in the headspace for that.

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

Having worked retail, they help. Good comments can be called out by the bosses.

Ever since knowing of how the system is stacked against the employee that only 9 and truly only 10's are worth it, when given a survey after I get help calling into some type of customer service, I rank only 10/10 or 5/5.

Especially cause if they happen to get an angry hopeless customer out of their control they can get dinged so hard for bad surveys.

It's called a net promoter score and it takes several perfect scores to make up one bad survey of anything 5/10 and under since they bring down the average so hard and scores like 7-8, are neutral, so near worthless.

 

[Joe117]

It helps a lot. When I worked retail I was getting a lot of slack in scheduling and stuff from my boss. Customer service hated me, but couldn't do anything because I was good with customers so they'd leave positive reviews, and my boss liked me more than all of them because that feedback. That job wore me down fast though. But yeah, positive feedback on surveys matters.

 

[Apathy]

They only help if you're giving them like anywhere from 80-100% depending on the company (so only do them if you give them 100% just to be safe)

You'd be surprised, if you give like a 7, you know better than average but not the best, that can actually hurt reps.

At the company I work for, I know that the bonus payout for the reps has a component that is tied to the surveys. So it may be the difference between an employee getting a 200 dollar bonus or zero

 

[Deleted member 4852]

I honestly don't know understand what you're saying here. I've worked in CS for years. Companies give incentives for good reviews...?

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Thats my point. Everybody knows that CS representatives are financially rewarded for good reviews and many times fired for getting to many bad reviews. People generally get that the first line or two of CS agents dont make the policy, they just follow it and are hesitant to give a bad review. So what often happens is that even though company policy treated them like shit they will give the CS rep a good review because the CS rep was nice but then the company sends a press release that says something along the lines of "according to the customer surveys, we are the best at respond to our customers needs" even thought their policies are wildly anti-consumer.

At my second job, I was cross-training as a CS rep and was dealing with an angry customer. They asked to see the manager and even though I had followed every protocol, the store manager came out and said that he was sorry for my refusal to accept the return and he would gladly do it. That was my life lesson that many businesses use front line CS workers to actually systemically provide worse customer service by using frontline workers as human sheilds

 

[blame space]

if good customer reviews or nps numbers help keep people off your back, it's good. if a subordinate has ANY kind of ammo to fire back at management if they call their work into question, it's good. is basically about data, which is why you should only do it if your service was good.

 

[smurfx]

i imagine a lot of weight is put into good or bad reviews as the person giving the review cared enough to bother giving them in the first place. most people usually ignore the survey call.

 

[Inugami]

They are valued way too heavily, and anything short of perfect is considered a negative review. It's absolutely crushing to get a positive review and then have the final score be 4 out of 5, because that's going to be a mark against you.

I'm glad I don't work in environments like that anymore, but it's absolutely why I won't do a survey unless I know I can honestly give a perfect ranking.

 

[Tanerian]

I've worked in restaurants where the surveys don't matter at all. Positive ones are posted on some stupid grade-school-esque board in the back as a stupid adult version of gold stars.


I've also worked in a restaurant where our schedules/hours given/worked are almost entirely based off of our survey scores. Getting bad reviews, or not getting a higher % of surveys compared to co-workers meant you got the shit shifts and the shit sections, and less hours than other employees.

If they are not too cumbersome, I tend to fill them out, just for that reason.

 

[jwhit28]

It's everything for the positions from work agencies that are juggling customers for a few different companies. It's the main way they are measured and it takes 3-4 good ones to cancel out a bad one.

 

[Socivol]

It's a pretty big deal. One of our OKRs is an NPS score of a certain amount. I hate it when I see a score come across from someone who barely uses our product and then rate it low, especially if there is no written feedback.

 

[hateradio]

Remember if you really like someone to give them a 9 or a 10/10.

if good customer reviews or nps numbers help keep people off your back, it's good. if a subordinate has ANY kind of ammo to fire back at management if they call their work into question, it's good. is basically about data, which is why you should only do it if your service was good.

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NPS is stupid, but what are you going to do.

 

[totowhoa]

Thats my point. Everybody knows that CS representatives are financially rewarded for good reviews and many times fired for getting to many bad reviews. People generally get that the first line or two of CS agents dont make the policy, they just follow it and are hesitant to give a bad review. So what often happens is that even though company policy treated them like shit they will give the CS rep a good review because the CS rep was nice but then the company sends a press release that says something along the lines of "according to the customer surveys, we are the best at respond to our customers needs" even thought their policies are wildly anti-consumer.

At my second job, I was cross-training as a CS rep and was dealing with an angry customer. They asked to see the manager and even though I had followed every protocol, the store manager came out and said that he was sorry for my refusal to accept the return and he would gladly do it. That was my life lesson that many businesses use front line CS workers to actually systemically provide worse customer service by using frontline workers as human sheilds

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I see, thanks for elaborating. That's a terrible way to use CSAT scores and I'd hope it's not the norm.

That said, a manager approving something a front line employee didn't isn't usually bad (in my experience). That's usually a shield for inappropriate returns / refunds / etc. Only edge case situations should get through. I have stuff escalated to me and most times I side with my front line staff and deny what the customer wants, but sometimes they have an edge case point and we grant those exceptions case by case.

 

[TheCthultist]

They're extremely important... we just don't ever actually expect people to fill them out.

 

[Josh5890]

As someone who used to be in that role, I can tell you it matters. A great deal.

 

[djplaeskool]

A lot.
They may be tied to performance reviews, contract stipulations, compensation and other bonuses, etc.
Also, for the vast majority of customer-facing outlets, feedback is genuinely helpful in identifying pain points and improving service.
Please, if possible, complete CSAT surveys when offered.
Thank you.

 

[kirby_fox]

Only matters if the company cares.

I get people happy I'm on the other end of the phone but I get a thumbs up and a socially distant pat on the back. And the occasional candy bar from my manager.