In many organizations, this is the time of year when end of year personnel reviews are being generated. We all know the drill. Pull data, compare performance, difficult conversations, and finally compensation impact. It got me to thinking about what if customers did the same thing to our firms.
I hear people out there. We do that, they say. We do voice of the customer surveys. We do NPS scoring. We ask “how am I doing”. But is that really the same?
Imagine if a personnel review went that way. “I am happy to tell you that for the year I am giving you a 4 on a 5 point scale. Congrats”. But what would that tell the employee? That they are doing well, but could do better. What would the need to do in order to get a higher rating? They would have no idea.
VOC type surveys are much the same. “Congrats firm that I do business with. You are a 4. Have a good day.” What does that mean? How could I do better? Will you stay a customer? If not, why not? It really answers very few questions. Yet that is the state of many of our customer satisfaction surveys.
What if we tried to make it more of a year end review? Ask for detailed reasons for what customers think. Firms used to do exit interviews, but very few do that any more. Do we dare to ask the really hard questions about how we are doing and what we could do to do better?
Just a thought. Now back to end of year reviews.
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