After a purchase, it’s common to receive a survey. Businesses are seeking input to see how they can improve, or how the customer feels about their company. It’s your chance to express your opinion. Corporations place a great deal of weight on surveys which creates lots of responsibility for the customer, so careful thought demands to be given.
Surveys can be about facilities, logistics, or salespeople. The question you should ask before diving in is… What is this survey pertaining to? There’s something the business wants to know. By understanding what they are evaluating your answers will be useful.
When it comes to a salesperson’s survey, customers do not know how to answer them correctly. A survey of the person who worked with you is not the time to complain about the organization. You would be criticizing the wrong person for your unhappiness. Here’s what happens.
The salesperson’s survey is going to his manager. It does not reach the management or ownership of the business. Unfortunately, many firms will ask questions on the salesperson’s survey about their experience overall but don’t be fooled. Whatever you answer will affect only the salesperson.
If you are upset with your last visit, don’t fault the person you are working with now. When you do, you are blaming your current rep for what happened. Or if you think it took too long for the service department to get your item fixed don’t criticize the salesperson. Unless he’s the one fixing your item, he doesn’t have control over the amount of time it took. He also doesn’t have control over how the cashier treated you. Your opinion only gets to the manager of the person on the survey, not the department who was at fault. You are wasting your breath; in this case the ink.
Stay on topic. The survey is about the person that helped you. Your misuse of filling out a survey can harm the wrong person. A harmful survey can affect their pay. For instance, if their normal commission is 25%, it can be cut to 15%. Another example is your delivery was late or your items didn’t come in on time. It’s not the salesperson’s fault. They weren’t the ones delivering it to you or the one who picked up the item.
Here’s an example I heard from a single mother with two children. She sold a $187.00 chair to a customer, telling him the sale was final. Upon taking it home, the purchaser decided he didn’t like it. The sale was final, but he wanted to return it. After the store told him no, he blamed the salesperson stating she lied to him so the store would allow him to return it, which he did. The customer filled out the survey on the salesperson and rated her zero. On a scale from 1 to 10 a zero is horrific. But, the customer was happy because he was able to take the chair back.
The outcome for the salesperson was devastating. As expected, she did lose the commission of $3.37. Okay. The score of zero meant she did not get her $1000.00 bonus that month, all because of one person. Now you see the seriousness of filling out a survey correctly.
A problem with surveys is they don’t have a key explaining what the scores mean. Some scales are from 1 to 5, or 1 to 10. Without understanding the ratings how can you accurately pick a number? There is a practice widely used and that is; if you score anything lower than the highest rating the salesperson fails. Businesses count on customers not to know this so the company doesn’t have to pay the salesperson as much.
You might notice when you take your car in to be serviced the advisor presses you to take the survey and give him a perfect score. He knows that anything lower than the highest number will affect him negatively. He can lose money, privileges, promotion, even his job. If you are upset with how your car was washed, don’t rate the advisor who didn’t wash the car. Anything on that survey goes against the service professional.
Here is the company’s view from your survey. Using a system of 1 to 10 for their rating, it’s not uncommon for the scale to represent:
A score of 9 or 10 is good – it helps the salesperson
A score of 7 or 8 doesn’t hurt or help the salesperson
A score of below 7 is like giving the salesperson a zero
My practice is to give salespeople the highest score. I don’t want to be the cause of taking food away from a family. If I have something to complain about I write it in the comments. I handle a problem with a salesperson by making comments on the review so their manager will notice, but I still give them the best rating. It takes fifteen surveys with the highest score to outweigh one bad one. Conversely, if you are happy with your experience, take the survey and help them out.
Receiving a survey is an enormous responsibility, so take it seriously. Sure there are times when a salesperson isn’t at their best, but do you want to be someone who takes money away from them and their family? As a customer, I don’t want that burden placed on me; nor should you.
