Customer feedback tool lets shoppers pass quick judgement

Thursday, 11 April 2019

Before you pay for your goods, a question pops up on the eftpos terminal asking you to rate your shopping experience from '0 to 9'.

You can press 'clear' on the eftpos terminal if you don't want to answer the question, but you have to key in something in order to be able to go on to pay.

A growing number of Kiwi consumers will have experienced that customer feedback system, which has been adopted by retailers including Kathmandu, Nike and Bendon.

But is it a recipe for better customer service, or an irritation for shoppers and a 'Big Brother' for shop workers?

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Avoiding providing feedback is no easier than providing it, so TruRating has a high response rate.

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The company behind the system, Britain's TruRating, says 'plenty more' retailers will adopt it in the coming months and it hoped to talk also to the country's supermarket chains.

Antoinette Laird a spokeswoman Foodstuffs which owns the New World franchise didn't rule that out, describing TruRating as an 'interesting development' and something it could look into.

'We're always on the lookout for ways to improve the shopping experience and for some years now have asked shoppers to rate their store experience via text message,' she said.

The managing director of TruRating's Australian and New Zealand business, Dylan Berrington, said the big advantage of the feedback system was that it had an 88 per cent response rate.

That perhaps reflects the fact that is no faster to press skip than it is to key in a response to the survey question.

Berrington said the software allowed stores to offer a rotating menu of seven questions that they can ask shoppers – one question to each customer.

Five of the questions are standard across its platform, but each retailer can choose the wording of the other two themselves. For example they could ask customers if they were greeted in a friendly manner, he said.

Standard questions include the customer's satisfaction with the service they have received, the shop's product range, whether they felt they got value for money and the 'overall in-store experience'.

The service costs retailers $50 per month per store, with a 'one off' set-up fee of $100 for each store.

TruRating might develop the system in future so it could reliably match customer feedback to the salesperson serving them, Berrington said.

'Further down the track that is something we are looking into, absolutely.'

But it appears some chains are already viewing it as a way to keep tabs on staff, as well as to check how their retail offering stacks up more generally.

Bendon's general manager of retail Joanne Blood is quoted by TruRating as saying the system had given Bendon the tools to 'effectively monitor staff in the field' and their performance against key performance indicators.

She described that as a 'game changer'.

A term has been coined called 'have a nice day syndrome' to describe the insincerity that can arise when service staff feel required to engage in platitudes.

But Berrington didn't believe TruRating would depersonalise interactions been retail staff and shoppers.

Instead, retail staff 'have really embraced TruRating', he said.

Nor did customers find it intrusive, he said.

Kathmandu has been quick to embrace the new customer feedback tool.

'We have done a lot of focus groups with customers and most enjoy it because it is easy and anonymous.'

Kathmandu operations manager Stephen Domancie said it received feedback that some customers did not wish to participate 'however the vast majority provide us insights into their experience'.

The company also saw it as a way to assess the performance of its customer service staff, he said.

'This forms part of a multi-pronged approach towards measuring service experience, along with self-auditing and mystery shops.'

Tali Williams, national secretary of the First Union, which represents shop workers, believed TruRating had pros and cons.

Other customer feedback systems used by the likes of banks and Countdown tended to rely on shoppers emailing feedback and were usually only used when they had something to complain about, she said.

'We do feel a little bit wary about how they end up being used by the industry to discipline and performance-manage people when they don't necessarily build a full picture of what is going on in the workplace.'

While TruRating might make it less likely retail staff would suffer consequences from the occasional grumpy shopper, she was concerned it could put them under extra, constant pressure.

'Perhaps you are already under pump and on top of that every customer is standing there with a finger at button ready to judge.

'Most of the time people want to be genuine and happy and courteous but when we are not it is not always to do with our own personality faults.'

Of course if customers do find the system an imposition, they do have a way to get that message across to retail chains in a way that would be sure to return any inconvenience – which would be to cancel the transaction and pay in cash.