Pointlessness.

I went to a well-known convenience store the other day. I walked around the shop and picked up what I needed to, joined the queue, had a few polite words with the cashier and after paying, made my way to the exit. Before I could leave the shop, however, there was a person standing by the exit with a clipboard. They also had a badge. The clipboard and badge combo was how I knew they were official and had the right to inconvenience shoppers.

They asked for a few minutes of my time to basically rate my experience in the store. I’d bought a loaf of bread and a few other items, so goodness knows what they were expecting. They asked me to rate the service I’d received out of 10. I’d figured everything had been entirely reasonable, so thinking of what I score films I like when writing about them, I figured an 8 was a decent score, reflecting a positive, yet common experience. The immediate response was “Why are you marking them down?”

“I’m not,” I replied, “I thought 8 was a good score.”

“We expect our staff to get 10.”

Many things went through my mind at this point, none of which I said to the person asking my opinion. The first and most oft repeated thought was this: If the only good score you will allow your staff is 10 out of 10, and everything else, up to and including 9, is unacceptable, then what the fuck is the point of marking out of 10? It’s a yes or no answer: was your service of an acceptable standard today?

To get a genuine 10 out of 10 – i.e. a perfect score, they’d have to give me my shopping for free, chuck me a winning lottery ticket on the way out and carry me home on a palanquin. 10 out of 10 should be almost impossible to get. 6-8 out of 10 service when popping to a corner shop is perfectly acceptable. So should I stick with my 8/10 and get the cashier into trouble, or give them a perfect score?

“Suppose I’d better say 10 then,” I responded.

I was asked a few more questions, equally as pointless, to which of course I had no choice but to score 10s for as well. Like most kinds of consumer polling like this then, it’s entirely pointless, and the company will be able to claim something stupid like ‘9 out of 10 customers rate us 10/10 for service!’ when actually it’s complete bullshit.

On the way out I very nearly reverted back to the 8 and gave the reason for ‘marking down’ as being stopped on my way out and asked to take part in a survey that is, at best, stupid and pointless and at worst downright dishonest. But I didn’t. But I will now have a clearer indication as to how big a lie the ‘customer satisfaction’ bollocks that companies use actually is.