On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Sullivan, Justin wrote:
Customer feedback is EXTREMELY important to us. I really can't stress how vital it really is. You should *NEVER* get "okay" support from Network Appliance.. It should always be AT LEAST "good".
I've been called by surveyors on the phone (for other vendors), and when I rate something as "okay" they ask "What was wrong?" Well, nothing was wrong; it was just an ordinary call! Then I have to explain what *I* think is good, because apparently they think everything should be "excellent," including as was mentioned here, just sending out a new disk. It's pretty hard to be "excellent" at that! (Unless there is a T-shirt in the box, too.)
Perhaps the rating terms could be links to what you consider "okay" or "good" or whatever. In my book, good and okay are pretty much synonymous, but you think otherwise. No offense intended; it's just people interpret these terms differently. If we know what you mean by each term, we can more accurately classify the call.
E.g.:
Please rate the tech support person for this call:
Excellent () Good () Neutral () Fair () Poor ()
Click on each of these and it brings you to a definitions page:
Excellent/wow: Service above the call of duty. You find yourself saying, "Wow, now *that's* service. Fan-fscking-tastic!" You could ask for no better, except perhaps receiving a free T-shirt for being a good customer.
Good/okay: Call was handled expeditously and was resolved in less time than expected. Person called with updates as necessary and kept me in the loop on any progress, or lack of progress.
Neutral/eh: Call was handled properly and was resolved on time, plus or minus a bit. Could have expected better, could have expected worse. Middle-of-the-road.
Fair/kinda stunk: Something slipped and the resolution was incorrect, or required more callbacks than expected. Wasn't kept informed of progress. Perhaps the process needs improvement or the person had a bad hair day.
Poor/sucked big time: Call could have been handled better by a roomful of monkeys at keyboards. Person should not be allowed to breed. Will be selling all my NetApp stock by day's end.
That's pretty much how I approximately and humorously view ratings like this, or 1-5 ratings. "Grade inflation" IMHO completely ruins any faith I have in ratings; most calls should fall in the middle rating to allow for the extreme calls to fall in a nice bell curve distribution around it. Descriptions should be worded to that goal, and adjusted on a periodic basis if the curve tends to skew towards one side, more than likely the "excellent" side. ;)
Until next time...
The Mathworks, Inc. 508-647-7000 x7792 3 Apple Hill Drive, Natick, MA 01760-2098 508-647-7001 FAX tmerrill@mathworks.com http://www.mathworks.com ---