The Problem with Feedback • Hacker News Board

Re: The Problem with Feedback

#41

Post by lozenge » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 9:12 AM UTC

hugh-avherald wrote: post #15

iaabtpbtpnn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I give Uber drivers 5 stars unless they did something egregiously horrible, because I know that if I give 4 stars, and enough people do the same, that driver will be banned from the platform, even though most people would say that 4 out of 5 ain't bad. Similarly, if I ever actually take the time to fill out a receipt survey from a retail store, I just give full marks across the board, because I know that otherwise so…

I'm surprised Uber doesn't add a remark like "Your rating for will be compared to your ratings of other drivers." beneath the rating. This could (a) encourage people to give 1-5 star ratings more uniformly and (b) discourage constantly giving 5-star ratings. Depending on how much they wanted to get more uniformly distributed ratings, they could (a) make the rider rating depend on the uniformity of the ratings given o…

They don't want uniform ratings. They can either show "average rating 4.7" for a driver (assuming everybody is rating 4 or 5 because they don't want the driver to be fired), or "approval rating 70%". 4.7 of course sounds better.

Re: The Problem with Feedback

#42

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 10:03 AM UTC

maroonblazer wrote: post #25

orev wrote: post #12

One issue I have is when feedback is clearly being collected with intent to manipulate, like with a cable company. They ask you to specifically rate the individual person, and you know that the person sitting in a call center all day might lose their job because of a bad rating. You might give a good rating even if you had bad service (or at least you’ll give a 5 instead of a 3). Then the company turns around and adv…

>and you know that the person sitting in a call center all day might lose their job because of a bad rating. It's more likely they'd lose their job if they consistently receive bad ratings, from several different customers. And they should. Given how much it costs to bring on new employees it's more likely that one bad review results in a consultation, additional training, etc.

The employees are disempowered to actually fix the problems. I'd suggest everyone read http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/category/callcentre/ (start at the bottom)

Re: The Problem with Feedback

#43

Post by brianmcc » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 12:42 PM UTC

iambateman wrote: post #24

Whenever I ask for feedback with friends, I say “on a scale of 1-7” which has the effect of being both a tad off-putting and rather memorable. Assuming I care how they respond, there are a few benefits: - people are conditioned to rate at the extremities with a 10-point scale, whereas they tend to use the whole spectrum more when the scale is reduced to seven points. - most people don’t realize that “1-10” has no tru…

Curious about why you ask for feedback with friends? Do you mean to get a rating of a movie or restaurant or something - or are you looking for feedback on your friendship performance! :-)

Re: The Problem with Feedback

#44

Post by iambateman » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

brianmcc wrote: post #43

iambateman wrote: post #24

Whenever I ask for feedback with friends, I say “on a scale of 1-7” which has the effect of being both a tad off-putting and rather memorable. Assuming I care how they respond, there are a few benefits: - people are conditioned to rate at the extremities with a 10-point scale, whereas they tend to use the whole spectrum more when the scale is reduced to seven points. - most people don’t realize that “1-10” has no tru…

Curious about why you ask for feedback with friends? Do you mean to get a rating of a movie or restaurant or something - or are you looking for feedback on your friendship performance! :-)

Baha good question. Movies and restaurants is it.

I don’t frequently ask friends to rate their interactions with me. ;)

Perhaps I should.

Re: The Problem with Feedback

#45

Post by jschwartzi » Wed, Dec 05, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

maroonblazer wrote: post #25

orev wrote: post #12

One issue I have is when feedback is clearly being collected with intent to manipulate, like with a cable company. They ask you to specifically rate the individual person, and you know that the person sitting in a call center all day might lose their job because of a bad rating. You might give a good rating even if you had bad service (or at least you’ll give a 5 instead of a 3). Then the company turns around and adv…

>and you know that the person sitting in a call center all day might lose their job because of a bad rating. It's more likely they'd lose their job if they consistently receive bad ratings, from several different customers. And they should. Given how much it costs to bring on new employees it's more likely that one bad review results in a consultation, additional training, etc.

My girlfriend works in retail, and every month there's someone who gives her a bad survey because she was following company policy or because the customer didn't listen to her when she was advising them. For example, she worked with a couple to port their phones over from AT&T despite advising them that their phones may not work on her cell network. After all was said and done she got a bad survey because their phones ended up not working well on her network. And her manager even caught them outright lying in the survey about how the interaction went down. She was still punished for that survey.

Customer satisfaction surveys can be a useful tool, but they're often applied as a blunt instrument on employees who have no control over the situation the customer is dissatisfied with. It's basically a lazy copout as opposed to actually fixing company policy. I tend to ignore them unless it's to give good feedback.

A more humane system would take the feedback and then interview the employee in question and their management to understand what the root problem is. But the management organizations that use these surveys are almost never humane. Plainly, they don't give a shit about any of their employees.