The Importance of Feedback – Beyond Ratings and Reviews

Kimberly J. Lewis: In order to truly become part of the global business environment, your business needs to constantly change and adapt to a variety of new constants. Welcome to Leadership Beyond Borders with Kimberly J. Lewis. We will help you navigate these changes on today’s program and help you think beyond the boundaries. The opportunities are limitless if you are prepared.

Now, here’s your host, Kimberly J. Lewis.

Hello, welcome to Leadership Beyond Borders. I’m Kimberly Lewis, your host, and this series is in cooperation with Cinda Virtual, which brings you thought leaders and business stories from all over the world. You can learn more about Cinda on www.cinda.org.

Now, this show not only brings you thought leaders from all over the world, but we also have listeners from all over the world. So good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you may be listening from today.

If you’re new to the series, let me tell you that this series is about leadership beyond borders, about the impact globalization, digital transition, and the connected world are having on our organizations, and what this impact is doing to the kind of leadership we need to drive long-term success in today’s economy.

In this series, we talk about everything from business issues such as artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and data protection regulations to leadership issues such as gender balance, business values, and ethics that may impact your organization or your individual career.

Please listen to us live every Tuesday at 3 p.m. Pacific Time. And if you miss us live, don’t worry, because we are on every major podcast platform, from Apple to Stitcher and all over the net. Just look for Leadership Beyond Borders.

Also drop me a mail and let me know what you’d like to hear about on this show. You can email me at leadershipbeyondborders@gmail.com.

If you’re in a leadership position, or aspire to be in one, regardless of whether your business is international or local, make sure you join us each week and we’ll make sure that you take away something useful for either your business or yourself.

Now on to today’s episode.

You know, today we’re going to be talking about a subject that I’m really quite interested in, because I’m one of those people who leaves customer feedback everywhere. I don’t care if it’s on ratings or reviews. If I get a survey mailed to me, I pretty much do this all the time.

And why do I do it? Because I feel customer feedback is important. And when I do it, I think I’m giving the business information, insights, issues, and input about my experience with their company or product. I’m hoping this provides information that can help guide improvements in the customer experience, or encourage them to keep doing what they’re doing right. Because it’s not just about improvements. It’s also about positive feedback.

Now, giving customer feedback can also be tiring. Sometimes I get long surveys that seem to go on forever, and I find myself struggling to decide if the experience was 4 stars or 5 stars. But there is 1 thing I always wonder about when I do this. What are businesses actually doing with this feedback?

Our guest today has found technology to help customers like me give feedback in a more consistent and easier way, while giving businesses data they can use to ensure they give their customers a positive customer experience.

Our guest today is Adam Alfia, a serial entrepreneur and founder and managing director of Real Time Feedback. Real Time Feedback is an award-winning customer engagement platform that allows customers and employees in stores, venues, and companies to give feedback instantly and instantly communicate with management. By using QR codes, customers, guests, and employees can easily let management know not only about issues and concerns they have, but also recognition and other important information.

Adam is a big customer service nut and can’t stand when companies deliver a subpar experience. He hopes that feedback will help companies learn more about customer experiences as they happen and pay attention to the right issues.

Adam graduated from SMU in only 2.5 years on academic scholarship, then started a European auto repair shop motivated by a business plan assigned by his professor. Within 5 years, he expanded the business to 4 locations and sold them all in 2005 for $7.5 million, paid out over 3 years.

So Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam Alfia: You know, it’s kind of exciting to have somebody on the show that also cares about feedback because it is kind of 1 of my pet peeves.

Kimberly J. Lewis: And so, you know, you’re a serial entrepreneur. Was this passion about feedback why you wanted to start looking into technology around it?

Adam Alfia: Yeah, exactly.

The other thing I did after I sold the auto repair shops was start a company called Maestro that is still in business. We have a national contract with 4 auto manufacturers, and it’s sort of like OnStar, where you push a button in the car and you get a live agent. We do that for Nissan, Mitsubishi, Subaru, and Infiniti.

With those brands, whenever somebody calls and has an experience with 1 of our call center agents, and I’m sure you have over the years called customer service for a business, right off the bat, within the first 3 or 4 words that agent says, you know whether you’re about to have a bad experience or a good experience just from the tone. You can hear people smile.

So since 2005, I’ve been really focused on making sure we deliver beautiful experiences when people call our call center, and that when they hang up the phone they go, “Wow, that was really, really a good experience, and I can’t wait to talk to them again.”

Having that kind of mindset, when I go and interact with businesses, whether it’s picking up the phone and calling customer service or physically being in the store, and I see the way people interact with customers, it drives me crazy. The art of caring has really died down in the last 6 or 7 years, for numerous reasons in my opinion.

But when I see that, I know the owner or manager of that business probably really cares about the experience. There just isn’t always a good way to communicate both bad and good experiences to that manager in an easy format. So that’s why we built Feedback. It’s probably the most fun I’ve had working in my career.

Kimberly J. Lewis: I really like what you just said, the art of caring, because that really says it. You’re absolutely right. You call 1 of those call centers and in 2 words you know if it’s going to be good or bad.

So with that experience behind you in the call center business, you start this technology. But let’s talk more generally. You said that over the last 6 years things have changed. What has changed in the customer journey? Why has it changed? Why have we lost the art of caring?

Adam Alfia: Several reasons.

In the golden years of customer service, whether you were having a bad day or not, think of the Disney experience. They didn’t care what kind of day you were having. You were expected to put on a smiling face, speak nicely, and make people feel like you cared that they were doing business with you.

I think now that so many things have gone online, and online purchasing has really dominated everything, a lot has changed. And I also think the younger generation, who grew up without as much face-to-face communication, has contributed to it. Reading facial cues, reading body language, and understanding how someone is feeling are important skills.

If a customer shows up at a grocery store and they’re standing in front of the cashier, you can often tell if they’re frustrated or in a hurry. But many employees don’t react any differently. They’re just doing their job and they want to get out of there. They’re doing their 9 to 5 and going home.

So when you see employees who really shine above and beyond, who interact with you and say, “Hey, how’s it going? How’s your day?” and genuinely try to make you feel special for being there, they really stand out. But much of the younger generation just doesn’t always have that skill set of making people feel comfortable.

I’ve got 6 kids, and I’m originally from Israel. My parents, growing up, if we went to restaurants and had bad service, it was always a spectacle. My mom would call the manager over and, in her broken English, demand that we get another meal or something fixed. So I grew up with that.

I did sort of the same thing. If I got bad service, I’d raise my hand and say I needed to speak to a manager. My kids grew up with that too. But when they go out with their friends, and they’re having a subpar experience, and my daughter says, “Can I speak to the manager?” all her friends say, “What are you doing?” They’re petrified.

And she says, “I’m calling over the manager. You’re all complaining about your meals. We still haven’t gotten half our food yet. I’m going to let the manager know.” But they’re embarrassed. They’d rather just not come back or leave a negative review. Meanwhile, she’s saying, “No, the manager needs to know. If I’m getting subpar service, I don’t want to pay for meals I’m not enjoying.”

Kimberly J. Lewis: That’s such a great example. I have to laugh because I just had my 11-year-old niece here for the summer in Europe, and I would do the same thing. If something was wrong, I’d say something, and she’d say, “Oh no, this is so embarrassing.”

So what happened here? Is it that we haven’t learned to talk to each other? Is it because of all the other technology, and kids are growing up on iPhones and chats, and they can’t read body language? Do you think that has something to do with it?

Adam Alfia: I think it really has a lot to do with anxiety. They get anxiety from being in a confrontational situation face to face with another person. We call them keyboard warriors. Put them behind a keyboard, where they’re not interacting face to face, and they’ll tell you everything they think is wrong with your business. But ask them in person, and it’s a different story.

So I own a chain of restaurants as well, and in Dallas we had a mandate that a manager had to touch every table before a customer left. “Hey, I’m the manager, just checking in.” And it’s happened to me too. Even if the food or experience isn’t great, when the manager asks, I’ll sometimes still say “fine” because I may be with friends or business associates and I don’t want to be that person complaining.

It really matters how you catch the customer. If they’re in the middle of a meal and a manager suddenly appears and says, “How’s everything?” they’re not always prepared to go into confrontation mode. They kind of got caught off guard.

But if you give the customer an opportunity to tell you about their experience when they’re ready, in a digital format, they’re much more likely to be honest and tell you how you can improve. And what Feedback really does is not just collect feedback. It allows the business to fix that experience in real time while the customer is still there. That’s really the difference.

Kimberly J. Lewis: And that’s important, and we’re going to get into that.

But first, I just want to touch on ratings and reviews. You know, we have all these star systems now, whether it’s Amazon or Google or whatever. I like them, but I don’t find them completely effective because even as a customer I struggle. Is it 4 stars or 5 stars? Is it 3 or 4?

What’s your opinion on these kinds of rating systems?

Adam Alfia: The good thing about star ratings is that they’re quick and easy. The bad thing is that they usually don’t tell you what’s wrong or how to fix it.

And if you’ve bought anything recently on Amazon, you know that some manufacturers now offer people gift cards if they leave a 5-star review. I just bought something on Amazon and got a letter from the manufacturer that said they’d give me a $20 Amazon gift card if I gave them a 5-star review and sent a screenshot. So can you really trust those ratings?

If a business has a bunch of 5-star reviews, but they’re essentially bribing people, that doesn’t tell you the truth about the experience.

Kimberly J. Lewis: And I have 1 more question on ratings and reviews. Are there statistics around them that people tend to only do them when they are either really satisfied or really unsatisfied? Because it seems like I always see 4 and 5 stars or 1 and 2 stars.

Adam Alfia: Yeah. Usually when somebody is really happy with a business, or really unhappy, that’s when they’ll go online and leave a review. Everything in the middle usually has to be solicited.

So if someone has an okay experience, they’re not usually going to go online and leave a 3-star review unless the business asks for it. 1 of the things we’ve built is not only a QR-code system for giving management feedback while you’re at the business, but also an interactive platform that, if the business has your information and knows you just did business with them, sends you a text message within seconds of finishing the transaction.

We do use a star rating there, but it’s not for public review at first. If you had a 5-star experience, you can still let the manager know how good it was, but that usually doesn’t require follow-up. So if you leave a 5-star, we say, “Great, we’re thrilled you had a 5-star experience. Can you do us a favor and tell the rest of the world by leaving us a Google review or a Yelp review?”

However, if you leave anything but a 5-star, we say, “We apologize we didn’t provide you a 5-star experience. Can you please let our store manager know how we fell short?” Then that feedback doesn’t go into some database for later analysis. It goes straight to that store manager in real time, and the manager responds.

We want to catch you as soon as possible after the interaction and try to fix the issue. Because otherwise, if you had a bad experience and nobody took care of it, you leave unhappy, you tell some friends, it festers, and then you start telling your sphere of influence about it.

We want to catch you beforehand, have a manager call you, turn the experience around, and sometimes just own the issue. “You know what, I’m really sorry you had a bad experience, but I’m the manager here. Next time you’re here, please ask for me and I’ll take excellent care of you.” If you tell somebody that, they’re much less likely to go online and talk badly about you because you owned it.

Kimberly J. Lewis: That’s a great example. So let’s talk more about how the platform works, because I know on your website you kind of describe it as a web-based feedback box. I had this image in my head of the little cards on the restaurant table where you fill them out and the waitress or manager looks at them right away. So talk to me about how the platform works.

Adam Alfia: Actually, when you say that, I recently saw 1 of those old-school comment boxes at a Costco. I stood there for half an hour while getting rung up just to see if anybody stopped and used it. It’s such an old-school thing. First of all, half the population is losing the ability to write. They’re not even teaching cursive anymore in some places.

So we’re moving away from the art of writing and penmanship, and people just don’t write anymore. Think about the last time you wrote a letter. To get people to fill out a comment card is really hard.

We live in a digital age. Customers want a digital platform. So the way the service works is that we outfit a brick-and-mortar location with QR codes throughout the business that say things like, “Compliments or concerns? Let our management know,” or, “We will respond immediately.”

By scanning the QR code, it opens a super simple page. There are no questions like, “How would you rate your service?” It’s just an empty box that says, “Tell us about your experience.” They type something out like, “I’ve been here, this is my 3rd time here, I love it, great job,” or, “I was just in your electronics section and the guy helping me really didn’t want to help and never came back.”

That feedback goes immediately to management. We have an app specifically for managers. They get a push notification and a text message saying that feedback came in. They open it up, see the issue, and can immediately respond saying, “Hey Kimberly, this is the manager, I just got your feedback. I’m in the electronics section now. Come see me, I’ll take care of you.”

Now they can fix the issue. Otherwise, you’d just be walking around the store looking for somebody else, and that happens all the time. I go to Home Depot all the time, and sometimes I’ll walk around for 5 or 6 minutes looking for somebody to help me, and everybody says, “Oh, talk to that guy,” or, “I don’t handle that.” It’s frustrating.

Kimberly J. Lewis: That sounds so simple. And I kind of like what you’re saying about there being no questions, because 1 of the things that drives me crazy is being a frequent flyer on a big European airline and getting these long feedback requests. I’ll be sitting there 20 minutes wondering when it’s going to end when really I just have 1 thing to say.

Do you have any stories, testimonials, or examples you could share where this changed the customer experience for a business using it?

Adam Alfia: Yeah. We have a lot of car dealers on the platform. At dealerships, either you get a text message as soon as you check out from the service drive, or for dealers that aren’t integrated, we’ll have a hang tag on the rearview mirror when you pick up your car from service. It has a QR code that says, “How was your experience today? Let our manager know right now.”

Somebody once submitted feedback after bringing in their car for an oil change and asking them to check the tire pressure. The customer got back in the car and the tire pressure light was still on, so he wrote in, “I don’t trust you guys. You told me you rotated my tires and the light is still on. I want to cancel a special order. I’m never coming back.”

The manager immediately wrote back and then called the customer and explained, “Look, you have to drive the car for 15 minutes for it to reset. I’m sorry, the technician should have told you that.”

Part of our platform is that once a feedback issue is handled, it automatically sends the customer a text message that says, “I hope we resolved your feedback. If so, please leave us a review.” If they give a 5-star response there, it takes them straight to Google.

The customer then wrote back through the platform and said, “John, thanks for calling me. I really feel much better after you called me. I got your review link, and I went ahead and gave you a 5-star review on Google.”

That’s the kind of thing that would have gone very differently otherwise. If they hadn’t caught that in time, who knows how many people that customer would have talked to or what kind of damage that bad impression could have done.

Kimberly J. Lewis: And the psychology of that is important too. If the manager texts or calls me right away and tries to solve it, then the likelihood that I’m going to go to Google and put up a good rating increases tremendously.

I wanted to come back to surveys for a second because you said it drives you crazy too.

Adam Alfia: It does. We get that all the time. People say, “We already have a survey program,” and we have to explain the difference between our system and a survey program. We’re not trying to replace surveys entirely.

But if you look at surveys, the first problem is they almost never tell you how long they’ll take or what step in the process you’re in. Is it going to take 5 minutes or 20 minutes? You don’t know.

Number 2, if they have a comment box, it’s almost always at the end. It should be at the beginning. Because so many people drop off in the middle of the survey before they ever get to it.

And the third problem is that once people get far enough into a survey, they start just checking boxes to get to the end. Now you’re not getting real data.

And how many times has anybody ever actually called you or responded and said, “Hey, we got your survey. We’d like to talk to you about it?” Businesses want to look like they care, but they usually don’t have somebody responding and saying, “Sorry about the experience. Here’s something to make it right.”

Kimberly J. Lewis: You’re absolutely right, because I just took 1 the other day that seemed like it went on forever. And toward the end, my human reaction was just check, check, check, check, check, to get through it.

The other thing I really like about your QR code technology is how it solves that issue of finding a way to give feedback. It reminds me of websites where it’s almost impossible to find where you can even contact somebody or complain. We have legislation in the EU that says websites have to make it easy to give feedback, and even then I recently had a situation with an airline where I spent forever trying to find the feedback form.

Adam Alfia: That’s actually a new metric that we’re starting to track, called CES, Customer Effort Score. It measures how hard the customer has to work in order to communicate with you and let you know about an issue. And there’s a strong correlation between CES and loyalty.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the service recovery paradox. If you have loyalty to a business and they mess up, but you reach out and they fix it, you’re often more loyal than someone who never had an issue at all.

Kimberly J. Lewis: Absolutely. CES is measured quite a bit here in Europe, and it’s interesting how many people don’t even pay attention to the legislation.

But let’s talk about e-commerce too, because since the pandemic, e-commerce has increased. We’re seeing foot traffic again here in Europe, but a lot was done on the web. So how does this work online? Can it be implemented for e-commerce shops or products?

Adam Alfia: One thing I’ve noticed over the last 10 years is that our attention span has gone down. We can’t stay focused on anything for very long, especially in digital experiences.

It drives me crazy, and I’m sure you’ve had the same experience, when you’re chatting with somebody online for customer service through a web chat. I start looking at other tabs while I’m waiting for them to respond, doing other things, and suddenly they’ve closed the chat because I didn’t respond in time.

So what we’ve done is take that experience and convert it into text messaging, because that’s on your time. People are much more likely to respond to text messages. You can start the customer service experience through the website, enter your phone number, and then we move that conversation from the webpage to your phone.

We’re actually integrated into WhatsApp as well. So outside the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, especially in Europe, customers can use WhatsApp. If you start the conversation online, we then take it offline into more of a digital experience through your phone, because that’s what everybody wants anyway.

Kimberly J. Lewis: So if I’m online, I put something in and then you move it to text. Is that AI-driven, keyword-driven, or people-driven?

Adam Alfia: Our core program does have an AI layer, but we find that customers love engaging with a real person much more than AI when it comes to complaints. If you’re asking, “Where’s my shipping?” then AI is fine. But if you really have a complaint and want to talk to somebody, that’s the key. You want empathy.

The robots can only answer so many things before people get frustrated. Eventually they say, “This is not what I want. I want somebody to hear me and tell me they’re going to take care of it.” I think there’s a lot more frustration when people have feedback to give and a robot is responding instead of a human.

Kimberly J. Lewis: I’m so glad you said that because bots make me crazy too. Whatever I put in there, it seems to respond with something that doesn’t match.

So how are businesses implementing this now? We had this pandemic, a lot of small and medium businesses started offering services online, especially restaurants, and now we’re in this mixed environment of partly online and partly foot traffic. Are SMEs grasping the technology?

Adam Alfia: Right. 1 of the things we’re doing outside of just having the codes physically in the store is helping with online order pickup. A big trend was order online, pick up in store, where you pull into a parking space and somebody brings it out to you.

So we’re putting QR code stickers on the package. When you pick it up, it says something like, “If there are any issues with your purchase, scan this code.” That generates feedback back to the store so they can take care of the issue in real time.

We’ve done that not only with brick-and-mortar retail, but also with to-go food and deliveries, which really skyrocketed during the pandemic. So if you ordered a pizza, for example, there could be a QR code sticker on the edge of the pizza box that says, “If your order is less than perfect, let our manager know.”

When the customer scans that, they can immediately tell management if something was forgotten or wrong. And what we found is that with most to-go orders, there usually isn’t much of a solution in the moment beyond, “Hey, sorry about that. Next time you come in, we’ll give you a free pizza.”

But that matters. You’re taking care of the customer. They say, “Okay, wonderful, thank you for owning up to it, and I’ll come back next time.” That’s really the point. Our platform helps businesses that have become so reliant on delivery and pickup to still get that customer feedback and solve issues in a way that doesn’t require the customer to track down a manager by phone.

Kimberly J. Lewis: That is brilliant. I can think of quite a few times I wish I’d had that.

So where do you see this going over the next couple of years? Do you think with technology like yours we can get back to a more customer-centric service orientation?

Adam Alfia: The biggest thing Feedback has really shined a light on is accountability, because 90% of the feedback we get is personnel-related. People drive your business no matter what kind of product you sell. Whether it’s a car or a hamburger, it’s the people delivering the experience who are responsible for the success or failure of that experience.

We launched with a chain of grocery stores here in the U.S., and we put a QR code at every cashier station that said, “Let us know if our cashier was friendly today.” It was amazing how much of a difference it made, because employees know that most customers who have a bad experience are not going to go find a manager and tap them on the shoulder to say, “Cashier 4 was really rude,” or, “They were on their cell phone while checking me out.”

That happens to me all the time, and it drives me crazy when somebody is texting while ringing me up. Most people don’t have the time or energy to find a manager and say something. But if you put a QR code right in front of their register that says, “Let us know if our cashier was friendly today,” and it goes straight to a manager, and that cashier knows it, they shape up. They know there’s now a very easy, direct line of communication to their manager.

Kimberly J. Lewis: You know, an idea popped into my head when you said that. Earlier we were talking about generations, and you said you have 6 kids and I talked about my niece. Do you think this kind of feedback system will actually help that younger generation, as they come into the workforce, become more comfortable with solving issues and being more customer-centric, without worrying so much about confrontation? From both a customer feedback expert and a father’s perspective, do you think we can move them in a different direction?

Adam Alfia: At the end of the day, it’s all about starting conversations and opening up pain points.

1 thing I didn’t mention is that anywhere from 25% to 35% of our feedback, depending on the industry, comes from employees of the business. Employees see things differently than customers or managers. And especially now, with how hard it is not only to hire people but retain them, if you give that employee a voice and let them tell management about things that could make the work environment better, they’re very, very happy to do so.

Not only that, our platform allows for anonymous feedback as well. So employees can submit feedback anonymously. Employees love that because they feel empowered to tell management about other employees slacking off, or about changes they’d like to see, without worrying that they’ll be labeled the complainer in the workplace.

That’s something we always encourage when we launch with a company. Make sure your employees know this isn’t just for customers. It’s also for employees to let you know what you could be doing better as an employer.

Kimberly J. Lewis: And if you go into the psychology behind that, when employees feel like it’s okay to engage, then they start to learn that engagement is normal. Then it may be easier for them to engage going forward. Excellent point.

So we’re getting toward the end, Adam. Really great insights. If you had 1 closing comment for our listeners on the direction this is going, or what they should be doing, what would that be?

Adam Alfia: Well, there are 2 things I want to say.

First, we actually have a tagline: Give them help before they Yelp. Take care of them before it escalates out of control. People really appreciate that.

And second, a lot of people out there have an issue with a business, but if you don’t do your part as a customer to let the business know how they can improve, it may never happen. Most customers think leaving a Google review is the best way to get a business’s attention, when really we’ve seen that 99% of negative reviews left online, even if the business responds and even if they try to take care of it, usually never come off Google. They stay there forever.

If you’re like me, when I look at a business and decide whether I want to do business with them, I look at the negative reviews. I want to know what the worst-case scenario is. Sometimes it’s pretty horrifying.

The point is that businesses do care, but the managers may not know what’s going on underneath their nose until they see that Google review, if they even see it. Our platform puts it right in front of them, lets the customer share both positive things and issues, and opens up that dialogue for a better experience and a better relationship with the business.

Kimberly J. Lewis: Great, great, great. I like “help before they Yelp.” That’s a great tagline too.

Well, really super stuff, Adam. Great technology.

For our listeners, we’ve been talking to Adam Alfia. He’s a serial entrepreneur and founder and managing director of Real Time Feedback, a customer engagement platform that allows customers, employees, and management to engage with each other. We’ve talked about how it works with smart QR codes and a very simple solution.

Adam, brilliant technology, and we know that you’re a great customer service nut and can’t stand when companies deliver a subpar experience. So we thank you for the effort and for helping drive us in the right direction.

If you’d like to reach out to Adam, you can find him on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter under Adam Alfia. And you can also go to the company website at realtimefeedback.com and reach out there.

This broadcast is also brought to you by Cinda, one of Europe’s fastest-growing nonprofit digital marketing and local search associations that holds virtual trainings, conferences, market research, and legislative white papers focused on digital. They also have a learning series every Thursday at 17:00 Central European Time, and their next live conference will be held October 16 to 18 in Florence, Italy.

Cinda also has an e-learning platform in cooperation with BOSS Capital for startups and product managers to help them with product launches and help them succeed. To learn more about Cinda, go to www.cinda.org.

And tune in every Tuesday at 3 p.m. Pacific Time, and don’t forget to join us again next week. Thank you.