I find Customer Satisfaction Surveys interesting. It gives us a sense of what is important to the firm and the type of information they are attempting on gathering gives us a clue as to what is important to the company.
PS: Go here if you’re interested in other articles on Queueing Theory.
I was recently sent a survey from The Olive Garden, which is an Italian Restaurant franchise and has locations all over the United States. The customer satisfaction questionnaire had 20 questions and 5 of which had to do with Wait Time. If 25% of the questions on a customer satisfaction survey has to do with wait time, then I’m guessing that’s an important data point for the company.
The first question in the survey was:
- If you waited for dining room seating, approximately how long did you wait after arriving at the restaurant?
The next question is on wait time accuracy provided by lobby staff at the restaurant:
- How accurate was the wait time the lobby staff quoted you?
Then,
- Approximately how much longer than the quoted time did you wait to be seated?
Then, a series of questions on order accuracy:
- Did we prepare what you wanted, exactly as you wanted?
Followed by a series of questions on my activities before coming to the restaurant:
- Where were you immediately before coming to the Olive Garden?
- Where were you going immediately after leaving the Olive Garden?
This goes to show that a key driver in customer satisfaction is wait time and, in general, reducing wait time for customers is the right thing for the business.
You may now play the “Captain Obvious” theme song.
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Nosybear says
Interesting…. I no longer answer surveys based on the idea that if the company wants my opinion, they can pay me for it, my implementation of the “fee basing” so many businesses seem to be implementing, but I digress. We avoid surveys here based on the idea if we ask the Customer about it, we might have to act on their feedback. Your Olive Garden survey seemed to be more targeted toward directing your attention toward what Olive Garden would like you to remember than to gather information. After all, the restaurant knows satisfaction with wait times already – abandon rates, people who leave before being called. They also know if they got an order wrong – you’d complain in the store. If there are questions actually targeted toward gathering data, it’s the last ones, what you were doing before and after. Tells them where to target ads. This is why I don’t answer surveys for free – they generally aren’t what they seem.