In my desire to do my bit for the environment, lately I've started travelling to work by cabs. Ok, may be intentions are not that noble but you can appreciate me for the results.
Anyway, as usual, this morning I book a cab to get to work. After a laborious 15 minute search, I mange to book a cab and I board it triumphantly.
A decent 20 minutes ride has me at my office. As I step out, the driver calls out to me. I wonder what I left behind in the cab and quickly search for my phone and wallet. A "5 star please, sir," stops my search and I smile and nod at the guy.
Since the mad rush to get cabs is a mini battle before the day has even decided to begin, I forgot to carry my lunchbox.
The war between the food app companies earns me a pretty good offer for my meal. As I am thanking Sarvesh, my lunch delivery guy who can speak 5 languages and wishes to open a restaurant some day. I am greeted with yet another, "5 star please, sir."
Evening cab search is a repeat of the morning struggle and a 5 stars please," response to my,"Thank you, bhaiyya!"
In just the last week, I've given away over a 100 stars to the cab drivers, eCommerce, food and grocery delivery guys, much more than my school teachers have given in all their careers combined!
This does pose a question of what is up with all these stars? Why is each one of us becoming a walking - talking galaxy of 2 to 5 stars with a few 1 star meteor showers every often? What is this suddenly so important and relevant rating scale?
Well, these rating scale question help organizations to collect, analyze and develop customer experience and develop employee engagement.
With safety becoming a major concern across the globe, this rating system has become one of the assuring factors for customers to trust a stranger by assessing the behavior of the driver or the delivery standard of the delivery person.
And to ensure high standards, companies are asking delivery guys/ drivers to maintain high ratings by greeting and treating customer well. When a delivery boy/ driver’s rating is consistently below average, they may lose access to the app/ fired from the Job.
To cope up with the behavioral issues, companies have started linking the ratings with various perks and incentives which effectively helps customer with a good experience.
However, we usually forget or skip to rate the experience from one to five stars. Every time we rate the delivery executives/ drivers, chances are we probably don't put a lot of thought into that rating, and we randomly select the ratings which makes the delivery mechanism messed up.
But for the delivery executives/ drivers it is the most crucial part as they lose out on incentives and tendency to lose their Jobs. Therefore, they push you to rate them 5 stars.
The companies have realized not to blindly trust the customers with the ratings. People can bump down ratings over things as random as getting late due to the weather.
To counter this, a lot of companies have modified these surveys slightly. You can no longer give a less than 5 star rating without choosing a valid reason.
And if your reasons have nothing to do with the driver or the delivery executive, their ratings are not affected and they continue to enjoy a better rating average.
Example of Uber tweaking its rating scale as shown below
With time, companies are ensuring the very best customer experience also keeping in mind of their employees.
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