In many cultures, end-of-the-year period is marked with depictions of stars. Stars are called heavenly bodies. Stars are beautiful to look at. A star is a positive symbol of hope, happiness, eternity, faith, and excellence. Stars as astronomical objects are recognized for numerous properties related to their brightness, size, chemical composition, or distance. For marketers, stars are associated with rating and their key feature is the number of them. The more the merrier.
Stars have been traditionally used in the hospitality industry as an independent expert assessment of quality. Traditionally, it was not customers but experts were providing assessment of market offerings. Customers could have considered expert views to adjust their expectations. In Europe, several countries have established national standards for hotel grading. Other European countries introduced hotel star rating through powerful industry associations. In the United States, for instance, hotel stars developed through travel guide publishers such as Forbes/Mobil or American Automobile Association.
Online world has been cluttered with stars. Online stores, aggregators, search engines, travel websites, healthcare or delivery services to name a few are immediately showing opinions of others about market offerings. As feedback consumers neither we know, nor we largely care, how timely, relevant, objective, and trustworthy previously collected feedback could have been. (It needs to be acknowledged that many rating systems do provide that information easily if customers care.)
As businesses, however, we might have lost a bit of focus on the very purpose of collecting customer feedback, which is supposed to be identification of opportunities for further improvement. The obsession with the number of stars shall become an obsession with learning about, why customers rated the offering the way they did. Surely, more stars have the potential to bring in more customers. Certainly, giving opportunity to a customer to express their opinion shows that the business cares. However, the ultimate goal shall be harvesting suggestions for improvement. Improvements can be achieved either on products and services or with management of client expectations.
Just as social media in general, customer rating systems are prone to favoring extreme customer views. Some industries report inflation of customer rating, where differences among various providers are finally miniscule. The so-called positivity problem poses a customer dilemma, which provider to choose if all are rated so positively. And five-star offerings may be more likely to receive other five-star reviews, as some clients simply want to join the happy crowd. Customer rating is rather an expression of fleeing emotion than a thoughtful assessment of various properties.
Understanding the motivation and rationales, why a customer gave that kind of feedback. Sometimes it is insightful to learn why customers provided feedback at all. Incentives to leave a feedback such as vouchers or discounts are likely to yield more raving reviews. The business may attempt to stop fake and illegitimate customer feedback. The business may provide an open response. The business may demonstrate, how action was taken. Or the business may come with a different name if brand damage is all too serious.
Another systemic issue with customer feedback is its retrospective nature. Reflecting on past customer views may not necessarily bring the business to successful future. Feedback resides with the current customer base and doesn’t tell much about needs of potential new market segments. It is like driving a car and looking only in the rear-view mirror.
Stars are not designed to map situations, where customer expectations were exceeded. Overall score is usually a variable composed of several partial items with same factor loadings. Higher rated offerings with fewer customers can easily be listed higher in the ranking than frequently provided offerings with a very small number of unhappy customers, who purchased long ago. Consumer ratings by any means shall not be used as a single measure of customer satisfaction.
Résumé
Ke hvězdám: O důležitosti a zvláštnostech hodnocení
Zákaznická hodnocení pomocí hvězdiček se stala oblíbeným nástrojem vyjádření zákaznických postojů zvláště v online prostředí. Jednoduchost, rychlost a srozumitelnost poskytnutí hvězdičkové zákaznické zpětné vazby však v sobě skrývá mnohá úskalí – teoretických, metodologických i praktických. Udělení konkrétního počtu hvězdiček je projevem těkavé zákaznické emoce, nikoli výsledkem expertního dlouhodobého hodnocení, zvažování alternativ či snahy o poskytnutí pravdivého objektivního obrazu.
Kontakt na autorov/Address
doc. Ing. Pavel Štrach, Ph.D., Ph.D., ŠKODA AUTO Vysoká škola o.p.s., Katedra marketingu a managementu, Na Karmeli 1457, 293 01 Mladá Boleslav, Česká republika, e-mail: pavel.strach@savs.cz
