When buying anything, using something or requesting services as a citizen it is impossible to escape the game of performance management, the metrics deployed to ‘measure’ what is generally referred to as my customer experience. ‘We want to hear from you! Give us your feedback!’
In general I have stopped playing because it’s exhausting: no interaction with an institution is so small that it is deemed unworthy of a customer satisfaction rating. As the moral philosopher Onora O’Neill has observed[1], we are left to wade through a blizzard of information which leaves us none the wiser.[2] O’Neill’s question was about trust — do we trust each other more because of a wealth of data, or does that depend more on understanding the relationship in the round, which can’t be reduced to likes and scores out of 5?
Though we might think of all of this activity as relatively trivial, it is an interesting phenomenon to think about because it is so ubiquitous and relentless. To a degree there is no escaping it, and it can begin to shape the way we interact with each other in other settings.
Rating, and being rated, involves revealing something about yourself in public (provided that you are not hiding your identity), and engaging in often asymmetric power relations. It puts us in constant judging mode.
I want a new waste bin from my local council, and after the transaction of a back and forth of a mere two e-mails I am asked to rate my customer experience. It is satisfying to know my new waste bin is on the way, but does this amount to an ‘experience’? I go for a blood test at my GP: within 48 hours I received a text to rate my patient experience. How satisfied was I about having a sharp object inserted into my arm? Am I taking this too seriously? Not seriously enough? What is my feedback worth if I haven’t entered into the spirit of it?
The broadband guy comes to connect my broadband. He is in and out in 30 minutes and warns me that anything less than a 5 out of 5 is considered an inadequate service by his bosses. He knows it’s stupid, I know it’s stupid. Probably even his bosses know it’s stupid but better to leave no score at all than to award him a 4. He’s a nice young man, so I award him a 5 because I want him to do well in his job. This is less about the service I have received and more to do with the relationship we have developed in the short time we spend together. This relationship depends on both of us: he might be open to conversation, or just want to get the job done. The same for me, and I might just be in a bad mood. But he helped me to help him.
It was another story with my solicitor. A long and complicated house move involved many twists, turns and huge stress after which I was asked to evaluate my solicitor and, prior to having had the conversation with the broadband guy, I gave her a 4. Disaster. She wrote to me in a state of agitation. 4 out of 5 is regarded as a ‘passive score’ and seriously undermines her performance rating for her bosses thus jeopardising the prospect of future work. It’s too late to rescind, and even my justification that in my world, being awarded 80% for a piece of work would be regarded as a distinction, seems to cut no ice. Apparently I have wounded her and her professional reputation: 4 out of 5 is a moral injury.
What would count as a 5 star service in this highly complex, stressful situation where large amounts of money, sentiment, and anxiety are in play? I was taken aback by the strength of her response.
There are differences in the four examples I have given. I care that my local council and my GP do well, by me and other citizens/patients. I have much less concern about my broadband provider and even my solicitor, although I think she did a good job. I don’t want her to suffer professionally, but it is also important to me to stick to my own standards. 80% is a good score.
Meanwhile, renting a cottage is a kind of Mexican stand-off, a great case study for aficionados of game theory and the prisoner’s dilemma: who’s going to shoot first? Two days before the end of my week’s stay in a Cornwall cottage my hosts send me an e-mail: don’t forget to leave us a review and we will do the same for you! In other words it’s a warning and an encouragement, let’s agree to both award each other a 5. Will we call each other’s bluff? Am I prepared to be honest? In a game of reputation enhancement l have an interest in achieving a high score as client or supplier and much less motivation to be frank.
And what about the game of reviewing sites? To what extent do I believe reviews of restaurants? Are they paid to leave positive ones? The only way to find out is to enter the labyrinth and pursue the game seriously and review the reviewer, to see what other reviews they have left. If there aren’t many of them and they are all positive, then does this person really exist? Can they be even-handed showing judgement in favour and against? To what extent are they a reliable narrator? If it’s an Italian restaurant and the reviewer is called Corelli, am I likely to take this view more seriously than if they are called Smith? Are my assumptions that Italians (if they are indeed Italian) are likely to be a better judge of Italian food than a Brit? Until I have some idea about the assumptions which have been brought to bear it is hard to judge the judgement of the judger.
Complex judgements reduced to star ratings or one word assessments can have real world consequences as headteachers in the UK have learned to their cost[3]. The new government in the UK has promised to withdraw simplistic one-word evaluations of school performance because of the fear, anxiety and harm that they have caused for teachers, parents and children. In doing so they are resisting the commodification of education and turning genuinely complex experience, the education of children, into a ratings game. As O’Neill has argued, trust needs more than just simple information.
In the highly developed societies of the 21st Century we are caught up in games which elevate often simple transactions into ‘experience’, and encourage us to calculate about our calculations. We become permanent customers, even as citizens. It is a game which is hard to play, and hard not to play, particularly when one is involved in a relational evaluation. Organisations put a huge investment in this ratings game, although it is sometimes hard to judge what they do with feedback they receive. Could it be a performance of being concerned? Even in my institution, a higher education establishment, we have senior managers in charge of ‘student experience’. Perhaps these every day evaluations should not detain us, but even putting your toe in the water involves ethical and relational complexities, particularly when one is asked to rate people one has met and whose prospects depend upon a perfect score.
Meanwhile in organisational life we may be discouraged from reflecting and making sense of the complex experience of relating to one another with people we encounter every day. This may be because it may ‘open a can of worms’, may not result in a ‘concrete outcome’, or we simply don’t have time. Do the same organisations who bombard us with questions about our ‘customer experience’ spend as much time thinking about how their staff relate and how they are managed? Or is there a danger that we turn our relations into transactions, so that to stay in relation with each other we can only, like customer experience surveys, rate each other 5 and stay positive. If rating a service or product involves us in power relations and ethical and practical judgement, how much more is the case when we reflect on our relations with each other?
[1] O’Neill, O (2002) A Question of Trust, BBC Reith Lectures.
[2] ‘Where the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’ TS Eliot: The Wasteland.
[3] Headteacher Ruth Perry is thought to have killed herself following a downgrading of her school to ‘inadequate’. The inspection body OFSTED admitted their role in her suicide: https://www.bbc.com/news/education-68024838
5/5 for the post.