How ratings result in worse, not better, customer service

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were in Galle, Sri Lanka for a much-awaited vacation. We chose a villa with great reviews on TripAdvisor. It seemed a decent place. A little far from the main town, but the hosts were quite friendly.

But we couldn’t get much sleep any of the nights we stayed there, because our room had bedbugs.

After we came back from the trip, we made sure to rate the place. We left not one, but two ratings (one each from my wife and me). Both of them were 5 stars.

Wait, what?

Did we enjoy getting bitten by bedbugs?

I was surprised too. Not just at my own rating, but at other ratings on TripAdvisor too. This place was one of the most recommended ones in Galle!

So how did this happen? How did I — and all the other guests — rate inferior customer service so highly?

Do ratings work?

The prevailing wisdom is that ratings work. That’s why they are everywhere. When you open an app on your Android phone, it asks you to rate it on the Play Store. Complete a ride on Uber, and you have to rate your driver. Order something from Amazon, same story. Open your inbox after a long vacation, and what’s the first email you see? A message from either your airline or hotel, requesting you to rate your experience.

I’ve always found the act of rating quite empowering. The equation is simple — if you can rate a service provider in public, he has every incentive to ensure that you get great service. Right?

Well, after that incident in Galle, I realized that ratings may not result in better customer service. In some situations, they may be worsening it.

Wait, how does that make sense?

I’ll explain. But first, let’s agree on two key facts about ratings.

1. Ratings have an impact on service providers.That’s one reason they’re ubiquitous. Drivers on Uber do get blacklisted for low ratings. Top-rated hotels on TripAdvisor do get ten times as many bookings as lower-rated ones.
2. Customers know ratings have an impact.This makes them capricious (this Verge article calls them — us — entitled jerks). To see this, you only need to see a few app reviews. Sample these ratings on Circa (an app that used to provide summaries of important news):

Ratings are supposed to highlight how good an app is. But no, sometimes you get a 1-star for an innocuous review request.

This customer fickleness is not just an app store phenomenon. As the Verge article says,

We rate for the routes drivers take, for price fluctuations beyond their control, for slow traffic, for refusing to speed, for talking too much or too little, for failing to perform large tasks unrealistically quickly, for the food being cold when they delivered it, for telling us that, No, we can’t bring beer in the car and put our friend in the trunk — really, for any reason at all, including subconscious biases about race or gender.

Please the customer, and hope for the best

The fact that we wield a strange amount of power and know it, turns upstanding, proud cab drivers and B&B hosts into fawning, obsequious and servile slaves. You can’t jilt or offend a customer in any way. A single misstep, and you get a 1-star rating. Not a 4- or 3-star. Your last five customers may have given you 5 stars, but this single rating could put you out of business. In New York, Uber delists drivers from the platform if they go below a 4.5 star average!

So what is a service provider to do? Provide honest-to-God great service.And hope that nothing gets screwed up.

But there’s an easier way.

The honest approach is hard, time-intensive and expensive. And it’s subject to random whims of the entitled customer.If a customer expects Hilton service at McDonald’s rates, you’re bound to get 1 star.No matter what you do.

But there is an easier, quicker and more inexpensive way. One of the oldest psychological tricks in the book.

Dr. Cialdini, the author of Influence, calls this trick “Liking — The Friendly Thief”. Studies show that if you spend more time with a person, you end up liking her. And if you like a person, you tend to favor her in your dealings.

At a certain level, this is obvious. But that doesn’t make it any less powerful. Malcolm Gladwell cites a great example of this in Blink. Patients don’t file lawsuits when they suffer shoddy medical care, if the doctor is polite. They only file when they feel the doctor mistreated or ignored them.

“People just don’t sue doctors they like.”

So, to get a great rating, all you need to do is: (a) smile a lot and appear likable; and (b) talk a lot, to create a human connection and familiarity.

Tried and tested. Once you get to know the service provider, you’d be a stone-hearted reviewer to leave anything less than 5 stars.

Nice host + bad customer service = 5 star rating

That’s what happened to us in Galle. Even though I was aware of this cognitive bias, I was powerless to counteract it.

The owner received us with great cheer. He chatted with us for hours. Always smiling and laughing (even when I didn’t crack a joke. And I’m not that funny anyway). I learned a lot about his life. I commiserated on his past troubles, and lauded him on his recent turn in fortunes.

My room still had bedbugs.

But my wife and I didn’t complain. Who can tell off such a nice guy? And when he requested us to leave two ratings on TripAdvisor, how could we refuse?

Talk more. Do less. Get 5 stars. Repeat.

This is just one small episode. But it sets in motion an insidious feedback loop, which could result in worsening customer service over time.

1. Customer give a 5-star rating despite bad customer service.
2. Service provider sees this as validation of his strategy. And becomes more chatty, more fawning.
3. Soon, if he’s smart (our guy was), he realizes there’s no return on actual customer service. It’s much easier to smile and bluster, than it is to clean the room. Over time, he’ll become more talkative, and true customer service will degrade.

Woe betide the unsuspecting traveler when that happens.

Thus, ratings may have an impact that’s the polar opposite of your intention.

How do we break this loop?

Now, I’m sure you want great customer service. So, how can we break this loop?

Just being aware of what’s happening is not enough. You’ll only feel worse, as you continue to give 5-star ratings like a powerless lab rat.

The only way to break this cycle is to have a system of multiple ratings on different attributes, instead of one single uni-dimensional one.

Why would that work? For two reasons:

1. It would force objectivity.If you’re rating your stay at a B&B separately on Cleanliness, Quality of Food and Friendliness of Staff, you’re more likely to question the halo around your host’s head, and distill your cheery feeling into its components
2. It would give the service provider the right feedback on how to improve.

Ratings are here to stay. Let’s make sure they actually improve customer service. Rather than slowly turning us into smiling zombies.

Originally published at jitha.me on December 21, 2015.