Hi! This isn't even just specifically for MS's but I do include them in this question. When asked to provide a 1 to 10 rating with 10 being THE BEST and 1 THE WORST - do you normally give a ten if they do everything right, or do you reserve that 10 for if they do something exceptional or above and beyond? Sometimes I have trouble deciding, since if I give "everything done right" a 10, then what do I give the "exceptional". So is an "everything right" a 9? I know it is subjective and personal, but I wonder what company's thoughts are when asking customers to provide a rating like that. Should 10s and 1s be extremely rare?

What are your thoughts when asked to rate like this?

I don't think I've ever given a 1. I'd say I mostly give out 8/9. If you hit all the guidelines, I'll give you a 10. If you were at least trying to hit all the guidelines and were giving good customer service, you'll probably get a 10. If something went wrong that was out of your control, you'll probably get a 10.
Depending on the client sometimes you have to mark down a couple points if anything went wrong during the shop however minor. Other clients freak out if you don't give them 10's across the board. There was one shop which asked something like "is this the most amazing food experience you've ever had?" Which is stupid because of course its not, it's a mid-range take-out place, but now I feel like I have to mark you down because of the way the question is worded.

In real life there is not a human that is a 10/10

In real life there is rarely a meal that is a 10/10

So, I think about the RELATIVE performance.

Did the Five Guys present the Five Guys meal as good as Five Guys expects them to? 10/10

Was it the absolute best Jack in the Box could do? 10/10

Was she well groomed, dressed, without deformity, and pleasant? Oh, ok, just kidding. Don't ban me.

Good questions. You will never remove the subjectivity of numeric scoring. I especially enjoy the vibe of a shop where I can tell the employees like their job and are having fun.....but it isn't something you could realistically give a lower rating for if not there (within reason).

I often giggle at the question about how happy efficient, smiling the employees are. How the heck happy can you be having to toil in a hot kitchen shaking pans of fries in hot grease and assembling burgers for slightly over minimum wage?

@OldmanJames wrote:

I often giggle at the question about how happy efficient, smiling the employees are. How the heck happy can you be having to toil in a hot kitchen shaking pans of fries in hot grease and assembling burgers for slightly over minimum wage?

I feel you. I have seen maybe 20% of locations feature genuinely happy people with good rapport. And they are really happy the NEXT time they see me, because they remember they got a good report around the last time they saw me. I’ve had the opposite! Nobody says a word, but you can feel their spidey sense.

I tend to give out mostly 10s, a lot of 9s, some 8s, rarely 7s, once or twice a 5. The problem like you say is that some places go so much above and beyond I want to give them an 11. I give them a 10, and feel kind of bad they got the same rating as the other places that were not nearly as good.

I think about this often when I take surveys for other sites. Like a scale of 1-5, how likely am I to....? And I usually lean towards 4, unless it's something I 100% would definitely do. Because maybe, but circumstances. lol

I feel very differently than those who responded above me. To me the rating when I have been asked is not about how well they did the questions on the survey but about my entire experience. I usually do not care much about some of the questions on the survey. And this is my chance to let them know how I felt about the experience. I would also add that for the shops I accept it is mostly restaurants I am rating on a 10 point scale.
So my experience rating is a combination of them meeting the expectations of the report and them meeting other things the report does not ask about but are quite important to me and other customers. There is almost always a box to write narrative asking me to explain my rating. In that box I can write about customer expectations that are not met in my eyes. As to the rating of a fast food place I would not compare it to a fine dining so my 10 there would only compare the experience to other like establishments.
I have never ever been dinged for rating below a 10. I rarely rate below a 7 but have done so. I have done reports where I have rated individual items on a rating scale...rate the green beans you ordered type questions all much higher than the overall rating due to what I felt was wrong outside the rating scales. And then comment on them.

I had a 6th grade teacher who realistically suggested that C's are what most people do (6-7). An 'A' (9-10) would be truly exceptional. So we are a bit too generous. However, it does seem like the clients WANT a 10/10 for delivering a C experience. Nothing bad; nothing special. Maybe I need to start rating a little worse? What is the point of 2,3,4,5 if we aren't using them more often. Usually I give a 5/10 for a bad experience. 5 would be an F, but ZERO is an F, too.

.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2022 07:32PM by Chix.

@mystery2me wrote:

I tend to give out mostly 10s, a lot of 9s, some 8s, rarely 7s, once or twice a 5. The problem like you say is that some places go so much above and beyond I want to give them an 11. I give them a 10, and feel kind of bad they got the same rating as the other places that were not nearly as good.

THIS! This is exactly what I mean!!!

I have given 1s. But only because 0 is not on the scale.

And then, the Covid era happened and resulted in staffing shortages, supply chain issues, business practice changes, etc. Some locations could not meet the pre-Covid standards. Should those standards have been changed, and should shoppers have been asked to address different aspects of the experience? At least one client suspended its shopping program in this Covid era because it was impossible for many locations to meet the usual standards due to chronic staffing shortages..

Is there a relative 1 - 10? Did the skeleton crew work steadily, politely, and without error to meet the customer requests? How important was a longer wait time, considering that logistically it was impossible to complete the transactions in a shorter amount of time (if timings were measured)?

I would expect more from a full crew than from the often scant crews in the Covid era. I would only want to do my best to determine that the current crew worked well in terms of teamwork, communication, maintaining a pleasant environment for themselves and customers, and achieving accuracy. Other people might want the previous standards to be met, like, yesterday, even though there would be too few people on duty to accomplish the work more quickly.

It is always subjective, even though we might be able to use objective data in support of whatever stance we present in our ratings and rankings.

Typically for Five Guys when it says Best in Class I usually give an 8 or 9 because I'm assuming that they want you to compare it to other Five Guys or fast food restaurants.

For example, my 10/10 would be when I got in the mobile express line at Chick fil A, scanned the QR code and pulled around to the pick up area and the attendant was bringing me my bag before I even had a chance to stop. Somehow it was also hot and fresh.

If they do everything right the scale is a 10...if they provide something beyond that I usually say something in the comments. Maybe Ive been lucky thus far but Ive never had to give a 1.

I almost FG awarded a 1 earlier this year when they forgot to put the hamburger patty on my sandwich. Since they made me a new one without argument, they got a 2.

I recently gave a gas station an overall rating of 5, which is an anomaly for my grading scale. The attendant was friendly, my transaction was processed quickly, and the station was clean. The forecourt was neat and well stocked. I entered [a very potent] restroom during the covert portion of the evaluation and was in the process of drying my hands (after I had thoroughly washed my hands). The only stall in the restroom was vacated by an employee who bypassed the sink entirely, left the restroom, and was later seen handling food. I was grateful that another employee rang up my transaction and provided the receipt that I had to touch. I think I was generous with a 5.

EWWWwwwwwww!

I definitely take in to account staff shortages and other circumstances beyond their control. The most vivid examples of this occurred a few times for me. One time earlier this year I was at a quick serve location, similar to Subway (but it was not Subway) where you select your protein and then the toppings you want and they put food in an oven as you move down the line.

At the beginning of the line when it was my turn I had to ask a question, so I asked how many vegetables I could get on my item. He looked at me with a straight face and paused for a moment. I was worried this was not going to go well. Instead, he said, "None. You can't get any toppings" Maybe you had to be there but it was really hilarious and unexpected. It made me laugh and he ran with that joke for a bit. Each time I asked for something else on it he said, "Remember, you can't get ANY toppings." and "You can only get ONE pepperoni" LOL

Of course he built the item the way I asked, but the place was busy at the time so everything took longer than expected. At the register, another associate (a manager) apologized greatly about the delays, and then let me know that the person who made my order was the only associate who showed up for the day, and he was performing ALL of the tasks. Only one guy was doing everything. And he made me laugh on top of it.

I definitely gave them a 10, even though some of the "standards" were not hit - it was the best they could do, and the fact that he made me laugh was such a bonus - they got a glowing review from me! I made sure to detail that in the comments section.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2022 09:21PM by Chix.

Another time at a many guys location, they too had only like three total staff members. And yet, it was one of the best ever visits to one of their locations I ever had - they hit all the points, built rapport, and made a memorable visit for me. They got an "above and beyond" score from me!

I almost never give a 10 score, no one is perfect. Really good service, smiles, greetings, etc... those get 9. Most everything and everybody else gets 8, unless there is something seriously wrong. Extra rude folks get 3 or 4, the same with filthy stores, blocked aisles and nasty restrooms. I have given 1s but those are extreme cases.

How I rank an employee or a location totally depends on the focus of the shop and how the question on the report is worded. So, I don't have a general tendency to rank a certain way. Some reports get a lot of 10s while others barely get past 7.

Quoted from @shopnyc "How I rank an employee or a location totally depends on the focus of the shop and how the question on the report is worded. So, I don't have a general tendency to rank a certain way. Some reports get a lot of 10s while others barely get past 7."

I agree with this for the questions within the report.


For the question at the end, where it asks my personal rating of the shop or my likelihood of returning, I generally put 10. If there was something quite wrong (Cleanliness, unfriendly, inaccurate transaction), then I will put less than 10.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/2022 04:14PM by prince.

They "forgot" the burger??? That's hilarious and pathetic at the same time.

@myst4au wrote:

I almost FG awarded a 1 earlier this year when they forgot to put the hamburger patty on my sandwich. Since they made me a new one without argument, they got a 2.

Becuase I’ve done so many FGs I’m probably less likely to award a 10 if I know they missed a few marks, but it takes something memorably bad to get below a 9. One area I really ding for is when major soda flavors are out of stock, because there’s a reasonable expectation that the customer is buying the soda for one of those flavors. I don’t mean the times where there’s no Diet Vanilla Soda. If there’s no Sprite or Coke and I’m blown off when I mention it to an employee I’ll be subtracting quite a few points. I’ve never gotten any blowback from the MSC for this or for any other negative ratings on one of these shops.

I lower their score when I observe a crew member wearing pants that expose their undergarments while cooking and preparing meals...Yuck!! Double Yuck!! I had one where the manager's pants were below his butt. He was friendly and cleaning up etc, but still was a turn off. Whatever are they thinking or not thinking?