The Reviews

Every end of the year, I take a day off to evaluate RedRibbon Days - I read back reviews, feedback from our customers and of course, the overall performance of the business. RedRibbon Days is almost two (come July 2010) and like a mother to a new born baby, I watched RedRibbon Days grow by the day. I love reading reviews and feedback from customers. I like it when my customers tell me how happy and how much fun they had with their RedRibbon Day experience. But I like it better when they give me suggestions on how to improve their experience and the negative side of their experience, if any.

So here I was going through the stack of reviews when just for fun, I segregated out each reviews and assigned them to each partners. What caught my eye was this stack of reviews which I successfully singled it out to one particular partner. The reviews towards this particular experience was always a one-liner sentence and miraculously - they always well, convey the same meaning to me.

"We had fun. It was great."

That's it ?? There should be more to it. Tell me more about how it went - what happened, did you scream your lungs out, did you yell, did you turn green and purple? See, when I come across reviews like that I'm extremely tempted to contact the customers to dwell deeper. How was it REALLY like for you? Was it really fun? See, for me, I will only give that kind of one sentence review if I reckon that the experience was just so-so and nothing really spectacular about it. So here are a whole stack of my customers who gave that kind of reviews.

So I picked up the phone and call our business partner.

Here's the conversation:-

S: Hi, is this X ? I'm Sherin from RedRibbon Days. How are you ?

X: yes. speaking. Ya?

S: (pause and clear throats) Oh, I'm just calling to say hi, and see how are things going on your end and also to follow up on the last few customers.

X : ya.

S: How did it all went? Did the experience went well?

X: YA. Everthing OK.

S: (that's it?) Hmm..everything OK. Great! Well, if there's anything we could do on our end to improve the experience, do let me know.

X: OK. Don't worry. We take good of your customers.

S: Thanks X, let's catch up soon for a drink or two when I'm in town.

X: ok .. no problem. U buy me lunch ah...

conversation continues ....

I'm wondering why is it so hard to get people to rave about their experience ? I love it when my customers tell me about their experience regardless of positive or negative. Personally, I love giving my feedback to service I received whether they are positive or negative. If they don't tell me the truth, there's no way I can find out about it unless of course we send our 'mystery tester' to seek the truth. In this particular case, we do not have a choice but to do so. If the review comes back negative, we may have to let it go.

What are you thoughts on a review that is a flat one liner sentence?