FEEDBACK: Why don't we make more use of it?

In My Humble Opinion
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(I’m unsure where to put this thread. It doesn’t seem to be a question with a factual answer, nor does it seem to me to be a great debate. It’s more a matter of opinion. But if this is the wrong forum, moving it elsewhere will get no objections from me.)

Feedback: How it should work
You try something. You observe how well or poorly it works. You make adjustments in order to make it work better. Or: You’ve been doing something for years. You’ve always been pleased with the results. But nonetheless, you continue to pay attention to what’s going on. Should you find that it has stopped working well, you make changes. You observe to see if the changes cause improvement, make things worse, or what.

The data that flows in re how well your whatever is working is feedback. It’s valuable information. People should be eager to get their hands on it. Yet, all too often, what do they actually do? They ignore it. In many cases, they take steps to insulate themselves from it, plainly considering it an unwelcome nuisance.

First example
In a business, any comment, complaint, or request made by a customer should be assumed to be valuable feedback until proven otherwise. Sometimes, the customer is a nut, but one hopes that this will not usually be the case. Who hears these comments, questions, and complaints? The frontline troops. In a store, the sales clerks and checkout counter clerks; in a bank, the tellers; in a bus company, the drivers. Etc. Theoretically, management should be eager to hear from the frontline troops about what their customers are saying. But they’re not.

Try telling a sales clerk that you’re dissatisfied about something: the fact that the store does not carry what you’re looking for, or doesn’t have the make/model/color/size you want, or that they have discontinued something you’ve been buying there for years. What do they say? “Oh, there’s no point in telling me that; you’d have to talk to the manager.” Ask them if they might not perhaps pass your comment on to the manager, and they’ll tell you, “He doesn’t listen to us.” Management doesn’t want to hear from clerks about what the customers have to say.

I once said to a bus driver that I hoped he would report to someone about a problem that had occurred on that morning’s trip. He angrily told me that it was not his job to do anything of the kind. If I wanted anything reported, I’d have to phone the company. I’m sure he was telling the truth. Instead of training the drivers to notice, remember, and report any problems on their route, and on any complaints from customers, they make it clear that they don’t want to hear about problems or complaints.

The bus company has a monopoly on each route it runs. I guess it doesn’t have to give a darn about problems, rider dissatisfaction, etc. Banks don’t really have to care, either. They don’t need to worry about losing customers to a bank that treats them better. For small depositors, they’re really all just alike.

But shouldn’t real businesses care? They’re in competition with other stores that sell the same products. In theory, a store that ignores customer feedback should lose out to a store that’s responsive to it. The only answer I can see, is that their unresponsiveness doesn’t hurt them because their competition isn’t doing any better.

Second example
The public schools. Consider how many adult Americans do not know the difference between “your” and “you’re”. Consider how many think that the plural of “Attorney General” is “Attorney Generals”. Consider how many are stumped by a question like, “What is 25% of 350?” Let alone, “50 is what percent of 800?” Consider how many do not have any comprehension of what the scientific method is, how it works, why it’s important. Consider how many… (fill in your own pet peeve). This is feedback. Every public school in the nation ought to be paying attention to such things, and beefing up instruction accordingly.

Plainly, few if any are doing so. Why not? Do they all think, “Oh, our students aren’t making those mistakes. It must be other schools.”

So, fellow Dopers, does anyone have an explanation for this?

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I’d say that some organizations pay lip service to the idea of feedback, but don’t mean it. Two examples follow.

My bank once handed out a survey to depositors. It seemed directed at measuring customer satisfaction. But it absolutely did not ask the right questions! For me, anyway. They asked about things that were of no concern to me at all. They didn’t ask the right questions to let me tell them about things I hated about doing business with them. It was like, “This is all we want to know. Don’t bother us with your actual concerns.”

I commute into Manhattan by bus. The trip ends at the Port Authority Terminal at 42nd Street. Every now and then, there’s a “tell us what you think” session at the terminal. People have the opportunity to talk to representatives of the Port Authority, the various bus companies, and the management of the turnpike on which some of the busses travel. Time after time, people bring up the same problems and concerns. The representatives are friendly and polite. They even take notes. But nothing ever changes; the problems are never addressed. I’ve come to the conclusion that the real point of these sessions is to let dissatisfied people blow off steam.

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Part of it is that we live in a culture of blame, if something is measured and found to be less than satisfactory then someone must be at fault, not a very conducive atmosphere to openness and honesty.

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I wonder if one reason may be that we have only recently developed technologies that make it easier to process and organize this kind of feedback in large organizations. It will take time for institutions to develop the tecnical infrastructure required for this, and it will take much more time for people’s assumptions, such as the culture of blame, to change enough to make such systems to work.

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It isn’t just top management of big companies that are ignoring feedback, it’s also the owners and manages of small outfits. They seem to me to be just as bent on insulating themselves from pesky customers and their comments as are the big guys. And just as determined to disregard any feedback that does manage to reach them. The attitude seems to be, “don’t talk to me about what you want; buy what we want to sell you or go away!”

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Anyone have any ideas or comments about the failure of the public schools to make use of feedback?

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The gift that everyone gives and nobody takes…

Advice.

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Zenster, most of what I’m talking about does not involve seeking advice. I suppose that surveying your customers, or listing to their comments could be likened to taking advice. But you can make use of feedback in other ways–

Try something. Pay attention to the results. Modify what you’re doing in order to improve the results. In a business, managment can do this without ever actually talking to a customer, just by taking note of what sells well and what does not. If your doohickies are just sitting on the shelf gathering dust, get rid of them and try some other product in that spot. Or, say you get a shipment of framistans in every Monday. They consistantly sell out in two days. If you’re paying attention, you will notice this, and increase your framistan order, or arrange for more frequent deliveries.

Or, consider signs. Businesses, schools, banks, govt agencies – everyone needs to post signs. Directional signs, announcements, instructions, etc. Ideally, whenever you post a new sign, you pay some attention to feedback. That is, you don’t just assume that no one could possibly fail to understand your sign. You observe the results, and if you find that somehow the idiots reading the sign are managing to misinterpret your message, you change the sign.