Should customers lie to you?

In a world obsessed with feedback, why do so few people give it?

A few miles from the Dutch fort City of Galle in southern Sri Lanka is a mountain area known as Rumassala, the beautiful rock. Legend has it the great monkey king, Hanuman was asked to go to the Himalayas and bring back four medicinal herbs to heal a fellow warrior. When he arrived, he couldn’t see the herb he needed, so… he lifted the entire mountain and brought it to the battlefield to help the fallen soldier. In the process, a chunk of the mountain fell from the sky to become Rumassala.

The area is filled with medicinal herbs and stray dogs who pass the time, watching locals from a secluded, jungle beach.

Today, the mountain, like much of Sri Lanka since becoming Lonely planets best travel destination in 2018, is full of activity. Two sounds shroud the landscape, the drum of workers beating new hotels into the hills, and the horns of tuk-tuks, alerting potential drivers around tight corners they are close by. Dioxins, a cancer-causing substance, floats in white smoke from roadside fires where the locals burn their trash.

At the top of the mountain is The Levels Cantelope Hotel, a four-story boutique hotel recently crafted to maximize on the booming tourist market. From each balcony, vines drape down nearly 30 feet into a pool below. If you sit nearby, you can see small sparrows taking dead leaves from the jungle to make their nests in the vines beside the pool. As I watched one afternoon, counting the seconds it took for them to come and go, one plunged into the clean glass railing, falling into the pool below.

Tourism snatching life from the world right before my very eyes.

Breakfast is served on a small grass area in the mid-levels from 7.30am. Whenever we arrive, it’s empty. Not because it’s bad, because it’s early and I’m a psycho for waking up early.

Like most menus I’ve seen in Sri Lanka, they’re split in 2 - hedging their bets. A Sri Lankan curry with hoppers, which will be good - it usually is, and western fare. Bread, eggs, et cetera, which is usually second prize.

Either way, after ten minutes or so, one of the waiters who shows a particular interest in guests being happy will ask you a question he asks hundreds of times each day and is a conversation that happens around the world.

“How is everything?”

“Fine,” I say. But am I really telling the truth?

I have suggestions, I keep thinking - about everything.

Food-wise, there are clearly things on my plate I didn’t touch, things I found weird, things that might be cooked strangely, that with a few adjustments would be wonderful, to me at least. But instead, we stand in a kind of awkward dance. He doesn’t press the issue further, there’s no incentive too. The conflict is too weird.

As someone who has run a business, I’m fascinated by customers coming in contact with friction. I adore IDEO’s learning personas, and when I see people out in the world, struggling to use a ticket machine, or find a bathroom, I can’t help embrace the intellectual exercise of working out how it could be better.

So why don’t I speak up when a waiter asks how things are? I know that feedback is essential to improving, and I really love helping businesses improve, but I’m still reluctant to give it.

When I reflect on it deeply, I know why.

It’s because I don’t care.

Feedback is good business

Sri Lankan restaurants and hotels are particularly obsessed with feedback, especially on Trip Advisor. It reaches a point where it dominates most experiences. Signs are posted everywhere. Sometimes, it is the only sign. Most chefs and restaurateurs will be reluctant to say 10 words to you, but one phrase they master well.

“Please, make sure you leave us a review on Trip Advisor.”

At one point, during a cooking class, a man sat down at our table for about 20 minutes, talking about how important good reviews were for him. His entire livelihood depends on good reviews.

Chefs know every comment on TripAdvisor in detail, and they respond to nearly all negative feedback with poise, clarifying points calmly, and generally speaking, carry the composure of a monk in their online interactions.

Responding to feedback is key — they know this.

In ReviewPro’s 2015 Top Luxury & Brand survey, 85% of users agree that a thoughtful response to a bad review will improve their impression of a hotel, and this sentiment is climbing year on year. The reason a response matters so much is that seeing a calm and composed response to a bad experience shows that a hotel cares more about their guests than those who sit in silence.

This cadence of responding to bad reviews comes from findings in the same report, detailing the impact of management response rates and how they can predict which hotels will see revenue growth.

There appears to be a strong link between a hotels Global Review Index (GRI) and its Management Response Rate. Hotels with the lowest level of guest satisfaction respond to around 17% of online reviews.

The top Hotels, respond to 66.8%.

Put simply, the more you respond, the better the hotel.

Own a business? Toughen up

Hotels have a particularly tumultuous relationship with feedback. On one hand, the primary reason my wife and I book a particular hotel, will be driven, at least in part by reviews on Trip Advisor. Reviews drive customers. But on the other hand, a swell of bad reviews, justified or not, can be crippling.

The internet is where customers do feel comfortable giving feedback — and boy, do they ever. Visiting trip advisor for a Hotel is a mixed bag. Optimistic, naive, objective, cruel and vengeful comments peppered throughout. They speak volumes of human behavior, expectations, and the entitlement of people when things don’t go their way.

Restauranteurs are told to toughen up, develop a thick skin and shake it off. After all, you can’t please everyone. But if you have ever spoken to someone who starts a restaurant, it’s hard not to feel for them. To have customers craft out online hatchet jobs on their BLT sandwiches can’t feel great.

But it got me thinking about why.

Why do customers lie about feedback in person and are so articulate behind the screen?

I think I might know why…

And I think I have a solution.

Why are people afraid to be honest?

Kim Scott in her book Radical Candor distills feedback into four perfect little squares. I’ll do the best job I can of explaining how this works. So follow along.

There are four ways to give feedback to someone today. 3 bad ways. 1 good way. Let’s start with the bad.

1. Ruinous Empathy

Ruinous empathy is the idea that when I’m at a restaurant table, and the waiter asks me what I think of the eggs, I’m actually worried about hurting his feelings. So I stay silent.

“Everything’s fine.”

*looks at the uncooked egg-whites*

“No really, it’s fine.”

The waiter is such a nice, sweet guy, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. By staying silent, I’ll preserve his delicate sensibilities.

2. Manipulative Insincerity

This is where I also stay silent. But this time, it’s because I don’t want to feel bad.

There are many times where giving someone candid feedback would make you feel terrible. By staying silent, you are really protecting yourself from pain at the expense of someone else’s growth and development. I think this is where I fit in when I eat out. I mostly just want to avoid the drama and have a good time. If the meal sucks, my wife and I can just bitch about it on the way home. I ideally want to avoid any kind of backlash from my feedback while I’m there. What if someone spits in my food?

I suspect most customers are truely afraid to give feedback. Restaurants might want it, especially in private, but perhaps they underestimate how much psychological safety is needed to give it.

A diner might think, If I give this waiter feedback about my steak being cold, in front of my friends, will my friends think I’m a douche? Maybe they’ll think I’m too high maintenance?

The list of emotional warning signals go up quickly to protect us in social situations. Staying silent is easy. The only person you’ll hurt, is someone I don’t know after-all.

3. Obnoxious Aggression

Welcome to Trip Advisor. Please place all nasty words in the comments below. I feel I have seen people be incredibly cruel both online and at restaurants (the real world), and the kind of feedback they give here is anything but silent. Some seem to take enjoyment in cutting down people with feedback. This is obviously a terrible way to behave.

It made me think, when people stay silent in person, and then go online to provide the real feedback, are they moving from Ruinous empathy and manipulative insincerity in person, straight to obnoxious aggression online? What is it about being online that gets people so fired up?

My guess is it’s because the psychological safety is at home on your sofa.

Nobody can hurt me from here. I can say what I want. And because I’ve been stewing about it all day, now I’m really angry.

4. Radical Candor

Finally we get to the right way to give feedback. Be direct, polite and helpful. Provide actionable intel the person can use, and move forward.

“How was everything?”

“Generally speaking, okay. But the egg whites look uncooked, and that made me a bit disappointed. Raw egg whites freak me out.”

So now what?

I hear you. You’re all saying, “I get it Brad, but people suck at giving feedback. This doesn’t change anything!”

Radical Candor is not coming to restaurants soon.

So now comes the solution part of my story. It will help people get better, candid feedback and it will force people out of ruinous empathy and manipulative insincerity, and it just requires swapping one question with another.

The feedback adjustment you can make today

When you ask someone who is used to ruinous empathy and manipulative insincerity, you are asking them to challenge their whole experience. Confront you, head on. No limits. That is fucking terrifying.

But…

What if you make it a safe question instead. The way I see it, there are 2 ways to ask for feedback about your meal or experience.

Question 1.
The Hard Question: “Is everything okay”.
This is way to open ended. It requires customers to have courage and confidence that most people simply don’t demonstrate normally. They often don’t know the staff, have no relationship with them, and no real vested interest in their future. What’s going through my mind when asked this is, how can I be polite, and how can I get out of here feeling okay.

Question 2.
The Easier Question: “Hey listen, we are trying to improve some of our dishes a little, and I wanted to get some feedback. Mind if I ask you one question? If you could improve one thing about the eggs today, what would it be?”

When you ask the question this way, you’re asking for a partnership. You want their input, because you respected them enough to ask. And when you respect them, customers start to care. And when they care, they move from those bad methods (ruinous empathy and manipulative sincerity) to the good one, Radical Candor.

Even with customers who are still reluctant will give you something which you can flesh out a little.

“What’s one thing we could improve about the eggs?”

“Oh…I don’t know.”

“No really, one thing. Just one. It can be really small.”

“Um… I don’t know. I guess I like a bit more salt usually. So maybe that.”

Great. Like blood from a stone.

But you got some insightful intel now. It’s growth for everyone. The shy customer learns it’s not so hard to give feedback. You get something slightly actionable, and you form a closer bond, which should make the dining experience better for everyone.