Did you do it willingly or was it shoved to you by a staff cos the management decided it's time to hear the customers' voices?
Getting feedback from customers has becomes an integral part of business operations. There are printed feedback forms at many of the customer facing touch points. Some can be folded into an envelope, some like post cards or printed on a company's materials like newsletter, tray liner, etc. You can even fill up a form online.
So who came up with the idea and format for the feedback form? I googled it but was unable to find the answer.
Talking about feedback form, I happened to saw one on a new restaurant's Facebook page. In fact, this restaurant ad appeared on my wall as a suggested post and it caught my attention as I've passed by it a few times.
This restaurant owner is smart by printing the feedback form on the tray liner. By doing so, he does not need to print the form separately. Anyway, he needs to print the tray liner too. The best part is that all customers will see the feedback form and perhaps be encouraged them to give their feedback. But he also runs the risk that the form gets stained by food placed on top.
Anyway, that's a small issue.
The bigger issue is on the form itself. Take a look at it.
However, do you think the feedback he received can really helps him to improve his business in any way? What does the customer mean by excellent? The same applies to satisfactory and poor. And what does the owner understand by his own definition of these three words? Do both parties have the same understanding about them?
For example, if a customer feedback that product pricing is poor, what does he mean? Does poor mean it's too expensive? Does poor mean that pricing is inflexible as it does not allow addition of extra ingredient by paying extra?
If the food quality and taste is indicated as satisfactory, does it mean it's nice or passable? Does it mean that given the price, this is the kind of quality a customer would expect?
The feedback collected is too vague to draw a conclusion.
Instead of asking questions that leave the definitions up to the discretion of the customers, ask specific questions. It doesn't has to be a Yes or No question. It can be an open ended question.
For example, you can ask these questions:
1. What do you like/dislike most about the food? Why?
2. What do you like/dislike most about our place and service? Why?
Secondly, why would you want to ask a question which does not serve any purpose? Whether a customer will or will not recommend his friends to patronize the restaurant does not help the owner in improving his business. It looks more like a feel good question to boost the owner's ego, especially if the answer is YES.
Even if the customer says there is no way he will recommends his friend to the restaurant, how does that affect the owner? Will he really go around and badmouth about the restaurant? You cannot gauge how good is your business based on this unless there is a way for you to measure it.
The last question is the best among the rest. First, it's specific. It asked for only ONE thing. Secondly, it asked customer for specific action, changing the ONE thing.
Could it be improved on? Definitely.
What about asking "If there is ONE thing we should improve on NOW, what would it be?"
Don't let your feedback form becomes deformed.
P.S. Make sure you provide ample space for customers to write.