Barnes & Noble.com Tops Customer Satisfaction Survey

[gb18]

Good news!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/barnes-noble-com-tops-customer-123000600.html

[keriflur]

*rolls eyes*

Who ARE these people that they contact for these surveys?

[gb18]

Probably paid surveyors offering free coupons to the responders!

[Sun_Cat]

---

gb18 wrote:

Good news!

---

As in:

"Good news, everyone!"
-- Professor Farnsworth (Futurama)

Actually, I believe that ForeSee's selection methodology is partly random and partly based on click path analysis. It ought to be equivalent across the sites it rates, so the comparative data should be more or less valid. However, individual responders self select, which adds a certain wild card zest to the picture. In any case, the mind boggles at this result.

[jesla]

---

keriflur wrote:

*rolls eyes*

Who ARE these people that they contact for these surveys?

---

Well, me for one.

For mother's day my family "upgraded" me from a Nook 1st edition to the 8gb tablet. Due to an oversight by my husband and later a mistake made by me, I've had to contact customer service twice in the past week. Both times I experienced little to no hold time, was treated with respect, and had my issue resolved. After the first call (on mother's day!) I received a survey. Needless to say they received high marks.

Maybe my experince wasn't typical but I'm happy.

[keriflur]

---

jesla wrote:

---

keriflur wrote:

*rolls eyes*

Who ARE these people that they contact for these surveys?

---

Well, me for one.

For mother's day my family "upgraded" me from a Nook 1st edition to the 8gb tablet. Due to an oversight by my husband and later a mistake made by me, I've had to contact customer service twice in the past week. Both times I experienced little to no hold time, was treated with respect, and had my issue resolved. After the first call (on mother's day!) I received a survey. Needless to say they received high marks.

Maybe my experince wasn't typical but I'm happy.

---

So, are they only sending surveys to people who had good calls?  They do record the calls, so...

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

Keep in mind the competition. Here are the entrants in B&N's category — Books/Music/Video — from high score to low:

• 82 - B&N, Scholastic (tie)
• 81 - Netflix
• 77 - Blockbuster
• 69 - efollett.com

B&N was helped by Netflix's recent self-destructive bent which has seen it drop from a score of 87. Although to be fair, BN.com is up from 80 last year, so it did help itself.

[bklvr896]

---

keriflur wrote:

*rolls eyes*

Who ARE these people that they contact for these surveys?

---

I had to laugh when I read this.  We periodically get surveys at work about how well we like our jobs, how is management, the organization, etc.  And when the results come out, we all seem to look at each other and ask, where'd they get these answer, mine certainly weren't like that. 

One thing to keep in mind, is that these forums (and all others) are almost never representative of the universe of users, we account for a very very small percentage of owners, and forum (and reviews) will tend to be skewed to the negative side because most people do take the time to post when they're happy and satisfied, while they will get right on posting when they're not happy.

I haven't had much need to deal with CS, so I can't really answer from personal experience, what experience I do have has been positive though.

[keriflur]

The last positive experience I had was in the spring of 2010, when CS was still (at least partly) in the US.  I have called at least 3 times since then, each time worse than the previous.  I've curtailed my B&N shopping considerably to avoid the chance of having to call CS again.

The last CS agent I had did not know what The Lord of the Flies was, and could not compare the titles or ISBNs of two books to tell that they were the same.  Her comprehension of English was poor at best - I had to repeat everything three times and she still didn't understand me.  Ultimately she "helped" me by deleting one of my paid ebooks that I did NOT ask her to delete.  Yes, she did refund that book, but somehow that didn't make it feel any less like a cluster.  It was a sad state of affairs and if I didn't have such a long relationship with B&N I would have written them off completely.

Thus, my opinion of B&N CS comes from personal experience, not that of other forum users.

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

---

keriflur wrote:

I've curtailed my B&N shopping considerably to avoid the chance of having to call CS again.

---

Just to be sure there's no confusion: the report referenced in the original posting isn't about Customer Service at all. It's about the customer's experience of the web site: browsing, searching, comparing, buying, etc.

So it would include the many problems with customer reviews, or that the Advanced Search still can't turn up a single NOOK Book after more than a year of being broken (when the problem is merely the difference between "ep" and "EP"), but it doesn't include the out-sourced CS.