I don't think consumers are responsible for ruining online ratings. I think companies are responsible for gamifying/training their users to ruin online ratings.
My first reaction was to scoff at this, but you might be on to something! I discussed the idea of "not wanting to hurt vendors' feelings" being a driver behind choosing 100% ratings versus more accurate reflections from consumers, but I hadn't considered that maybe people's feelings in that regard were influenced by the fact that every app and product begs to be rated that way. "Did we fulfill the basic requirements? Please rate us five stars!" Is that anywhere in the ballpark of what you mean?
Indeed, that is exactly what I mean. Uber is the best example of this.
"Do you think I should lose my job over the way I drove you here? If no, please rate me 5 stars."
This also now transfers to NPS surveys. I used to work at an ISP and I often take the time out to rate customer service providers as I know how important metrics can be to individual workers. A lot of companies doing NPS are now "stuffing" the rating system by telling people "Please rate us on a scale of 1 - 10 where 9 or 10 means you're happy". Yes, 9 - 10 means happy, not ecstatic, not over the moon, just happy. If you rate an 8? Well you must not be happy, what did we do wrong to deserve an 8/10?
I will reply separately specifically about NPS Surveys as I believe they have essentially become the "Scrum" process of the telecommunications industry.
That is to say, a lot of companies say they are doing it. Middle managers will profess to their upper management overlords that they are doing it, but very few companies are actually doing it.
NPS was built around a key metric which is "how likely someone is going to be to recommend your service to someone else". The P stands for "promoter" and a promoter is exactly that.
If you start stuffing the by asking the wrong questions, priming responses, etc. then your NPS score becomes meaningless, a 9/10 or 10/10 no longer means that person is necessarily going to be a promoter! For now, it's a numbers game so I think the upper management don't care that their 9s and 10s don't translate to actual promoters, because they'll get their bonuses, or they'll get acquired by a bigger firm based on those "fake" numbers.
Soon enough, I think we'll see a revolt from the smarter firms doing due diligence where it's not enough to show a high NPS score, you will also need to prove that these numbers are reliable (better yet, simply show that you're getting new customers through word of mouth by some other, verifiable means).
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[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 20.0 ms ] thread"Do you think I should lose my job over the way I drove you here? If no, please rate me 5 stars."
This also now transfers to NPS surveys. I used to work at an ISP and I often take the time out to rate customer service providers as I know how important metrics can be to individual workers. A lot of companies doing NPS are now "stuffing" the rating system by telling people "Please rate us on a scale of 1 - 10 where 9 or 10 means you're happy". Yes, 9 - 10 means happy, not ecstatic, not over the moon, just happy. If you rate an 8? Well you must not be happy, what did we do wrong to deserve an 8/10?
That is to say, a lot of companies say they are doing it. Middle managers will profess to their upper management overlords that they are doing it, but very few companies are actually doing it.
NPS was built around a key metric which is "how likely someone is going to be to recommend your service to someone else". The P stands for "promoter" and a promoter is exactly that.
If you start stuffing the by asking the wrong questions, priming responses, etc. then your NPS score becomes meaningless, a 9/10 or 10/10 no longer means that person is necessarily going to be a promoter! For now, it's a numbers game so I think the upper management don't care that their 9s and 10s don't translate to actual promoters, because they'll get their bonuses, or they'll get acquired by a bigger firm based on those "fake" numbers.
Soon enough, I think we'll see a revolt from the smarter firms doing due diligence where it's not enough to show a high NPS score, you will also need to prove that these numbers are reliable (better yet, simply show that you're getting new customers through word of mouth by some other, verifiable means).