A couple days ago I was browsing through my image files. I found two customer satisfaction surveys that I had captured with SnagIt  – one from Zipcar, the other from Levi Strauss & Co.

Seeing them together was amusing – one horrendous and one wonderful. Zipcar’s one is a fantastic example of how a customer satisfaction survey should be done. Levi’s is an example of how a survey can contribute to dissatisfaction.

In truth, I’m loyal to both companies. Zipcar makes my life better and understands designing a service to make people happy.  A long time ago, I worked selling Levi jeans to customers at their flagship store in San Francisco. I wear Levi’s event today, and I love I can walk in and buy 514s or 511s knowing they fit like I want them too.

This is a classic example of a how an old brand with a great history needs to be more aggressive in learning how modern companies use technologies and how to have a conversation with customers.

Levi’s survey should never found it’s way to customers. The survey either shows too many hands in the pot or at worst a company without a vision for the future, leaning on the crutches of bad data.

I’m not going to go into every aspect of the surveys but I typed out some thoughts about the differences between the two.  You can click on the images to see the surveys.

Length – Long is Wrong

The quickest way to judge a survey is by its length – roughly, the number of questions asked. Long is wrong. Short is right. Zipcar has nine questions. Levi has 33, which means a person has to do 22 more clicks and more “cognitive work.” And Levi doesn’t even offer to buy you a coffee for your time.

The longer the survey, the more pressure to justify every single question. Also, I believe long surveys produce inaccurate data. Each successive question turns people into automation monkeys trying to get towards the goal of clicking submit if they don’t abandon all together the survey to eat a banana.

Form Design – The Organization of Questions

Zipcar has nine questions, but the last seven questions are grouped together into the third and final question. These last questions have the same rating scale. Redundancy is eliminated making these questions easier to fill out. Levi didn’t even try to group questions and they could have. For example, questions one through seven have the same rating scale. That’s needless repetition.

Net Promoter

Zipcar’s first question is the wonderful Net Promoter. They’ve implemented it in a great way too – a vertical scale instead of a horizontal one -  which is easy for the user to scan. The rating text – to help standardize responses – is clear (1 = never, 5 = maybe, 10 = Absolutely!).

Levi also asks the Net Promoter, but buries it in question 22. By the time you get to it, you’ll want to lower your rating by a few notches.

Language and Confidence

Levi’s questions are needy and insecure. For example, they ask you to rate the quality of the images on the website and so on. It’s like the company is asking,  “If you don’t  like this, I’ll try something else. I did my best for someone with no vision.”

On the other hand, Zipcar is confident, asking straightforward questions you feel they have already thought about. They are just checking in with you, and not asking you to validate them.

Here is how they each set up their surveys. Zipcar entitled their survey “how’s our driving?” and the intro to the survey reads, “Are we headed in the right direction?” Ties into the brand, right? Absolutely.

Levi’s  on the other hand starts out with the bland, “Customer Satisfaction Survey” and leads with “Thanks for visiting Levi’s.com.” Where is Levi in that? Nowhere!

Privacy Policy

Privacy policies are important for obvious reasons, but that doesn’t mean they should be a key element of every interaction with a user. It’s letting the legal team poke your customers in the eye. Zipcar has a privacy policy in their footer of the page and avoids sticking it in the survey. More importantly, in their brief intro, they ask you to just shoot them an email if you have any concerns – legal or whatever.

Your brand is your privacy policy. If your customers need to ask, they are unsure about your brand and they aren’t likely that loyal to you. When they ask to read the privacy policy, they are in affect stating, “I use your service, however, I keep it in the back of my head you might screw me because I don’t really trust you.” And when your company wants to put privacy policies everywhere, they are saying that they don’t trust themselves either.

Pointless Brand Dilution

Finally, Levi’s logo sits next to the survey company’s logo at the top of the questionnaire. I have no idea why Levi allows this. That’s poor form, either pointing to bad contractual negotiation or general lack of brand control. Either way, it shouldn’t happen, especially for a company that relies so heavily on its brand.

Meanwhile, Zipcar is zooming ahead, finding ways to please customers, as with their recent addition of FasTrak to Bay Area cars that prevents me from fumbling for dollar bills when crossing the Bay Bridge when driving north for a day of hiking.

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