Feedback, Trust, and Anonymity

One of my guilty pleasures is making sure I catch Scott Adams’ Dilbert cartoon every morning.  Today’s is genius (at least, for those of us in the business of feedback).  In three panes, Adams succinctly captures the challenges and pitfalls of so many efforts to collect feedback.

Anonymous surveys that collect demographic or statistical information can be very useful.  However, surveys collecting feedback – particularly when that feedback about a service – are challenged greatly when attempted anonymously.

Fundamentally, the goal of collecting feedback is to understand his unique preferences and adjust your processes to fit his style accordingly.  Feedback of this nature is inherently personal and unique.  Providing a service (whether it be managing employees like the Pointy Haired Boss, or providing engineering expertise to a client) is not just a technical proposition.  Services are provided by people to people.  And since we’re all different and have individual preferences and approaches, there is no one-size-fits-all methodology.

Understanding this concept unveils the first challenge of anonymous feedback.  When no name is attached to the feedback, it can’t directly benefit the respondent.   When you receive anonymous feedback, and 99 out of 100 people love the way you do something, how much effect does the one dissenter have on your approach?  You aren’t going to change everything for one person.  However, if you knew who that one person was, you could adjust the process just for him (assuming it made business sense to do so).

Secondly, anonymous feedback demonstrates real challenges with trust.  The respondent can’t trust you to actually do anything about the feedback given (because, after all, you don’t know who gave it).  Or, he doesn’t trust the actual anonymity of the feedback.  With all the tracking and tricks of technology today, how often do you really believe your anonymous feedback is truly a secret?  Worse, what if you ask for feedback anonymously, and (without trying to) you figure out who gave challenging information.  Now, you really want to respond, and fix the problem – but doing so is going to violate the “trust” you offered the client by offering an anonymous survey in the first place.

But what about the good anonymity provides?  Won’t my clients be more honest?

Actually, you can get great, honest feedback, and get more of it – if the right person asks the right questions – to the right person at the right time.  Therein lies the challenge of building a great feedback process.  The most important aspect of collecting feedback from clients is to be sure the feedback is about the client – not about you.  If you collect feedback  in a manner that unveils the client’s preferences, and you respond by specifically helping the client more according to his expectations, trust is created.  When you prove to the client that feedback matters, and that you act upon it, there is no need for anonymity to get honest feedback.

That is the paradigm where the healthiest relationships are developed and were lasting client loyalty is built.