UX of Service Feedback

Crafting a better way to receive actionable feedback in coffee shops and restaurants.

There have been growing streams in the study of customer or user behaviour. Interestingly, the world of business successfully introduced a new career path for professionals- customer experience management. Since service delivery is well incorporated in businesses, the customer experience seems to be pivotal for metering the health of a business. Hence, food businesses like restaurants and coffee shops are not left, more so considering the frequency of visits by users within a period of time… blah blah blah…

No long story, this is an exploratory study of visitors to Canada’s pride coffee shop in other to acquire descriptive (qualitative) data. In this study, the schemata for purchasing coffee is considered for analysis, based on a two-day visit to the shop. In addition to this, I also gathered quantitative insights on feedback using a questionnaire.

Prior to these two days of observation, I had visited a different coffee shop where there was a feedback machine with an interface, almost like an ATM 😀 (See picture below). Then I became curious since I observed no one using it. By the way, in this article, the term “user” is used interchangeably with the term “customer”.

Feedback machine located by the entrance/exit.

Conducting Observation Study

With the aim of improving the feedback mechanism in a physical shop, going to meet the users was important, so I spent two days in the shop studying users i.e. visitors/customers. Prior to that, I had created some hypothesis based on my visit to the first shop, where there was a new feedback machine. Here are the hypotheses:

Coffee shops need each customer to give feedback on their service while going out.
Users consider giving feedback a daunting task that engages their emotion and thought faculty.

Pictures showing activities in the coffee shop within two days

Having established these, let's move quickly to behaviours in the coffee shop during the two-day visit. In other to sort and make meaningful the behaviours, the schema approach was employed.

Using schema approach

To better model the service experience, using the schema approach will help structure the observations for meaningful insights and quick grasp. The choice of schema approach is based on its ability to “interpret sensory data, retrieve information from memory, organize action, and eventually solve problems”… hence, acting like a skeletal structure. Moreover, since Schema is all about the perception of new information based on relatable old information, more precedence must go into understanding what people commonly recognize from memory, based on similar past experiences.

Observations from my two days, to visit a coffee shop.

Based on the above discussed, designing an innovative solution for feedback would require introducing new or organizing scripts within the schema i.e. where the most important events (defined by the user) are associated. For this project, I thought of structuring a questionnaire to get acquire thoughts from users, practical users.

You might argue that a questionnaire might adequately not represent a cognitive tool for addressing service experience, safe to say, I am JUST TESTING.

Designing a questionnaire

So I drafted a 5-question survey to discuss customer’s experience in the coffee shop/restaurant and received 24 responses. The aim like I said was to allow users to reflect based on past experience on what was done while in the shop in order to give feedback. Here are the questions:

Have you ever had a bad service experience in a restaurant or coffee shop? The data showed users are sometimes not satisfied with the service (79.2% claimed to have had a bad service experience).
If yes, how did you communicate your disappointment? (see map below)
In a time you were really satisfied with the restaurant service, what did you do to show your satisfaction? (see map below).
How frequently do you visit restaurants/coffee store in a week? Most people visited the coffee shop once-two twice-weekly (about 79%).
What's your age group? Most are young people (about 80% fell between 25–35years).

Based on these responses, we can create an affinity map to help group matching behaviours and importantly identify themes.

Affinity mapping

The affinity mapping first afforded me the ability to appreciate the insight generated by the survey participants, thereafter, group these insights based on similarities or patterns induced from their responses. At this point, the goal isn't to make sense of the insights but make patterns clearer.

Naming these groups should come after grouping these insights based on patterns, since it should be reflective of the the similarities (theme).

After grouping, we cab further map the themes (similarities) based on how users would give negative feedback. The quantitative data wasn’t considered to be weighty, as second least, users using feedback site (8.7%) drew more affinity than users sucking it in (65.2%) with just one (1) card associated with it. So, here it is more of association than quantitative numbers from the survey

Also, it is important to listen to insights and follow it (not blindly though); since some people translated giving tips to giving feedback, which might not be intuitive, but that’s how they felt at that moment 🙂. Moreover, this spells the reason for affinity mapping).

Research Implication

Let me iterate here the goal of the research: find a balance between the customer’s thoughts (theory of cognition) and his/her perception (theory of schema). Firstly, based on the schema, the use of POS has become strong, as users prepare for making payment even right from home. In relation to the affinity map, since there is a good association with giving tips via:

1. POS- a touchpoint, giving feedback at this point might be intuitive (especially if payment is to be made at the end of the service). The iteration is to make provision for giving an actual review or feedback (not monetary) on the POS; making a case for PAYMENT and FEEDBACK userflow and designs. Since most restaurants collect payments and tips after meal service, it is safe to say give feedback on that spot.

Secondly, considering the affinity map, different groups of users are more associated with giving feedback via the restaurant’s website. Also, since people go to sit and discuss, (as dictated by the observation) which has a strong occurrence (script) within the schema, this makes a case for having

2. QR codes containing a link to feedback interface on each table.

This makes provision for users who decide to sit and discuss or chill over a coffee or meal.

Conclusion

Having used the schema approach and affinity mapping, it seem very applicable to service experience where the cognition and perception of the user are really engaged. However, I intend to do further study on the theories of perception and cognition, as they seem historical, yet fundamental.

This study was blind to some other insights and use cases; for example, the users who would love to rush in, grab a cup of coffee and straight out were not prioritized, since the schema didn't reflect strong occurrence.

Anyway, I hope this engaged you; please share your thoughts below.