Ask me about 10

There seems to be a universal underground movement amongst industries that service customers, where the motive is to get feedback on the level of service received or (God forbid) not received. While at a auto body shop yesterday, I noticed that several of the employees were wearing a tag that said, "Ask me about 10". It didn't take a big leap from me to figure out what the motive was behind the message. What else would body shop employees want from everyday, day-in, day-out customers, besides their business? They want feedback. This is the golden information that helps them to determine the liklihood of repeat business, which in turns helps determine their immediate future as a profitable business enterprise. Can't say that I've not seen this before: my own employer has a similar quest for truth, albeit the grading scale only goes up to 5 (hey, cutbacks happen everywhere, it seems, even in the grading scale business). Always being the salesman that loves to hear all spiels, I asked about the "10". The clerk was very professional and very well coached. "We value your opinion and would appreciate you taking a few minutes to answer some questions about the level of service we receive; our goal is to get a '10' from you, and that tells us that you have been given the highest level of service". Very subtle -- she appealed for my help in giving them extra justification for their job, via an outside grading system. Of course, I was willing to comply. In sales, we always want to know how we did for you and what we could do better. Sometimes it matters in that it brings attention to things we may not have been aware of during our sales relationship cycle. Other times (if it comes back very favorable), it's used as a proud banner of achievement, to shamelessly self-promote us as the best thing in this industry since sliced bread. Quite understandable -- feedback is important if used to better oneself. Just ask any psychoanalyst. And then, sometimes, the feedback does not always matter -- the complaints are not anything that can be easily resolved, or maybe something was lost in the translation, resulting in a hopeless cause of a project that was doomed from the start. Yet we know from past experiences that the most successful companies get that way, in part, because they paid attention to their customer's feedback and made changes as needed. Conversely, the feedback is not always used to benefit all parties, because it can also be used as a tool to support claims that the benefactor was unjustly served by the employee, thus putting it on record in the employee's file for future reference. I'm the first to admit that knowledge is power, but as a fledgling self-taught golfer for over 20 years, I also acknowledge that there is such a thing as "Analysis Paralysis", and sometimes too much information is not always the best policy. At that point, it comes down to very simple and basic principles -- if you do your job right, and follow up with your business plan, you should see success come to you, plus your clients will benefit greatly from your performance and dedication to your craft. Makes sense, for the most part, but after a while, we lose sight of this idea (probably because it's too simple), so then we call in the feedback surveys to bring us back to reality. And so it begins...again.