Hong Kong MTR Coffee Evenings and Liaison Trains An improvement over traditional customer surveys

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Customer satisfaction surveys often rely on brief, limited questions that don’t capture the whole picture. This method can lead to overlooked feedback and biased responses. The Hong Kong MTR has a more engaging approach: it sets up coffee booths and special carriages for casual conversations and provides richer, more comprehensive feedback through group discussions.

Have you ever been stopped on a station concourse by someone with a clipboard who asks if you would like to answer a few questions as part of a customer satisfaction survey?

You either say “no thank you” and walk quickly on or stop and answer the questions – questions that frequently have yes or no answers or scores on a 1 to 5 scale.

It is all over quite quickly, and you probably didn’t seriously consider your answers.

There is also the issue of only getting to answer the questions you are asked. Thus potentially missing out on feedback on important factors that those who set the questionnaire have overlooked. The questions may also be biased, leading you to give the answers being looked for. There is quite a skill in designing unbiased, non-leading questionnaires.

The Hong Kong MTR collects customer feedback differently. They set up coffee booths (opinion zones) on station concourses, inviting people to have free coffee and chat about customer service.

They even have special carriages on commuter trains (liaison trains) where people can have a coffee and give feedback.

What an excellent, more human-engaging way of giving customer feedback.

But it’s more than that.

Engaging several people in a conversation rather than asking simple, one-to-one questions gives you fuller, richer responses.

In a one-to-one question session, you might be asked to rate the cleanliness of the trains on a scale of 1 to 5, and you might pick a number like 4.

But in a conversation, when you hear other people talk about their experiences, it reminds you of similar experiences that you’ve had and forgotten about, but now you can bring them up in the conversation.

Listening to others’ verbalized experiences stimulates memories, ideas, and experiences in participants.

This is also known as the group effect where group members engage in “a kind of ‘chaining’ or ‘cascading’ effect; talk links to, or tumbles out of, the topics and expressions preceding it”

Credit: Thomas R. Lindlof and Bryan C. Taylor

So, the conversation helps to surface long-forgotten experiences or ideas for improvement, and the MTR Corporation gets richer, more useful feedback.

The Hong Kong MTR’s approach to collecting customer feedback through casual conversations offers richer insights than traditional surveys. This method helps uncover deeper issues and experiences, leading to better service improvements. Other organizations can learn from this model to enhance their own customer feedback processes.

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