I’m reading John Seddon’s book on quality management, I want you to cheat!. It challenges conventional ideas of managing quality through service guarantees and measurements.
He contrasts two approaches to using customer feedback. One bank employed a firm of consultants to do “mystery shopping” in its branches, leading to staff discontent at notions of spying by “experts”.
A Canadian bank took a different approach: they invited a large number of their customers to take part in a program. They would write a letter to their local branch manager after each visit, reporting their experience. They discovered that different branches had different types of customer, so they were able to respond flexibly to the feedback.
I am sure the second approach was cheaper as well as more useful.
