Aggreko : Spinning feedback

Random viewing lends credibility to customer comments.

The Site

Aggreko, a Scotland-based provider of temporary power and temperature control systems, has a transparent and novel way of displaying customer feedback.

Aggreko’s company information section, About Aggreko, includes a page titled Customer Comments that presents visitors with an interactive tool displaying feedback provided by clients in response to an annual satisfaction survey. The tool shows three columns: the comment itself; a score out of ten for the company’s performance; and the country from where the comment was submitted. A button labelled Generate Random Comment spins the display like a casino slot machine, and lands on a different comment each time.

Surrounding information explains that about 7,000 comments “good and bad” can be viewed in this manner and emphasises that all “are viewed by our operational personnel as well as senior management and Executive Board”. A sub-link in the section navigation, What is Net Promoter, leads to a description of the methodology that underpins the scoring and was “created by Fred Reichheld, Satmetrix and Bain & Company”. There is no cross-linking to the Products & Services Overview section.

The Takeaway

Leaving aside its highly engaging, verging on addictive, slot machine front end, the impressive aspect of Aggreko’s customer comment viewer is the varied nature of the feedback that is displayed. As a form of ‘anti-marketing’ – admitting to there being rough in the smooth – it will play well with the company’s hard-nosed core B2B audience.

Peppering the largely positive selection of comments with some extremely negative ones (for example, “One of the generators did not show up on time and the communication to me on that piece of equipment was not acceptable”) and low scores reinforces an air of openness and honesty that adds credibility to the praise rather than undermines it. The randomness of the display and access to the scoring methodology offer further reassurance that the company is not rigging the wheel excessively in its favour. Of course it still controls the ratio of positive to negative comments and the editing of them, and retains the right to moderate business-sensitive feedback. But in the real world no one would expect the ‘house’ to forgo all of its percentage.

First published on 18 October, 2011