I’ve spent years preaching the gospel of customer experience feedback. Collect. Analyze. Take Action.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth I discovered at a recent industry event: we’ve been asking the wrong questions.
After my keynote presentation at a recent event for independent garden center owners and operators, I moderated a live customer focus group with five real garden center shoppers. No scripts. No multiple choice. Just open-ended questions and genuine curiosity about what drives their purchasing decisions.
What happened next completely changed how I think about feedback.
When Scores Became Stories
Within the first five minutes, a retired Army veteran named Dennis shared something no survey could ever capture.
He called a garden center from the top of a mountain in Afghanistan – literally while watching Taliban movements – to arrange an anniversary surprise for his wife back home. The person who answered didn’t just take his order. She said, “Okay, Sniper Man, I’m gonna make this my special project.”
The pot was delivered perfectly. When a windstorm later broke it, the owner replaced it at no charge. When Dennis’s wife was later diagnosed with cancer, that same owner personally delivered a pink cherry tree for their yard.
Dennis has been a loyal customer ever since. He tells that story to everyone.
Now imagine if that garden center had just sent Dennis a survey asking him to rate his experience on a scale of one to five. What would they have learned? That he was satisfied? That he’d recommend them?
They would have completely missed the story. And stories are what create lifetime customers.
The Problem With Our Obsession With Customer Experience Feedback Scores
Here’s what typically happens in most businesses:
We collect all sorts of customer experience feedback metrics. When scores go up, we all high-five each other and celebrate. When they go down, we blame the economy, the weather, or whatever external factor lets us avoid taking responsibility.
The real issue? We have no idea why the scores move up or down in the first place.
A customer satisfaction score tells you how you’re doing at a single moment in time. It’s a snapshot. But it doesn’t tell you why someone chose you over a competitor. It doesn’t reveal what frustrated them enough to leave. And it definitely doesn’t give you the language customers actually use when they talk about your business.
What Five Customers Taught Me About Customer Experience Feedback in 45 Minutes
As I listened to these five garden center shoppers talk about their experiences, patterns emerged that no amount of survey data could reveal.
A statistician named Katja explained that she’s “a little bit more cost conscious” due to inflation, so she buys smaller plant sizes and teaches herself patience. But her husband Ben – a trained biologist – said they’ve actually spent more in recent years because the experience matters more than price.
Same household. Opposite responses to the same economic conditions. How would a one-size-fits-all survey capture that nuance?
Anya, a physician and flower farmer, casually mentioned that she meets friends at her favorite garden center for wine and conversation. “Many times, I end up shopping after I go just to hang out,” she said.
Think about that. This garden center has become a social destination. A place you go to spend time, not just money. That’s the holy grail of customer experience – and it would never show up in an NPS score.
Then there was Sandy’s viola story. She buys 13 flats of violas every single year. That’s serious customer lifetime value. At one garden center, she tried to select younger plants that would bloom at the perfect time for her garden. Two employees “came running over” and told her, “Oh no, you can’t have those, you have to pick from here.”
She left, frustrated. She’s never gone back.
One interaction. Four words. “You can’t have those.” Result? A customer worth hundreds of dollars annually, lost forever.
Would a customer experience feedback survey have captured why she left? Probably not. She bought a few other items before leaving, so she might have even rated the experience as “okay.” But the damage was done.
The Question That Unlocks Everything
About halfway through the focus group, I asked a simple question: “What’s one thing you wish garden centers better understood about you?”
The answers came fast:
“I want to be educated, not just sold to. Error is expensive.”
“I need to know my kids are welcome here, or I can’t shop at all.”
“Sometimes I want help. Sometimes I want to be left alone. I wish they could tell the difference.”
These aren’t insights you get from asking someone to rate their checkout experience on a scale of one to seven. These are the “why” behind customer experience feedback: every score, every purchase decision, every recommendation to a friend.
What This Means For Your Business
You don’t need a conference stage or a professional moderator to get this kind of customer experience feedback. You just need genuine curiosity and a willingness to ask better questions.
Here’s what I learned works:
- Stop asking customers to rate you. Start asking them to tell you stories. “What’s one experience here that really stood out to you?” beats “How would you rate our service?” every single time.
- Listen for emotion, not just information. When Anya talked about her kids being welcome, her voice changed. When Dennis described the cancer tree, you could hear the gratitude. Those emotional markers reveal what truly drives loyalty.
- Ask about the negative without making it formal. “When have you been frustrated at a business like ours?” is less threatening than “What did we do wrong?” and often yields more honest answers.
- Watch for the language customers use. They might call something “ambiance” while you call it “store layout.” They might care about “not being pressured” while you’re measuring “staff interactions per customer.” Use their words, not yours.
The ROI of Real Customer Experience Feedback
At an average of $25 per flat, preventing just two “viola incidents” per year – customers who leave and never return due to poor interactions – would retain over $650 in annual revenue. Implementing educational workshops based on customer requests could add thousands more.
But the real value isn’t just in the immediate fixes. It’s in fundamentally understanding what drives customer behavior.
When you know that some customers browse for the atmosphere while others arrive on a mission for specific items, you can train staff to identify and serve both. When you discover that parents need kid-friendly environments or they can’t shop at all, you can make strategic decisions about your space. When you learn that customers crave education about gardening mistakes, you can create new revenue streams through classes and consultation.
None of this shows up in a CSAT score.
The Simple Truth About Customer Experience Feedback
After years of advocating for customer experience feedback, I’ve realized we’ve been collecting data when we should have been having conversations.
Surveys have their place. They’re useful for tracking trends over time. But they’re terrible at driving transformation because they quantify satisfaction without explaining it.
Real conversations with real customers reveal the texture of your experience – the moments that delight, the friction points that frustrate, and the opportunities hiding beneath surface-level metrics.
So here’s my challenge: this week, don’t send a survey. Have a conversation. Invite three loyal customers for coffee. Ask them open-ended questions. Actually listen to the answers.
You might be surprised by what a simple conversation can teach you about building a business worth talking about.
About the Author: Dan Gingiss, CSP, is a top customer experience keynote speaker and strategist who works with corporations, associations, and franchises to create remarkable customer experiences. His engaging keynotes, hands-on workshops, and proven WISER™ methodology help organizations drive customer loyalty and business growth. Contact him directly to inquire about hosting a Live Customer Focus Group at your next event.
