This article should be a must-read if you go to chain restaurants
Ziosks are designed to increase restaurant efficiency by allowing customers to order drinks, appetizers, and desserts, and pay their bill from the table without talking to a server. But, as Bishop soon discovered, they also prompt customers to take a satisfaction survey at the end of every meal, the results of which are turned into a score that’s used to evaluate the server’s performance.
The scores are taken super-seriously enough to cut down hours or even fire someone, even though the survey isn't very detailed and customers don't know it's being taken so super-seriously that even a four-star rating isn't considered good.
I haven't warmed to using the devices (old enough to be set in ways, I s'pose), but if I had a survey as simplistic as the one they give I'd probably have my usual reluctance to give out five stars to preserve the highest ranking being something special, not knowing it could be used against the server so much with even a four-star. This is ridiculous.
Ziosk tablets sit atop dining tables at more than
4,500 restaurants across the United States — including most Chili’s and Olive Gardens, and many TGI Friday’s and Red Robins. Competitor E La Carte’s PrestoPrime tablets are in
more than 1,800 restaurants, including most Applebee’s. Tens of thousands of servers are being evaluated based on a tech-driven, data-oriented customer feedback system many say is both inaccurate and unfair. And few of the customers holding the reins are even aware their responses have any impact on how much servers earn.
It looks like the system is nowhere near being fair. There's the age-old problem of people blaming the server for slow speed or food they didn't like when it could easily be the kitchen's fault.
Also surprising to customers is the fact that survey questions that have seemingly nothing to do with a server’s duties, like how well their food was prepared, are factored into a server’s overall rating. Restaurant brands, not Ziosk itself, set the questions on the device, which means they can vary widely. Some common questions across restaurants include, “How likely would you be to return to this restaurant?” “How would you rate the cleanliness of this restaurant?” and “How likely would you be to recommend this restaurant to a friend?”
I could easily do 4's thinking those are good, and in any case they don't always reflect on the server.
Though it sounds like the worst of the worst are at places where they do some of the T&A bit AND have the Ziosks.
When a woman named Anna worked at a Midwest outpost of Smokey Bones — a chain restaurant that requires women servers to wear low-cut T-shirts, preferably with makeup and longer hair — she often saw “comments on boobs — nice boobs,” she said.
When her managers printed out Ziosk scores and comments each week, they would also highlight the positive comments — including the ones that mentioned servers’ bodies and appearance. “They were considered a positive response to service,” she said.
Maybe my 20-year-old self was capable of a comment like that as a joke but only under the belief it'd just be discarded. I was used to being ignored back then.
The article is long-ish but a real must-read. Like most here, I'm guessing, I don't go to the chains very often but I'm sure the vendors are trying to spread this beyond the chains. If I'm really dissatisfied and think the problem is systemic I might be motivated to post on Trip Advisor or Yelp, thogh my reviews there are either the raves or the train wrecks and most of these chains would be somewhere in between. One of the sources mentioned that the restaurants don't want people posting on those sites and if they can vent in this way then it protects the business, but takes it out on the server that may not even be the problem.
Experiences like Anna’s remind Cornell's Professor Levy of an economic concept known as Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." In other words, pushing people to reach a specific goal tends to corrupt the system, rendering it ineffective.
(emphasis mine)