I would appreciate any participation in my survey.

I am a student at Washington State Univesrity, studying deviant customers who ruin the service experience for others.

Would love to hear your stories!

https://qtrial.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_85KynhLENIaVggs

Joel Anaya

Clicked. Read the first page. No thanks.

I think posters in this forums are really nice people. You won't find much Deviant Customers here.

perhaps you should define deviant behavior for us!

Agreed that you are probably asking in the wrong place if you are looking for "deviant customers". Clicked to read the preamble and I don't understand the following part:

Are there any benefits to me if I am in this study?

The potential benefits to you for taking part in this study are managers can learn how to better deal with deviant customers, thus limiting your exposure to them.

If you are only interested in surveying people who have acted deviantly, why is it a benefit to the person surveyed that managers learn how to better deal with them? That's a benefit for the organisation, not the deviant customer! Am I missing something here

I read through the first two pages and I still don't have any idea what behavior this survey is referring to. Even the "example" given just keeps referring to vague negative actions:

Hint: if you're giving an example, don't set up the scenario and then bail out on the actual example at the last second.

You asked the wrong questions at the wrong place.

Basically, most FTers are experienced enough to identify morons, but they are from airline, not customers.

I can't express enough how appreciative I am of your honest and constructive criticism. This is the kind of feedback that I need to help me, not only develop my study better, but to improve as a researcher in general. I am only a junior, and this is my first research project at this level. This initial survey was intended as a test trial, and as evident, there are a number of issues I need to address. Thanks, again for taking your time to identify issues in the survey.

As a clarification, the study seeks to find consumer deviance that negatively impacts the service experience in any aspect of the service industry.

Again, I will address the confusion in the desciption of customer service sabotage in the survey.

How to ask the "right" questions and ask them in the "right" ways are only some measures for good survey/questionnaires. I suggest you talk to your professor. The professor should be able to give you some good pointers and "redirect" you.

Good luck with your study.

I would argue that those of us who milk mileage/points earning opportunities to the max (e.g. bringing 10,000 dollar coins into the local Bank of America branch) often cross the line into "deviant" waters. But, I see little benefit to us in describing such behavior.

Surely the OP has an academic advisor of some kind who knows how to design surveys? I mean, not from the evidence, but...

I read the first two pages, then exited. On the one hand you say the benefit of the survey is to help suppress "deviant" (whatever that is) customer behavior. On the other hand you ask respondents to self-identify as "deviant" or "saboteur" customers.

I can't imagine what you'll end up with here other than a mess of qualitative, anecdotal rants. And I can't imagine what chutzpah, or at least blind spots, it takes to ask respondents to self-identify as "deviant."

Thanks for spelling out my point more clearly. I must admit that I've engaged in "deviant" behavior during the past. But, in the absence of substantial compensation, I have no interest in sharing my secrets with parties that aspire to suppress such.

To the OP:

The way you get good research is by asking the questions that elicit the answers you want without people realizing they are giving you the answers. That's how you get people to give honest answers.

I'm not sure what the OP aims to get by asking about "deviant" customers. From my own experience I'd propose there are two types of deviants: people playing malicious pranks; and customers who are, frankly, insane. There's definitely skill that managers need to develop in terms of dealing with these types, but trying to build case studies by asking the offenders to self-identify seems ineffective. Only the pranksters would be able, and even then, why would they?

Thankfully, the truly deviant types are relatively rare. Much more common in terms of creating a negative experience for other customers are the people who are merely annoying. For example, the parents at a theater who won't take their screaming child outside. Again, there are good skills Management can develop to deal with these situations. But again, asking the offenders to self-identify is a weak approach. Annoying people are annoying largely because they don't grasp that what they're doing is wrong.

As someone who often required to demonstrate a level of assertiveness in order to receive fair treatment, I am uncomfortable with this study. It seems that the author/investigator is starting with the premise that being a squeeky wheel is not a good thing. Words like "deviant" and "saboteur" can't be good when used to describe customers.