This was a bit of an unusual sight in the Shanghai customs line: A push-button interface at the immigration station for travelers to rate the performance of the Chinese police officer who was reviewing your passport and visa. There were four different levels of satisfaction, designated by the smiley faces and text labels underneath each one in Mandarin and English.
I doubt each customer’s response is immediately visible to the police officer evaluating immigration forms, but I didn’t take any chances– I pushed the button for “highly satisfied.” 
It’s interesting to see the Chinese government providing these types of survey tools and feedback procedures for the work of public officials. In many U.S. chain restaurants now, like Chiles and KFC, every time customers are given a receipt they are also given a link to an online survey to provide feedback. Good businesses know one of the best ways to improve is to continually ask customers for input and comments.
A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted an update and photo using Loopt to a sign in an Oklahoma KFC asking for survey feedback. My thought was, wouldn’t it be great if our schools asked for such regular feedback from constituents: students, parents, and others, AND regularly shared the results of that feedback in a transparent way? Think Pick-A-Prof, but for K-12 schools.
Digital technologies SHOULD enable organizations of all types and sizes to solicit continual feedback on employee/staff performance and customer satisfaction. Then organizations should use that feedback to improve services. It’s interesting to see diverse organizations like the Chinese police / immigration officials as well as many international restaurant chains utilizing these capabilities of social media technologies. Does your school or do you know of schools regularly soliciting electronic feedback in this same way from educational constituents, and then responsively changing as a result of that feedback?
Technorati Tags:
china, poll, survey, feedback, immigration, responsive
On this day..
- Digital Magazines: Text Plus Multimedia - 2011
- When Parents Don't Want Student Email - 2011
- Mirroring an iPad with iOS 5 & Apple TV - 2011
- Platforms for Interactively Sharing Student Work - 2010
- AudioBoo provides a great opportunity to record and share holiday memories - 2010
- The Research on Teaching Animation Design Art by Yang Huansong - 2009
- Viva Las Vegas with Elvis in Hangzhou, China - 2009
- Creating an alternative gaming classification system - 2009
- Leading, Learning, Loving It, Leading Tomorrow’s Schools Today by Jenny Lewis - 2009
- The Digital Generation: Up Close and Personal by Milton Chen - 2009
