Feedback Matters

You know the email. You stay at a hotel, eat at a restaurant, buy a product or use a service, and soon afterward it lands in your inbox: “How likely are you to recommend us?” Pick a number and you’ve just become part of a Net Promoter Score.
NPS is everywhere; from hotels, restaurants and retailers to B2C and B2B product and service companies. For more than 20 years, that familiar question has been showing up in customers’ inboxes while the resulting scores have become a fixture on managers’ dashboards.
In this episode of Feedback Matters, Jeff Robbins and Rich Raffel take a fresh look at NPS more than two decades after its introduction. Why did it become so popular? What exactly is it measuring? And what are some of the quirks and potential pitfalls of its rating scale and scoring methodology?
The discussion was sparked by two separate guest surveys Jeff received following the same hotel stay. Both asked about recommendation...but in very different ways. One simply asked, “Would you recommend us?” Yes or no. The other asked the familiar NPS question on a numerical scale. That seemingly small difference raises a much bigger question about what NPS is really measuring.
Jeff and Rich also look at what NPS got right—particularly the simplicity that helped make it so successful—and whether, more than 20 years later, it’s time to rethink how we measure recommendation, loyalty and the customer experience.
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Want us to take a look at your feedback loop? 👉 https://www.guestinsight.com/book-a-f... ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

So You Want My Feedback?- Episode 21
After a recent hotel stay, Jeff received a feedback request that seemed to offer a simple choice: leave a public review if you enjoyed your stay, or explain your concerns if you didn't. As it turned out, it wasn't nearly that straightforward.
A few days later, a completely separate guest survey from the hotel brand arrived.
In this episode, Jeff and Rich walk through both feedback experiences live, examining what worked, what didn't, and what they reveal about guest feedback, survey design, and the overall guest experience. Along the way, they discuss review requests, Net Promoter Score (NPS), question wording, and why the final guest touchpoint deserves the same thoughtful design as every other part of the guest experience.
About the Series
So You Want My Feedback? is an ongoing series that follows real guest feedback experiences Jeff and Rich receive during their own travels and everyday lives. They don't identify the hotel, brand, or survey provider because the goal isn't to criticize organizations—it's to identify what hospitality professionals can learn from each experience.
Each episode explores the complete guest feedback journey—from the initial invitation to the survey, review requests, follow-up communications, and everything in between. By walking through each experience live, Jeff and Rich examine how survey design, messaging, and follow-through shape both the guest experience and the quality of the feedback organizations ultimately receive.
While hospitality is the primary focus, the series occasionally examines customer feedback experiences from other industries.
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Want us to take a look at your feedback loop? 👉 https://www.guestinsight.com/book-a-free-discovery-session ➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖

So You Want My Feedback?- Episode 20
Can a simple haircut follow-up survey teach us something about customer feedback? Absolutely.
In this episode of So You Want My Feedback, we step outside the hospitality industry to review the follow-up email and survey from a regional hair salon. While the business isn’t a hotel or restaurant, the customer experience principles are exactly the same.
Jeff and Rich walk through the entire feedback journey—from the email invitation to the private survey and review request—and discuss what works, what could be improved, and why even well-designed feedback programs often miss opportunities because of small details.
Among the topics we discuss:
* The difference between public reviews and private feedback
* Why wording matters in survey invitations
* How businesses unintentionally reduce survey participation
* The importance of signing follow-up emails and making them feel personal * Missed opportunities to promote mobile apps
* A clean, responsive survey interface that gets many things right
* Why the feedback loop often receives less attention than other parts of the customer experience
Whether you work in hospitality, retail, personal services, healthcare, or any customer-facing business, this episode offers practical ideas you can apply to your own feedback process.
If you enjoy these real-world critiques, be sure to subscribe for more episodes of Feedback Matters and So You Want My Feedback, where we review actual customer surveys and feedback requests to help businesses create better customer experiences.

So You Want My Feedback?- Episode 19
What one small detail in a restaurant survey reveals about anonymity and guest feedback.
In this episode of So You Want My Feedback?, we review a restaurant survey sent after a recent dining experience—and quickly uncover a small detail that could have a big impact on the feedback it receives.
From how the survey frames its opening question to how it handles guest identity, we break down what works, what doesn’t, and what it may be doing to limit honest responses.
If you’re collecting guest feedback, this is a reminder that how you ask… matters just as much as what you ask.

When Guest Surveys Go Wrong: A Masterclass in "Worst Practices"
What happens when one of the world’s biggest hotel brands sends a guest survey that is confusing, repetitive, and mathematically impossible?
In this episode of "So You Want My Feedback", Jeff and Rich break down a recent post-stay survey from a major global hotel flagship that misses the mark at nearly every turn.In this episode, we discuss:
The "Zero Percent" Paradox: How a survey can tell you you've completed 0% of the task after you’ve already provided your primary rating.
The Yes/No Rating Trap: Why asking a guest to "rate" a binary event (like whether they were recognized as a loyalty member) is a fundamental design flaw.
The Missing Middle: The dangers of using a four-point scale that forces guests to be either positive or negative, with no room for a neutral middle ground.
Survey Fatigue & Redirection: The frustrating experience of being redirected to a second, unannounced "brand survey" just when you thought you were finished. Jeff also shares his experience using the hotel's digital key—one of the few highlights of the stay—and how the survey failed to capture that nuance effectively.
Key Takeaway: A survey is an extension of the guest experience. If the survey is "mailing it in," the guest feels it.
Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction: A stay at a major global flagship
1:30 - The Email: Missing signatures and "Very Poor" scales
5:10 - The 0% Completion Metric frustration
9:20 - Rating a Yes/No question?
14:00 - The $2 Water Bottle Dilemma
18:30 - The "Secret" Second Survey
22:00 - Why Midpoints Matter in Scale Design
26:00 - Final Verdict: A "Shocking" Lack of Best Practices
 
About the Podcast: Feedback Matters by GuestInsight explores the world of guest experience, survey design, and actionable feedback. Hosted by Jeff Robbins and Rich Raffel, we draw on 25+ years of experience to help businesses elevate the guest journey.
About the Series: So You Want My Feedback is our ongoing look at how hotels and other hospitality brands handle guest feedback — from post-stay survey critique to full hotel survey review.
Each episode breaks down real examples, highlighting what works, what doesn’t, and what these choices reveal about guest feedback analysis, survey design, and the overall guest experience. And while hospitality is our focus, we occasionally review customer experience surveys from non-hospitality businesses as a point of comparison — because the contrast is often just as illuminating.

84% of hotel guests rely on online reviews when booking. Only 4% regularly post them.
So who is really shaping your hotel’s reputation?
In this episode of Feedback Matters, Jeff and Rich explore the results of GuestInsight’s December 2025 U.S. consumer survey of hotel guests — and uncover a major disconnect between how guests consume feedback and how they contribute it.
We discuss:
•Why 72% say surveys are important — but only 24% frequently complete them
•The persistent “ones and fives” polarity problem
•Why the “missing middle” rarely speaks up
•The friction behind low review participation
•Whether post-stay emails should match your hotel’s brand positioning
•What this means for response rates, reputation accuracy, and revenue
If most travelers rely on online reviews — but those reviews reflect only a tiny fraction of guests — are hotels being judged by a representative sample?
Watch to understand what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what hoteliers should be doing about it.
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