So this is an NPS survey, or Net Promoter Score survey. I know you'll all laugh, but these metrics & the verbatims provided by respondents are taken quite seriously by management. They're consumer surveys that are in part derived by how much you're likely to be discussing a product, service or experience with the people you interact with in your daily life. Yep... potentially super vague, but it's a real thing. You might have noticed you're receiving more & more of these surveys from say, online shopping sites, services like cell providers, even utilities providers - gas, electricity, water etc., after some of your interactions with them or their websites/portals.
Every company does it differently - in this instance, I'm guessing the reason for restricting respondents to 400 characters is to cut down processing time, & really get you to air your most significant emotional response rather than a laundry list of problems (that we all know exist).
You might be thinking "but there's a wealth of feedback on these forums, on reddit, YouTube etc., surely that's enough?" & me personally, I'd more or less agree with that, but the NPS surveys will be going out to a subset of consumers, many of which may have zero contact with social media. I totally get why this might seem valuable, but it really does depend on the quality of the feedback. A consumer who doesn't visit forums or leave comments on YouTube might simply respond with "5/10 - it's not fun" & what on earth does that mean? Many respondents don't give a verbatim. Some might say "I don't like it because my friends don't play it" so then what do EA do with that information? Will one of their key objectives be to... grow the player base? Friend codes? Free weekends etc.? Some of that may give results but none of it addresses core issues.
Two last things: no way to know for sure, but the NPS was likely deployed by EA or if it arrived on DICE letterhead, at EA's insistence. DICE will be given a KPI to increase the average NPS over time & yes that can be as absurd as it sounds. "Make number go bigger" - sure chief, can we have some resources to achieve that? "no support, only number big".
The other thing is the verbatims will likely be processed by a 3rd party who will present "insights" to EA which again, is potentially as crushing as it sounds......
Or I'm completely wrong about how it's being managed which definitely is possible, & DICE will take on the feedback directly & wonderful things will come of it. I'm not being facetious, I'm quite sincere. The cynic in me doesn't think this is the case but the optimist in me hopes it is. I still have a lot of respect for DICE - for reasons I won't go into here, but honestly - bless 'em, every one, I hope this pulls thru in the end.
