Every service company from plumbers to medical (actually not so far apart, now I think of it) wants me to do their survey (“it will only take a couple of minutes” is a fucking lie) so I can tell them how wonderful they are and they can boast about their approval scores. And if I don’t take it at the first invitation, they keep sending the invitation over and over and over. And guess what is one of the most ubiquitous spam/scam types of email? “Take our survey and win a $90 gift certificate” is what.
If I have a complaint, you will hear about it. If you don’t hear from me, everything was fine. It will never be perfect, so you will never get 10s from me.
So take your survey, print them out on a half-size sheet of paper, fold it five times, and stick it where the sun shines not.
Sometimes I feel bad because the product or service wasn’t that great, but not so bad I want to put them on blast for it (especially if I know it’ll be seen by the public (ie facebook/google/yelp)). The problem is that some of these places will keep ‘reminding’* me to fill out their survey and eventually I’ll do it so they stop bugging me…there ya go, there’s yer shitty review for all of the internet to see.
The best/worst is car dealerships. They’ll nag and nag and nag you to take their survey, but they also live and die on perfect reviews. If you’re rating them on a scale of one to five and anything isn’t a five, they’ll get called out on it, meaning I, the customer, will also hear about it. However, I did once have that work to my advantage. A local dealership had my email on file for someone else. Every time that person was in for service, I’d get nagged about filling out a survey. I tried to get them to knock it off, but they weren’t interested in that, big surprise. After a few years of that, I started giving them 1 star reviews and put in the comments that I’d continue to do that until they took my email address off that account. One or two rounds of that and I never heard from them again.
*And fuck those ‘reminders’. I just bought something from you, I don’t owe you anything. You don’t have to ‘remind’ me to do something I chose not to do. That ‘we see you forgot to take the survey’ attitude really gets under my skin.
My bank has sent me emails noting that I conducted a transaction with, say, Olivia the teller on April 1, or whatever, and then asking me if I would recommend Olivia to a friend. I never respond because the question doesn’t make any sense to me. I even sent them feedback one time, something like: “Look, dude, the teller conducted the transaction with no mishaps, and she wasn’t rude. That’s a a pretty low bar to set, but really, that’s all I want. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate Olivia’s efforts to provide good service, but let’s be serious: Who recommends a teller? No one, that’s who. You stand in line and go to the next available window. Olivia might be down at the other end of the room. She might even have the day off. Whatever. But if all the line stuff doesn’t work out just right, my wonderful recommendation to my friend just flies right out the window. So I guess what I’m saying is that if you really want to know my opinion about your bank’s service, figure out a way to ask a more meaningful question.”
I got another email asking about Arlene the teller a week later.
This rant gets 8/10 points from me.
I would recommend it 2/10 to my friends.
I will recommend it 10/10 to my enemies.
I enjoyed this rant 6/10.
I will read it again 4/10.
Citibank sent email asking me about my recent visit to their website and whether I’d recommend them to a friend or colleague. And then they send a reminder email a few days later.
I took a redeye flight from the west coast to the east coast and the airline pleaded for my feedback. But I had nothing to say about the flight, given I was asleep the entire time.
This thread has inspired me! Next time, I’m giving the company a 1 for Customer Service. And I’ll fill in the reason: “Because they nagged me to fill out a survey”.
I got one from a construction company BEFORE they’d done any work! I’d asked them to come over and look at a hole (that the rain was getting in), and they were prompt, coming by the second day, as promised. But immediately after my call, I got the dreaded “Just a quick question on how we did” form!
… Umm, the voice on the phone said she’d send someone out the next day. So, 10/10 on politeness, a 9 on diction and an understandable accent, but it’s either a 10 or a 1 on “Actually Showing Up”.
My rant about surveys is that they don’t ask the questions I would actually like to answer. They really need to have an “essay” section where I can write, in my own words, whatever I have to say.
There were two cases I remember where I did get to write my own essay. I have no idea if they were ever paid any attention to.
One: After doing jury duty about 10 years ago (I got as far as voir dire and then peremptorially dismissed), I got an evaluation form. I wrote a full-page essay, attempting to be as constructively critical as possible, detailing every little thing that was stupid with the way it all went.
Next, just yesterday: Dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles web site. They’ve bent over backwards making it as simple as possible for benefit of even the dumbest dumbshit driver, but they miss a few marks. My immediate concern is getting my license renewed and upgrading it to RealID at the same time.
They have procedures for license renewal. They have procedures for upgrading to RealID. They have procedures for getting a new first-time license with or without RealID. But NOWHERE do they seem to contemplate that someone might want to renew an existing license AND upgrade to RealID at the same time. They do have an adequate feedback form with room for a paragraph in my own words. I included the phrase “Need answer Real Soon Now”. But I’m not holding my breath.
If you can go in person, it’s easy: just bring the documentation you need for RealID with you when you renew your license. Online, not sure… I guess you’ll find out before anyone else.
Hey, I’ll bet if you just sign up for RealID online it’ll interrupt you and say “ALERT! You need to renew your license as well! Give us more money!”
Maybe. You’re right: I’ll just have to go there (which I need to do anyway) and see. The CA DMV has part of the REALID upgrade process on-line: I can fill out the application (which also signs me up for an appointment) and upload documents. But I still have to go in person and bring the paper docs with me. Supposedly, it will go faster if I’ve uploaded the docs first.
I also need to go in person to renew this time. They require that once in while, and in particular for us elder drivers.
But nowhere on-line can I find any mention that these two separate processes can be combined, or how to do it. For that, I’ll just have find out when I get there.
Anytime you, as a customer, are asked to complete a survey, remember that you are the product more than the customer. If they want to have my product, they can damn well pay for it, so if there is no money attached, they can go fish.
I had one of the annoying bank ones a couple of weeks ago. I simply went to the bank to deposit a check, nothing more, and decided to do it via a live teller rather than the ATM. It took all of a few seconds.
No, bank, I do NOT want to fill out a damn survey about my experience. I deposited a goddam check. It wasn’t a freaking “experience”. And when I deleted that email, they sent me another one, as a “reminder”.
I guess I must have got my bank teller fired, too, because my non-response to the survey must have been taken as raging hostility from being mistreated during my “experience” depositing a check.
Here’s another one that’s super-annoying. During this plague that has infected the planet, credit card issuers significantly raised the limit that can be charged via the touchless tap method, with no PIN required, to minimize the need to touch things like the notoriously germ-laden keypad.
So I bought a bunch of groceries a while ago, and tapped the card to pay, and it went through, everything working as it should. But before the transaction could complete, I had to respond to a screen that said “How would you rate your experience in [our store] today?”. Drove me crazy. I had to touch a plague-infested keypad to answer or it wouldn’t proceed. Naturally, I gave it the lowest possible rating, then doused my index finger in hand sanitizer.
