Customer Surveys Are Despised, According To Customer Surveys
We dip our toe in the debatable pastures of feedback
By Ed Goldman
Most customers hate customer satisfaction surveys. They think they’re a waste of time and an invasion of their privacy.
Okay. How would you rate that first sentence—are you intrigued?
_ I am definitely intrigued
_ I am marginally interested but “intrigued” goes a bit far
_ Not so much
_ I have to go to the bathroom
Polls apart
According to various marketing, news sources and the testimony of one’s own senses, these satisfaction surveys are being used by every possible business and even nonprofits, allegedly so they can gauge how they’re doing—but more likely, to elicit a relationship with you.
So: What do you think of Paragraph 2?
_ The language is very vague: it doesn’t specify which marketing and news sources, which businesses and nonprofits, and why I should trust “the testimony of one’s own senses.”
_ I like that the writer didn’t spend a lot of time being specific. Despite the fact that I’m on a regimen of Ritalin, I really don’t have the time for deets (see? I didn’t even have the time to type “details”).
_ I wondered what sort of “relationship” a business or nonprofit expects from me. I’m happily married and the only “affairs” in my life are Monte Carlo Night at the Knights of Columbus hall and my Rotary chapter’s annual Extreme Pickleball awards banquet.
_ Does that door lead to a bathroom or a linen closet?
Apparently, experience-management experts (yes, they really exist) think there can be a better way of finding out if you satisfied your customers: like bribing them with discounts if they complain about an item they just bought or a service they just received and were dissatisfied with.
Businesses also “can now apply machine learning to analyze the language used in transcripts of calls and chats. They say they can evaluate how happy or angry customers are, or why they are calling,” writes Laura Casey in her Personal Journal column.
I’m a bit surprised that it takes a machine to interpret a happy or angry call (next thing you know, it’ll take a village). For instance, how would you parse the following exchange?
CUSTOMER SERVICE: Hi, you’ve reached the service desk at amassalot.com. This is Tessa. Whom do I have the pleasure of talking to?
CUSTOMER: “Whom?” Meem, that’s whom!
CUSTOMER SERVICE: And how may I assist youm? —I mean, you.
CUSTOMER: Well, since you can’t come to my house to help me because you’re probably sitting at a phone bank in Pakistan or Fallujah, can you at least tell me how to open the #@$!!*&%$! package you just sent me?
CUSTOMER SERVICE: And what is in the package, sir?
CUSTOMER: I haven’t the faintest #@$!!*&%$! idea! If I could open the #@$!!*&%$! package I could #@$!!*&%$! tell you!
All right. Have your pencil, stylus, crayon or mouse at the ready? Did Paragraphs 3 and 4, then the playlet, deliver for you? If so, why? If not, get lost.
_ I started out to like them but I used to date someone named Laura and grew clinically depressed.
_ I loved them, especially when you mentioned my given name of Laura.
_ I was annoyed by all of the symbols and punctuation marks when some good healthy swear words might have satisfied me. BTW, I currently hold down two jobs, as a stevedore and bouncer.
_ I don’t really give a #@$!!*&%$! I found a bathroom and am now completely customer-satisfied, you lousy #@$!!*&%$!
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
