Freakin' Surveys

RJM62

RJM62

Touchdown! Greaser!
Gone West
Joined
Jun 15, 2007
Messages
13,157
Location
Upstate New York
Display Name
Geek on the Hill
Am I the only one getting tired of this?

For the past few months, it seems as if I can't do anything without being asked to complete a "customer satisfaction survey" or some such nonsense. JavaScript boxes stop me cold and ask for my opinion when I visit new Web sites. E-ZPass just stopped me cold when I was trying to add money to my account and asked if I'd be willing to complete surveys for the MTA. It never seems to end.

The real kicker is when I called Some Company and declined the survey at the end of the call -- and they call me back to answer the survey questions that I declined to answer!

I really wouldn't mind as much if anything changed in a positive way for consumers as a result of these surveys. But frankly, I doubt that anyone looks at the results other than than for marketing purposes; and if they want to use my time for market research, they'll have to pay for it like anyone else does.

The only time I'll answer a survey is if it specifically relates to the person I spoke to, and that person did a good job. Hey, maybe it'll help them keep their job, so what the heck. As for the lousy ones, I don't bother. They probably have enough problems to deal with without my negative opinion of the way they did their jobs becoming part of the mix.

-Rich
 
I just spent ten minutes doing an online survey to rate a motorcycle. I did it because a) there was cash money involved, and b) I genuinely wanted to improve the product.

I don't do telephone surveys. If a dude calls me with survey crap I'll tell him to ask his boyfriend instead. If a chick calls I'll ask for her bra size. That usually shuts them up.
 
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

If I feel really bored and its a telephone survey, I tell then whoever they asked for is dead. :D
 
My wife received several snail-mail surveys that contained $1-$3 cash! Not sure if she ever mailed them back.

As for me? I almost never fill them out. Waste of time IMO.
 
What's really starting to irritate me is the number of web sites that pop up a window after you've been there for a few seconds and are trying to read and/or find something... offering "live chat" with one of their droids. Holy crap. If I wanted to deal with a human I'd call. The LAST think I want to do is deal with a human in slow motion. Alas, I have not yet found a way to keep these from popping up without disabling scripting completely, to the point of breaking about 80% of the web sites out there.

Sigh... the web used to be so useful. Now it's starting to resemble cable TV more and more.
 
In my practice, I deal with health insurance companies [billing/authorizations]. Each time I call, they want to do a "Provider Satisfaction" survey at the end of the call. Just stay on the line ... I never do. If a "life" person calls in to do the same and ask for the owner, I tell them he [me] just died in a hunting accident... This of course depends on the time of the year. Sometimes, it starts out with a robo call and that is a sign to hang up or to answer in Dutch or French. Have yet to run into someone calling my bluff: Het spijt me, maar ik begrijp U niet! Popups on websites I try to ignore.
 
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Heh heh. That software I've been fighting with for three weeks (speaking of that the vendor's tech and I got to talk tech to tech this morning at 5 AM and lo and behold, once he explained how their stuff works, I now have a procedure that works every time to make the thing do what it's supposed to... Go figure. Nice talking to a 30 year tech support guy. We had a nice industry chat about processes and procedures and crap getting filtered through four or five non-engineers and nothing written down while I was typing up real documentation to send to the other two sysadmins for real future reference... Anyway...) ...

... that software is all about sending real-time data from our customer's phone switch to our system after they deliver calls fo us, and us sending back final call processing data within 5 minutes 24/7 -- so *their* system can pass off *every single customer who called in*, to a robodialer who calls them back and connects them to a customer survey rep. For every single call they receive.

Heh heh. Not my fault! Customer wants to do it!

We IT geeks are happy to oblige the doofuses who think their customers aren't annoyed by this stuff. Hahahahaha. Heck, I think they paid extra to us to do this, just to annoy you all! :) :) :)

Just the upsell on us having this back-end process paid for all the contractors to develop it, the sales folk's commissions, and probably even covers most of my salary for a year. Maybe not my bennies, but at least a big chunk of salary. :) :) :)

So timely Rich... Totally made my day. I got paid to annoy my customer's customers today. ;) ;) ;)
 
Drives me nuts! And the questions they ask are so narrow that you can't really provide them with any useful feedback.

Also, don't you love it when the employee giving you the survey tells you his pay or his job rests on you giving him a perfect rating.

Yeah, those are gonna be really accurate survey results. :rolleyes:
 
RJM62 said:
I really wouldn't mind as much if anything changed in a positive way for consumers as a result of these surveys. But frankly, I doubt that anyone looks at the results other than than for marketing purposes
Click to expand...

I like it when they ask me on a customer service call if I want to fill out the survey after the call. I always say no, but the person I am about to talk to does not know that.

Service when the person on the phone knows I can comment about there performance before I hang up, is usually better.
 
Thank you for starting this thread. Your posts are important to us and we'd like you to answer the following survey so that we may improve your future posting experience.

* On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the most gratifying, how would rate your level of gratification the responses created?
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* Would you start another thread again?
* Would you recommend starting a thread like this to anyone else?
* What is your favorite color?
 
numl0ck said:
My wife received several snail-mail surveys that contained $1-$3 cash! Not sure if she ever mailed them back.

As for me? I almost never fill them out. Waste of time IMO.
Click to expand...

I take the surveys that come with SASE and mail back the envelope -- often empty.

The ones with the money, I give to my 5 YO granddaughter to add to her bank account.

Whatever turns you on
 
Most surveys are actually marketing strategies - they collect your contact information so they can start contacting you to sell you stuff.
If a company REALLY wants to know if their customers are satisfied, they themselves should ask the customers rather than paying some outside company to collect data for them. Surveys usually do not allow consumers to voice their complaints.
For example, long ago I worked at a 250-room hotel that had only about 180 parking spaces. Guests were always complaining they could not find a parking space; we employees would give up our space and then park blocking them in. When they wanted to go out they'd have the front desk call us to move our cars for them. However if some survey company were to provide questions for them, the questions would probably have to do with the cleanliness of the rooms, the reservation process, the food in the restaurant, and so on. They would purposely ignore the issue of insufficient parking because they do not want to do anything about that.
As for an employee telling you that his pay depends on his ratings...aren't the calls being monitored for "quality assurance"? Well then the boss should just listen to the recordings to see how his employees are doing.
 
I simply respond with my hourly billing rate, and let them know that I have a 30 minute minimum. As soon as they send me a purchase order, I'll provide them with the requested information.
 
The same group of idiots believe that both customer surveys and robodialling are the way to go.
 
Steve Foley said:
I simply respond with my hourly billing rate, and let them know that I have a 30 minute minimum. As soon as they send me a purchase order, I'll provide them with the requested information.
Click to expand...

I need to start doing this for the phone solicitors who call at work.
 
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