The world & it's wife seems to want me to do one of these surveys after every contact and transaction. It seems like a rash or a contageous disease which has spread to the four corners of the business world. Every online or phone contact I make seems to ask me to spare anything from a couple of minutes to the time taken to write a short story. I don't have either the time to waste or the inclination to evaluate everything I do.
I have serious doubts about how all of this information is correlated & used. Is there any evidence that it actually improves customer service or "the customer experience" - (what a nauseating phrase that is). Are there really huge teams of people analyzing all this data or does it all go into a vast black hole somewhere? If it is evaluated, could they be better occupied actually providing the service? Maybe then we wouldn't have to go through "War & Peace" sized phone menus & hang onto a phone interminably waiting to speak to a real person.
Do companies really need customers to tell them, in minute detail, what makes for good customer service? I would have thought it isn't difficult. Simple & clear information, delivered courteously, by someone who seems interested in what the customer wants & is able to match their needs to a product or service. Job done.
I do think that customer service has improved over the last decade. Mind you the base line was pretty appalling. Competition has made companies realise that satisfying their customers by delivering well designed products & services, at a good price point & in a timely fashion is the way to market share & therefore profit. I also like the fact that the people who we customers deal with identify themselves by name & refer to us by name too.
So plaudits as well as brickbats. Hopefully companies will tire of the interminable customer satisfaction surveys & just get on with the actual job of serving customers efficiently and fairly.
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