I took a short business trip recently and stayed overnight at a hotel at which I have previously stayed, not once but half a dozen or more times.\u00a0 I love the hotel.\u00a0 It\u2019s great value, great location, and I recommend it to anyone I know who\u2019s heading to that city without hesitation.\u00a0 After this visit, however, there arose a small issue.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ve joined the online customer service survey bandwagon.<\/p>\n
A day after my stay, I received an email asking me to complete a short online survey.\u00a0 Being a fan of the hotel, I was happy to comply.\u00a0 For the first couple of screens, at least.\u00a0 But when the questions started drilling down into details like asking me to rate the lighting, the pillows, the muzak in the elevator, etc etc \u2026 I bailed.<\/p>\n
About the same time, I took my car for an oil change.\u00a0 I went to the same dealership where I bought the car ten years ago and where I\u2019ve been taking it two or three times a year every year since for routine service.\u00a0 In the past, service visits have been followed up by a simple email or phone call to check that things went well and that I was happy.<\/p>\n
After this visit, however, I received an email invitation to complete an online customer service survey.\u00a0 Out of curiousity, I skimmed through some of it;\u00a0 it was pages and pages long, with dozens of detailed questions probing every possible nook and cranny of my \u2018experience\u2019.<\/p>\n
I had an oil change, not a seat on Virgin Galactic\u2019s first trip to the moon.<\/p>\n
Now, I can see asking customers to complete a survey when they\u2019ve undertaken a major financial transaction like buying a new car or getting a mortgage (that\u2019s one I\u2019d love to fill out \u2026) because often there are a lot of factors at play and marketers want to know which specific ones may have helped seal the deal.\u00a0 I can understand asking a new customer for their impressions of a product or service they\u2019ve tried for the first time: how did you find us \/ were your expectations fulfilled \/ etc.\u00a0 This can also offer valuable insight to the service \/ product provider.\u00a0\u00a0 Surveys have their uses.<\/p>\n
But what should be a sharp, precision guided tool is being used as a blunt instrument.\u00a0 It seems to have become standard operating procedure for businesses now to ask every<\/strong> customer to complete a survey after every<\/strong> encounter \u2013 no matter how small, routine, or repetitive.\u00a0 Buy a brace of 2×4\u2019s at Home Depot or a can of motor oil at Canadian Tire and you\u2019ll be asked to \u2018fill out our online survey\u2019.<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve mentioned elsewhere, I\u2019m in marketing, and as such I understand the value of listening to your customers and seeking feedback on your products and services.\u00a0 But the current obsession with customer interrogation risks causing exactly the opposite effect to what is intended.\u00a0 Rather than being engaged and impressed, customers become irritated and turned off.\u00a0 This result is even more likely when, as in both my examples above, long time customers of proven loyalty are suddenly subjected to the third degree.\u00a0 They must know I\u2019m happy; I keep coming back – so what’s with the inquisition all of a sudden?<\/p>\n Unless, of course, that\u2019s not the point of the exercise at all\u2026<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of chatter in marketing circles these days about harnessing social media and predictive modelling and all kinds of other faintly Orwellian sounding tools to do a better job of selling you stuff.\u00a0 A base assumption to a lot of this thinking is that \u2018the more we know about our customers, the better\u2019.\u00a0 So firms of all kinds are hoovering up as much data as they possibly can about their customers to reach the critical mass of information that is generically termed \u2018big data\u2019.\u00a0 Firms aren\u2019t sure yet how exactly to use all this information they gather, but in the short term they\u2019re grabbing as much of it as they can.\u00a0 Hence the fixation with surveys and feedback forms and so on.<\/p>\n Bottom line: the driving force behind all this needy questioning is not so much about doing a better job for you, it\u2019s just about selling you more.\u00a0 Think about that next time you sign up for a survey.<\/p>\n If companies are sincerely interested in how their customers feel about them, I\u2019d offer two suggestions.<\/p>\n First, have a meaningful relationship with your customer (and this can be established on the very first visit). If you have a meaningful relationship and the customer is unhappy about something, they will usually tell you about it.<\/p>\n