Survey Culture

Yeah, I know, I owe the nation a blog post about better by-state music options than a bunch of hip Bostoners can come up with... It's taking a while... Don't blame me, blame North Dakota...

In the mean time, something completely random has hit me after getting yet another request to complete an online service survey, this time from my bank.

When did this start? Have big businesses across our country ALWAYS needed daily affirmations from their customers, or is there a belief my time is less valuable than my parents time was because I have the ability to go online to answer useless questions? C'mon guys, I don't have time for that, what with my blog surfing, obsessing about psych-rock, and endlessly searching for some heretofore unknown holy grail of useless cinema... (Of which The Tenebrous Empire may have uncovered...)

If Best Buy, Home Depot, Starbucks, JC Penney, Target, my car dealer, my bank, local grocery store, regular eateries, and online retailers want to know if I'm happy with their service, perhaps they should take a look and see if I purchase goods and/or services from them more than once. If I have been a customer before, and I come back to partake in their particular brand of business again, then there is an above-average chance that I am happy with their service...

Keep in mind, I'm not advocating a complete lack of outlet for consumers to complain, or praise. I think it's a tremendous advancement that the Internet allows customers to anonymously post positive or negative feedback about a purchasing experience they have had. At the same time, each and every time I buy a DVD, a box of nails, or go out to dinner I am not likely to have a sublimely good or bad experience. For the most part, my purchasing excursion is going to be unremarkable, and as such, not something I would have any desire to comment about...

SO STOP ASKING ME TO!

And now a word to my bank... I have been a customer for eleven years... If I was unhappy with the service, you likely would have known about it 10 or so years ago when I closed my account... Since that hasn't happened, take solace in the fact I still pay you each month for the right to pay my bills online... You're already taking my money, stop trying to waste my time too.

One could say 'Hey Asshole, in the amount of time you've spent writing this inflammatory useless garbage, you could have just taken the damn survey and made your bank feel all warm and fuzzy inside.' While you may be correct, I would still be stuck choking on this cathartic rant, wondering if my bank really wanted me to answer their questions, or were secretly trying to tell me they wanted to go on a date...

Either way, I've gone a bit off base here. My point was not to rail against the individual purveyors of this new 'survey culture', but more to point out to others, who may not have noticed, that this new trend in business practice is upon us, and man is it annoying. Take note the next time you are making a retail purchase at a store, online, or even just checking your e-mail... I'll bet you end up with a plea for acceptance. 'Please oh please nameless one, tell us you LOVE the way we bag your groceries...'

What's more, it seems that survey culture has replaced good old fashioned customer service. Keep in mind, I grew up in the 80's, so I'm not talking about the 'good old days' when gas stations featured service attendants or when your local butcher knew your name, I'm just talking about the recent past, before the Internet, when a check out clerk would say 'and how was everything today' rather than, 'here's a code to take an online survey... NEXT'

I'm a pretty easy sell. I usually go into a retailer knowing what I want, and open to a positive purchasing experience. Often, if it happens, I will seek out an avenue to write something nice about an employee, or the overall experience. I do this because I've worked retail jobs, and understand the challenge of dealing with the public at large. That said, if an establishment cannot provide the level of service that would make an 'easy' customer want to seek out an avenue to praise their service, begging every customer to reveal their level of enjoyment at said service is not likely to lead to positive, or accurate results.

What I'm getting at here is that this trend toward surveys is ruining the customer interaction experience, it's wasting consumer's time, and to top it off, isn't even providing the retailer with useful data... I beg you, uber-successful captains of industry who obviously take to the blogosphere to see what every day citizens think of you, stop this surveying madness... Stand up and say "I'm mad as hell, and I don't care what you think about it on a scale of one to five in which one is 'entirely unsatisfied' and five is 'thoroughly orgasmic'!" Take a stand to train your employees to glean useful information for your customers. Or better yet, do what every business did in the 90's, stop caring what your customers think, and just buy up all the competition!

Now, if you wouldn't mind taking a little survey on this post...