So Many Surveys, So Little Improvement

Seems like I get six or seven surveys a day asking how some service I received or product I bought was. Not only do some companies send you one or two e-mail, but my car service department sent me nine different requests to review the same oil change. Hey Ford, if I had a problem you would know it, take my silence as a good sign and stop bugging me.

E-mail is harmless enough and easy to delete, but phone calls to ask me about my service are a line that should not be crossed. Any of my readers certainly know that I have strong opinions and am never shy about letting the appropriate people know when I am very unhappy or very happy.

Today at lunch a group of us got a yummy Nicoise Salad. We thought it should have come with capers, based on our historical knowledge of what a Nicoise salad usually had and the description in the menu. We asked the waitress and she brought us an abundance of capers to add to our lunch, which we greatly appreciated.

She told us that what we got was the chef’s interpretation of the Nicoise Salad. Fine, he can interpret all he wants and I will just order capers on the side. A supervisor later told us that capers were supposed to come on that salad. Since we are regulars at this place and she was new I let her know not to bother trying to sell us any excuses the sous chef wants her to sell us next time. It might not have been the nicest thing in the world to say, but it will save her heartache when she waits on me in the future. I did not need a survey to ask me what was wrong, it was easiest to tell the person I will see regularly how to make sure I am a happy customer.

I like to give feedback so things get better, but what I can’t stand is being asked to spend my time to help someone improve their business and then have them repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Stop asking me ‘cause it is worst that I went to the trouble of telling you and you ignored me.

The world has plenty of ways to give feed back and most of them are public and not nice. Sometimes I read trip advisor reviews and want to have a review of the reviewer. Clearly their standards are not the same as my standards. Sometimes I am more harsh than others just because I am hungry, as was probably the case today according to my friend Carol.

It’s all right to ask for feed back, but please don’t badger customers to death to tell you what they think. They may have been perfectly happy until you started bothering them, take no news as good news.