How did we do?

Posted by fitheach on Sat 19 May 2018

It is not possible to do anything online, and sometimes in meatspace, without getting follow-up communications by email or SMS asking: how did we do? It has become a disease. Organisations must be doing it to harvest email addresses, solicit social media "likes", satisfy a management consultant's recommendation or a combination of all three.

If I feel that an organisation, or an individual, has provided excellent service I will pro-actively provide feedback, either privately or on a public forum, to thank them. Most transactions will, naturally, fall into the category of acceptable and require no further comment. Some transactions will fall well below the satisfactory level and I will then make a complaint. The two extremes are the ones that require additional communication; not only will I feel motivated to make that extra effort but I am able to do so as they are much less common.

Questions, questions

However, the how-did-we-do disease tries to push this extra communication into all transactions, and consequently is an attempt to waste my time. It is for this reason that I find the constant requests for feedback so irritating. Sometimes it isn't clear immediately that an email or SMS is a feedback request and I have to spend time reading it to ascertain this fact. The feedback requests are often quite blatant by asking for Facebook likes or Twitter follows (neither of which will ever happen) but usually the outcome is unspecified. I never know if the requested feedback goes into a management report or is used for some online bragging rights.

The how-did-we-do requests are always prefixed with a "could you spare a few minutes to...". The answer is no. These requests invariably take longer than a few minutes and I've probably already spent considerable time placing the order and don't want to add to it. Pester me with these feedback requests and you risk alienating me as a future customer. Life is busy enough.