Survey says: Stop sending stupid surveys!

It seems these days you can’t even blow your nose without the tissue company wanting you to complete a survey about their product and your experience.

Them: On a scale of one to 10 with one being the worst possible experience and 10 being the absolute best possible experience, how would you rate the performance of the tissue you just used?

Me: I don’t know and I don’t care.

Them: On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate the strength of the tissue you just used?

Me: It caught the snot, isn’t that enough?

Them: On a scale of one to 10, how likely are you to recommend our brand of tissues to your friends?

Me: I’ve never recommended a brand of tissue before. Why should I start now?

Them: Please provide any additional feedback that might help us improve your nose-blowing experience using our product.

Me: Yeah, how the heck did you even know I just blew my nose?

Them: Please consider leaving us a review at (insert name of online service here).

Me: Leave me alone. Go away! Shoo!

Seriously, it seems you can’t go anywhere or do anything without getting hit up with a survey. Grocery store and restaurant receipts try to bribe you to take their survey with the chance of winning cash or free food. If you eat out, go to the barber, get gas, buy groceries, shop for clothes or walk across the street, you’re going to get an email and/or text asking for your opinion in a survey. Enough already!

I’ve had the experience of going through some minor surgeries lately. Guess what? The hospital wants to know how they did. The surgeon wants to know how he/see did. The anesthesiologist wants you to take their survey. And they text and email until you finally relent.

At first filling out surveys was kind of a novelty. It was fun to do. Now it’s annoying. I’m to the point of grading service providers much harder than I used to. I mean, if the purpose of the surveys is to improve customer service and satisfaction, then I expect five-star service everywhere I go. Trust me, it ain’t happening.

Now, the only time my wife and I look forward to filling out surveys is when we’ve had a bad experience. If we leave a restaurant or someplace where we’ve had poor service and my wife says, “I hope they send me a survey,” you can bet it’s not going to end well for someone.

There are times when we get outstanding service and we’re more than happy to express that. Our preference, however, is to express it in the tip rather than in a survey. I had a restaurant job many moons ago and I know from experience that tips directly correlated to the quality of service I provided. That told me enough. As an assistant manager, it was easy to tell which waitresses did a good job and which ones didn’t. No survey required.

Whenever you call a customer service person on the phone, nine times out of 10 you will be asked to hold on the line to take a short survey. Nine times out of 10 I will simply hang up unless I had really, really good or incompetently horrible service. Seriously, if my call is being recorded for quality and training purposes, what more does a supervisor need?

Sometimes I wonder what companies actually do with the information they gather in their surveys. Do they lord it over employees? Do they joke about it with other companies?

Company A: Hey, look what we got this moron to do.

Company B: Wow, you rejected his refund and got him to like it?

Company A: Yeah, people will do anything for free widgets.

Company B: Well, look at this. We caught this person blowing his nose and now he’s recommending us to everyone he knows.

Company A: How did you get him to do that?

Company B: It was simple, we gave him a survey.