Remember last week when you bought those vacuum cleaner bags from us? Well, we’d like to know: How did we do?
You shopped at Safeway? You enjoyed a complimentary beverage at one of our dealerships? You opted for the PiYo-Zumba combo hour at one of our rec centers? Fair enough. Now tell us: How did we do?
You don’t remember giving us your email? Trust us, you did. It happened toward the end of the online transaction we shared, when you were starting to get that squirmy how-do-I-make-this-end feeling. You’d opted not to choose and enter a password, which would have made all future transactions with us seamless, cloudlike, exultant even. Instead, you complained about being forced to keep track of yet another password. “I am only going to buy a decorative urn for my own future cremains once!” you shouted, perhaps thinking no one could hear you.
But we heard. And the truth is, you never know! Life is unpredictable. You might need to make a similar purchase again.
You declined to sign in, and opted to check out as a guest. What you didn’t realize is that we consider our guests to be permanent. We will continue to check in with you, via email, text, and phone. Your opinion is valuable to us. In fact, it is the very lifeblood that sustains our young; without a steady stream of customer opinions, they soon wither and die.
After you’d entered your credit card information, we knew you were trying to escape, and we offered you an out: your email address in exchange for an end to this experience. “End” is such a relative term, though, isn’t it? You thought you could just order that deeply discounted bag of specialty dog food that we offered to rush direct to your home at no shipping cost to you in exchange for the mere pleasure of those brief moments in your company. We lied. It wasn’t entirely free. Now we’d like to know: How did we do?
Did the product meet and/or exceed your expectations? Did it arrive with speed and alacrity that put you in mind of the wing-footed Mercury? Did our customer service personnel manage to evoke your first-grade teacher, Mrs. Pugel, the one with the golden hair, who looked deep into your eyes when you spoke and truly cared? How did we do?
In the past, we tried giving you a chance to win a gift card in exchange for your opinion, but we don’t even do that anymore. We feel that offering prizes or compensation for your time cheapens this true, pure bond we have with you. You started to take one of our surveys once—O joyous day! We’ve gilded it on our calendars!—but then you gave up, finding it too long. Not even the progress completion bar showing how close you were to the sweet release of your opinion induced you to continue! Is fifteen minutes of your uncompensated time really so valuable? Well, yes, it is, but only to us.
We are the insecure boyfriend that you’ll never be allowed to dump until you tell us: How did we do?
On a scale of one to ten, out of a star rating of one to five, in terms of thumbs up/thumbs down, smiley/frowny/vomiting faces: How did we do?
Why do we care so much about what you think, you may wonder, when your own friends and family members don’t always seem to care? Shouldn’t the proper question be: Why don’t they care more?
Deleting our latest email requesting your responses to our customer satisfaction survey will do nothing to diminish our ardor or our eagerness for your opinion. We’ll fill your inbox again, each message prefaced with an increasingly desperate plea: Only Five More Days to Share Your Opinion! Tell Us Now!
Okay, Last Chance, We Mean It! We Care So Much That We’re Giving You Three More Days to Rate This Product!
You’ve shunted us into the “Promotions” tab of your inbox, and don’t think that didn’t hurt, but we will not be discouraged. Requesting removal from our mailing list might work. For a time. But the truth is, we’ll never leave you, because what we feel for you and your opinions is agape, a God-like, unconditional love, not mere eros or philia. We do not play dice. We do not trifle. We must know.
How did we do?
Thinking this gives Dante plenty of material for a new circle of hell. Well done.
I had an ebay seller email me four times to rate our transaction before I had even received the item.
Is it bad form to just…let it sit for a while? I don’t use ebay that often, but…
I had a seller pester me multiple times to leave feedback, so I did, but knocked them a star and put in the review that I’d done it because they wouldn’t stop asking me to leave feedback.
I mean that’s probably awful but it was really annoying, you’re not obligated to leave feedback/a rating!
idk if I’d characterize docking a star as ‘awful’, that’s considerably more generous than I would’ve been about that shit
It’s a very low standard to not make an ebay transaction insufferable, you never even have to interact with anyone at all. Send a package or money without annoying a stranger, get an A! Anyone should be able to do this, if only kindergarten was so easy!
Literally replied to a seller the other day “STOP ASKING ME TO REVIEW THE PROTEIN BARS I BOUGHT, I JUST WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE TO EAT THEM IN PEACE.”
Speaking as a very occasional seller: It’s impossible to charge what things are worth when you don’t have much feedback. People don’t want to buy from people who don’t have a lot of ratings, and they especially don’t want to buy something pricey.
yep. My husband is a seller and in the beginning he would get downright angry if people didn’t leave him feedback. Being a high-rated seller also gives you access to eBay fee discounts, so the pestering is understandable (if annoying). I always do it now, kind of like how people who worked as wait staff tend to leave good tips, I guess?
I am used to being terrified by things I see on the Toast, but this made me actually want to hide under my desk with a blanket over my head. (That is a compliment, I think.)
Me tooooooo! :shudders:
Corporations are people, and they really could use a hug now.
A hug? Really? My reaction is more … ah … Trumpian, shall we say?
Okay, but I really don’t mind filling out the Dairy Queen feedback surveys, because they give me a free Dilly Bar. I don’t mind incrementally offering up my soul to starving corporations if I get ice cream out of the deal.
Oh my god, a dilly bar! I haven’t thought about one of those in ages! I might have to stop off at Dairy Queen on my way home!
EEEEEEE
Why do we care so much about what you think, you may wonder, when your own friends and family members don’t always seem to care? Shouldn’t the proper question be: Why don’t they care more?
So true…why do the only ones who care turn out to be the people we pay to care? A bit of depth from the endless surveys.
The struggle is real.
So, it seems relevant that I just started using Google’s Inbox, and for some reason the Promo bundle isn’t working the way it should. I regularly delete all the emails and, hand to God, THEY DON’T STAY DELETED. I can only get rid of them if I delete them through the old Gmail app on my phone.
This is one of the reasons I avoid buying things online where possible. Also being Canadian can add $$$ in shipping costs when you’re trying to get things from the US.
I’ve been traveling a lot for work recently, and each trip cranks this experience up to horrifying new levels. The airline after every flight: How did we do? Every hotel I stayed at: How did we do? The rental car company: How did we do? The combination gas station/Taco Bell where I refueled and ate lunch: How did we do? The driver who scowled at me when I slowed down to figure out where the hell I was going: How did we do?
Yes! Exactly this. It gets all the more frustrating the more of this stuff you have to partake in. I realize that each individual company / person / whatever might need feedback to get service, but when you have to answer surveys for literally everything you do, it feels EXHAUSTING to have to give feedback on it!
I also wonder why on earth they can’t figure out some internal metrics for customer satisfaction that are *surely* slightly more useful than how a customer felt on a random day? Usually a few days later, when the customer doesn’t care about the experience anymore, and hardly remembers what happened (especially if the service was good) because who gives a flying whatever how the croissants were at the continental breakfast (terrible, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t eat there again the next time I have to do a layover)? And so pretty much rates based on their mood that day? And says they’d recommend to a friend if they’re feeling especially sociable that day?
Ugh. Infuriating.
I used to work at Starbucks, and our customer satisfaction surveys offered happiness quotients 1-5. Naturally, a 4 was the most common response, because everybody can think of some way in which their transaction could have been more cosmically perfect, like their latte is delivered by a unicorn who tells them they’re doing a good job at this whole life thing, and they deserve a treat. So, lots of 4s (also, lots of “I am completely and entirely satisfied with every itemized aspect of my visit here, but I’m giving the overall visit a 4 anyway, because of reasons”). However, Starbucks only counts 5s when giving your store its overall rating. A customer who gives you a 4 overall might as well give you a 1. It frustrated me so much. The graded scale is meaningless when you do that, Starbucks!
Yeah I mean on the face of it, 4 means “good! I’m not super excited about how good it was, but it was good” but apparently that is a DIRTY LIE. So if you’re not savvy to how it works then it’s like you’re being tricked into giving a negative review when you intended to give a positive one.
I mean… as a customer I’d kind of rather… not be lied to? PLEASE don’t have an option that looks positive but which will actually be treated as negative.
<small>man I don’t even WANT places I go to to be ~all about the customer experience~ I just want to get the thing I bought, with a minimum of fuss, and have it be good</small>
Ah, but Starbucks wants to be the “third place” customers go during the day to feel comfortable. Home, work, then Starbucks. “Make everybody feel really happy and cherished while they’re here” is a huge part of the Starbucks image, so if we weren’t doing that, we were falling short of the company’s expectations, which is apparently just as bad as not trying at all.
I mean, Starbucks is still a good place to work. They pay decently, and the benefits are excellent. They just try too hard with the cheer and delight sometimes (although that’s probably part of why they’re an integral part of American life now).
I don’t have to do this stuff directly at work, but I am part of the team that does and so I am often in meetings where it is discussed and it makes me writhe.
Wait, you’re part of a team that…makes policy decisions about extracting reviews from customers? If so, I want stories.
Oh god, way less exciting than it sounds! It’s not quite getting feedback: we’re a membership organisation so it’s about how we retain members and how we recruit new ones. It’s all stats: X people using X product who engage with us through Y route have a 6% higher chance of staying members for 2 years longer, which is given a value of £200 and so on. Offering a prize draw got 42% more people to fill in their contact details. Etc. Super unjuicy, unless you’re a hardcore analytics person!
…*fist bump of solidarity because I was recently in a room where people were talking about this kind of thing to us*
I second this request!
This post brought to you by Peeple (currently rated 1.5 stars)?
I chuckled at this, but then cringed, because that is my automatic response to Peeple being mentioned in any situation.
The other day I bought 1,000 blue plastic poo bags on Amazon for our dog, because in quantities like that they cost me about $0.02/bag as opposed to $0.05/bag at Wally World. The seller asked me to leave feedback. What was I supposed to say? Bags arrived a day early and in the quantity I requested. They are indeed blue and look like they’ll do their job admirably.
I gave them 5 stars because I had no reason not to. If the bags don’t work maybe I’ll rethink that.
I feel that requesting feedback on poo bags is asking for trouble.
“This product is so full of shit right now.”
“this vacuum sucks”
STANDARD BOILERPLATE ANSWER TO THESE SORTS OF MERCHANT INQUIRIES
Dear [name of company]:
So.
So.
You want to know what I think of your product. Your… product. The thing which you delivered unto me, having received some amount of my money in return. The thing which you had already assiduously marketed to me, pushing the requisite buttons–including some that I honestly didn’t know that I had!–to acquire my business. You want that feedback, hmm? Honestly, to improve that product, or simply to tweak the marketing a bit? Whatever. Unbeknownst to you, we’re kind of beyond that point, yes, we are.
Be careful what you ask for, they say, and you roll your eyes like, whatever. Oh, my sweet summer child. Cherish these last moments as you carelessly saunter over the lip of the abyss.
Here it comes.
How do I despise thee and thine product? Never mind counting the ways, I’ve got a motherloving spreadsheet. In the staggering cornucopia of your various inadequacies, which I shall decline to enumerate because I haven’t the time, you’re not worth it, and you’re not really capable of doing anything about the vast majority of them, there is the matter of your feeble, foolish “rating system.” Those stars. Those utterly fucked stars. The conceit that the lowest rating possible is one star, as if, should you be granted that solitary sun, you’re still, like, a one star general or something. I should tell you that I sort of agree with you on the “no zero stars” thing, the only thing I could possibly agree with you on, because, my dear little cubicle denizen, we need to talk about negative stars. ★s. Black holes. Singularities. Antimatter stars. Most of the matter in the universe is in the form of dark matter, and I would like to believe that that matter can form dark stars, casting out some dismal enveloping antilight, the better to steal away the last shreds of illumination and warmth from your company and your career. I want everyone and everything associated with your product, most especially you, to be cast shrieking into a bottomless abyss which will eventually strip away all hope, all feeling, everything except the faintest glimmer of a memory of what the light was like, the better to make the infinite plunge more horrible. To fall forever, without even the promise of an eventual landing.
Why, you ask? Why this overweening lack of regard? Because your product had one job. One. Job. And you can deny that this was the true job of your product, but, as I said, we’re beyond that; we are watching the approach of a multi-megaton truth bomb. It’s the only thing any of you are selling, and that, my little marketbot, is simply What I Need To Complete Myself. The last missing puzzle piece that will transform me into an actualized, unitary being that can simply be without the gnawing ache that has been part of my consciousness for as long as I can remember. I look at this, this thing that you sent me, it not only being utterly and patently inadequate for that task, but veritably mocking me for being naive enough to think that it might be, and I want to open a stoma into the organ of my self-loathing–that tireless gland!–and bathe it in my self-contempt, then lash together a trebuchet of every form of communication that I possess or can even imagine to launch it at you. I want to hang it around your neck like the albatross of poesy and march you through every form of social media, ringing a bell and inviting all and sundry to hurl their spoiled produce and dung from whatever source. I may yet let slip the dogs of Tumblr.
Hope this answers your question.
Sincerely, Halloween Jack
P.S. BTW, does it come in matte black? Asking for a friend.
MASTERFUL
ALL HAIL
Too goddamn real.
An added layer of horror: a couple weeks ago I wanted to order some bagels for a work thing, and what I discovered is that Noah’s Bagels literally WILL NOT ALLOW YOU to check out as a guest. There’s no option for it! It can’t be done! I ended up placing the order over the phone just so I wouldn’t have to create a user account. I mean, what the fuck.
Another thing I hate is that thing Amazon does where you can’t just leave a star rating? You have to write something? I’m happy to give anyone and everything the top scores (especially given the dumbass retail standard where you CAN rate things from 1 to 10, but anything other than a 10 is “failing,” which, like, come on), but please don’t force me to write something to explain why I didn’t have a problem with the thing I ordered. Like, for a while I was able to give items star ratings without writing reviews, and I was so thrilled, but apparently it was some kind of glitch/oversight and now it’s impossible again? PLEASE LET ME LIVE.
The whole “anything less than a 10 results in an employee reprimand, but I can’t tell you that, so I’ll just tell you we strive for 10s with a pleading look in my eye” nonsense is why I just flat-out don’t fill out surveys. Ugh.
Of course, it’s probably only a matter of time before the percentage of customers that complete the survey gets factored into employee performance. I think that’s the moment I start researching how practical it would be to fly the entire planet into the sun.
I think it already is, actually.
Like, I hope I’m wrong about that, and I certainly don’t want to contribute to your having to undertake a lengthy and frustrating research project, but.
Any retail worker who asks me to take a survey but then adds “make sure to give me a 10 on everything!” as I’m walking away automatically gets points taken off for basic lack of understanding of how surveys work. I am taking the survey as a favor to you; you don’t get to tell me how to take that survey.
The only exception was for a year I worked for an attorney who was losing his mind (literally, he was 80 and I suspect he had early stage dementia) and he didn’t have an office so we commandeered the public space at a FedEx. I filled out several online surveys for the people who worked there and put up with his nonsense and were extra nice to me. And I made a point of trying to sound like a slightly different customer each time and give different answers.
On the subject of employee performance, my friend worked in a bookstore in a low-income area that was part of a chain, and they were expected to sell x amount of memberships every month. They would get in trouble if they didn’t hit the quota. But as my friend said, people would come into the store with a few bucks and buy one book. They were not about to buy the $20 membership. They literally did not have the money with them. And the company refused to take the socioeconomic info/demographics into account. I feel my tension levels rising as I type this.
Well, yeah, but the “make sure to give me a 10 on everything!” worker is in a tough spot, too. If nobody rates them, it looks bad, but if they don’t get all 10s, they’ve failed that survey. Ideally they’d phrase it more diplomatically and less like a command (“If you were satisfied by your service today, I hope you’ll give me a 10”?), but sticking it to service workers, even obnoxious ones, isn’t fighting the real enemy.
(while reading that last clause, please picture Sinead O’Connor tearing up a picture of Corporate)
Ugh I used to work in a pub like that, in a place with a really big rich/poor divide – and this place was somewhere with a reputation such that anyone with the money to go elsewhere did go elsewhere. Upper management would routinely scold the staff for our low takings, and do things like completely overhaul the uniform to try to make the place look smarter – but that doesn’t help when your customer base has barely any disposable income to spend there?? On the one hand it’s slightly reassuring to know that we weren’t the only team being put through that kind of treatment, but on the other it’s kinda depressing how there are multiple companies that refuse to acknowledge the socioeconomics of their customer base, ugh.
Ugghhh. I ordered an adjustable wrench – it it indeed wrench shaped and adjustable! THERE ARE NOT MANY MORE VARIABLES HERE. Let me give it 5 stars and leave me in peaaaace
I’ve started just writing “No complaints!”
Oooo, nice one. I tend towards “as described” and “arrived when/earlier than expected” (assuming that’s true).
“Received the wrench; am super torqued.”
“Screwdrivers arrived this morning. Can’t wait to screw some wood tonight!”
Oh man! And then there’s the surveys with, say, a 1-5 scale that they label as “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “neutral”, “agree”, “strongly agree”… but some of the questions are pretty binary?
Also I filled out a survey for an ice cream place in a mall once and naively assumed that 4s (“agree”) were good, like, I mean, I assume they gave me a friendly greeting but that’s not… really… what I was concerned with? And yeah I agree that the general area was clean (it was fine and not off-putting!), but I don’t super agree, whatever that means. And there was stuff that didn’t apply because it wasn’t a standalone shop with its own seating, just a stall thing, so I put 3 (“neutral”) since that seemed closest to “not applicable”. And then later I found out that on those kinds of things only 5s are considered success and felt bad.
Like. Dude! That’s not necessarily how people fill out surveys (especially when you make it look like a rating that’s high but not the highEST expresses that you were happy and will probably come back).
…ALSO ALSO ALSO goddaaaaaaamn I cannot believe that apparently they’d rather not make a sale than let someone get away without making an account. how do you do that. how do you misunderstand the purpose of a store that badly. how
that only makes sense if your store is secretly a front for a data-mining company or something
Fully intended to read this; continuing to do so became dangerous to blood pressure.
I literally just got another email from amazon asking me to rate a BB Cream I bought a couple of months ago, plus the one asking me to rate Steven Universe.
Why do they keep bugging me about the BB Cream?? And not any of the other crap I’ve bought recently? (Well other than Steven Universe.)
Maybe one of the Amazombies is thinking of using the BB cream, but they don’t want to splash out the ten dollars or whatever unless you think it’s good?
The (very large, university-based) medical group where I get my care has the most appalling phone-based customer satisfaction survey that calls you after virtually any interaction with them at any level, and has very specific questions that only address the issues they are interested in–at the end, when you are asked to mention anything not raised in the automated questionnaire, you are cut off after about 45 seconds. I just refuse to answer their calls anymore (which means more calls to ignore), but if they ever catch me unawares, all they’re getting from me is “well, you haven’t killed me. Yet.”
Yeesh. The clinic I go to at least mails you a paper survey, which does not require giving an email address with which they can spam you, and they give ample room to write in comments and say you can attach more sheets if you want to.
Gee, are you in Cleveland?
No, but funny you should say that–I think the area code of the automated questionnaire is in Ohio …
A company I used to work for emphasized customer service to everyone, whether they interacted with customers or not. One job employees had (not me thank god) would be to see which customers gave us a low rating, and to call them to see what was up. Now the customer usually got a free product out of it, but personally I would be so annoyed if that happened to me.
Oh my god, what a nightmare. I’d go straight past “annoyed” and into “hunted animal.”
Mmm, it's fine to ask for feedback, once, if a reasonable amount of time has passed with nothing.
But repeated "reminders"? Irritating, and unlikely to get someone to do it if they haven't bothered after the first reminder.
It made my outer barista also want to scream and throw things violently.