What's with all the survey requests

[ExXB]

Just got back from a two week visit to Canada. Six flights, four hotels, one B&B and two rental cars.

Two of the airlines, all the hotels, the B&B and the car rental company (twice) want me to fill out surveys rating our stay.

Overkill ... !!!

I'm tempted to just lie!

[Hartington]

I just ignore them. Pain in the ass in my view.

[obgraham]

I don't do surveys. Mail, email, or phone. Period.

[PAXboy]

What amuses me about these, is how they are so crudely written to get you to 'tick all the right boxes'. The options offered are highly limited and use leading questions etcetera. They also want you to agree that their company/product made you 'feel good' or is 'for people like me'. These are utterly without value and are only meant to produce pretty graphs to show the Main Board how wonderful everyone is.

Also, they rarely allow any free form text entry - as that requires reading and being understood by a human. They like the tick box as the computer can tally the points and produce the graph without anyone actually having to DO anything or UNDERSTAND anything.

My perception is that this type of questionnaire has increased in direct response to the rise of all the web based 'voting sites'. Many companies now find themselves being voted on by their customers without mediation and that can be uncomfortable - this is a way to regain some control. Further, if a company is denounced in the media / stock exchange, then they have some data to counter with. I suspect much of this is just packed away awaiting a bad report/scandal.

In days gone by, the client would probably have dropped back into the travel agent to update them on how the trip went, etc. Or there was a Freepost postcard that you could fill in and send, which would be read. Now they need numbers and they need them cheaply.

[Hotel Tango]

21st century business craze which is in fact totally meaningless. I ignore them!

[Planemike]

21st century business craze which is in fact totally meaningless. I ignore them!


Totally agree....... Just an exercise in the companies involved massaging their own egos. Wonder if they so accessible if they receive a genuine complaint?

[noflynomore]

Or an exercise in survey nerds forming a lucrative new business where nothing but hot air existed before.

[PAXboy]

Recently, with BA changing their front page, they asked for feedback. Since I had encountered a problem and had to revert to their original site - I thought I'd be helpful. I took a screen shot of the problem and highlighted it. Then emailed it with a note. Had I have received even an automated acknowledgement - I would feel the effort had been noted. Consequently, I shall never help BA again.

That might seem petty to say 'never' but it is just another in the string of events when corporates ignore you and I have long given up wasting time more than once.

[ZFT]

Interesting. I've had constructive feedback from TG and even given ROP points following suggestions from their survey.

Also quite good responses from the likes of bookings.com and rental.com so it's not all bad

[BlankBox]

...it's a wonder I haven't been banned on some airlines I've answered surveys about... :suspect:

[TelsBoy]

Probably because the industry has cottoned on to the power of social media and how people would rather have a public rant on FB or T'ter than actually taking their complaint to the company involved and see something done - much easier just to moan about it.

MIL works for Waitrose and deals with this kind of thing all the time. She basically keeps a watchful eye on social media for anything which gives the company bad press. Companies are now paranoid about this kind of thing because all it takes is one disgruntled customer to have a rant about your product or services on FB and all of a sudden it's caused massive damage to your reputation. Hence the reason for all these surveys.

Folk don't realise that whilst they can be a pain these surveys actually serve a purpose. If you have something to complain about it is an opportunity to do so, making the company aware of problems and giving them a chance to change whatever went wrong - in addition usually some sort of "here's a voucher/refund etc. for your trouble" often comes with it.

That said, we had a horrendous experience with Jet2 going to Lanzarote a couple of years back and complained, they couldn't give a stuff. We just decided that our first holiday with Jet2 would also be our last and warned others not to go near them.

[RevMan2]

There are 2 things: as @Teleboy says, directly channeling customers' frustrations to the service provider and giving the impression that the company's actually interested in their insights.
The other aspect is that performance reports are increasingly based on customer satisfaction and the surveys are cunningly designed to give HR a massive assymetric information advantage.
So when it comes to salary increases/bonuses/termination, they'll filter the data and come back with "Oh look how poorly you're performing" if they don't like the shape of your nose...

[MoateAir]

Possibly a coincidence, but.....
Had an awful experience with BA some months ago. Tech fault that took an hour or so to fix, but 3 hours of testing before it could be signed off by the crew. Boarded the a/c 4 times, were told on the 3rd disembarkment that there were BA reps with 'meal vouchers' waiting for us back in the gate area. They never appeared. All in all, a very frustrating 5 hour delay. Reported all this on the BA website when invited to do a survey a couple of days later. Next flight with BA (2 weeks later) and the next after that, I was upgraded on both occasions, outbound and inbound.

As I said, possibly a coincidence, but maybe the worst scores from the surveys are investigated, checked and remedial action possibly applied?

[PAXboy]

In this forum, we have often heard reports of complaints such as MoateAir reports, bringing rewards of flyer miles. As a cynic, I'd say that the airlines prefer to hand out FFMs to the few that complain than compensate all the pax involved. If I'm right, then it's a short term strategy.

[Peter47]

I remember doing interviewer administered surveys on trains twenty years ago for BR and plenty of interviews for my research degree in the late nineties. I insisted on them being interviewer administered as you can often get far more feedback from the way people answer and the additional comments they make, quite apart from people misinterpreting questions. The interesting part was the supplementary questions which I was able to ask. I was also lucky that people generally cared about what they were being interviewed about (quality of train services).

I was told then that people used to be flattered to selected for a survey but were beginning to suffer from survey fatigue. This was before computers came along. The trouble now is that online surveys cost virtually nothing and you can't stop at a hotel or take a flight without being asked to fill in an online survey. Fatigue is an understatement, I limit myself to one a day after a trip. I would personally prefer more open ended questions (what could we do better, etc) rather than tedious filling on of scales. Some are too long (the World Travel Market survey a few years must have had a hundred questions).

I am always happy to fill in a questionnaire if I think that the results will produce changes. Of course you can ask how well people fill in surveys. (I have been on both sides of the fence and I worry how good my responses are.)

[iggie]

Whenever I'm asked by a commercial company to provide feedback for the purposes of their business I advise them that I may do so subject to my terms of business. I provide them with my requirements including financial arrangements. I do not conduct business with them in the absence of an acceptable deal.

[Piltdown Man]

I only do surveys when they pay me. After all, if you value my opinion, you will pay me for it. So quite reasonably you can get very indignant if you are expected to do something for nothing.

PM

ps. I'm in iggie's camp.

[Stanwell]

Ahem..
"Your opinion is valuable to us." .. or .. "Your opinion would be valued."
Good.
Then, OK, if you'd like to tell me just what value you place on it, I'll discuss it with my accountant and get back to you.
Next, they'll be expecting you to tell them which way is up.
Parasites.

[MathFox]

In a previous life^W job I used to be "internal quality auditor" (a two day/year gig) for an ISO 9001 certified company and one of the requirements for certification is to have a system to get to know your customers' opinion on the job that the company did for them.
So, we did interviews with our biggest customers, sent yearly questionnaires to the smaller ones, duly processed the results and used them to improve our way of working. (about three years after the slip ups)

[PAXboy]

I started to become really jaded about this process when, about four years, I was asked to take part in a survey of TV viewing (in the UK). I agreed as it was to be person-to-person in my home.

After an hour of polite, detailed questioning, he had all the details of what I did and did not watch and how my viewing had changed in recent years - which was watching less broadcast material than before.

He packed up to go and I said, "You haven't asked me WHY I am watching less than five years ago?"

"No, that's not in my questions." He replied politely, not seeming to understand what I was getting at.

The research company had gone to great expense to send someone - in the evening - to interview me and had failed to ask the most important question! So they knew I watched less and which channels I never watched but did not ask why that was so?

I continue to see that, as I mentioned in post #4. The key question that might tell them how to get me back as a consumer - they do not ask.