Monday 9 October 2017

"Your feedback is important

to us" comes in yet another email.
Really? 
I am tired of being asked to "rate" the service I received and "give positive feedback". It isn't just on-line companies either. I have been asked by the post office, two local shopping centre stores, a  bank, and an "independent" business. 
When I am paying for something I expect to be served promptly, efficiently and pleasantly. I expect the goods to be as described and as  durable as they are intended to be. If they are posted I expect them to be packed in such a way that they don't break in transit. If they are given to me in a shop I will, under some circumstances, expect them to be packed properly. I take my own bags where possible - but to save the environment from plastic rubbish not because I expect to have to pack my own things at the supermarket. (No, I'll help the check out person. It's faster for both of us that way.) 
But this business of having to "rate" service and "not leave negative feedback"? I am being asked to do your advertising? You are already spending money on advertising. I have paid you for the goods or the service and I am expected to pay you with yet more time?
I spend my days (and often nights) filling out forms. I don't want to fill out yet more forms - even those with just tick the boxes, lines of numbers or fancy stars.  
In my job people's "service" does not get rated like that. People just get on with the job. Nobody has time to create little surveys. We know soon enough whether you have been successful - whether a life has been saved or a bridge secured or a building made safe or whether the dam isn't going to collapse. Success might actually mean being invited back - into another dangerous situation. 
This morning there are no less than three "rate us" emails, including one to "remind" me that I have not yet left feedback. The service on that one was nothing out of the ordinary, indeed rather poor, and being reminded like that makes me even less inclined to help advertise a business.
I know it's a cut-throat dog-eat-dog business world out there but perhaps if you concentrated on getting on with the job....
I'm going back to mine. 

2 comments:

Jodiebodie said...

I ignore those feedback forms and surveys - they are a waste of my time which is too precious for that. I agree with all that you said.

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I would have to lie if you are not allowed to leave negative feedback, and the the truth is that the negative feedback is what they need so thy can improve their services.