I’m tired of being asked to rate everything I do, everything I buy, and everyone I encounter. Apparently, my paying for a product or service is no longer enough; now I’m expected to give them reviews.
It seems that whenever I conduct a transaction online, I invariably get an email or pop-up window asking how my experience went. When I receive a package, I’m asked to rate the delivery. Then a few days later I receive an email to review the product. A few days after that I get a reminder that I’ve not responded.
It’s relentless, intrusive, and actually pretty ridiculous. Somehow companies are convinced that pestering us is okay to do. But it’s not – it’s simply another form of spam. The only difference between these endless survey requests and ordinary spam is that they come from companies we’ve actually paid money to. Apparently, making a purchase gives a business permission to bother us, their best customers.
Often these requests make absolutely no sense. A restaurant wants to know whether I’d recommend it to a friend after I bought a sandwich. Door Dash wants me to rate the order process, the driver, and the restaurant. Fedex asks me to rate the person who left a package at my door who I never saw. Amazon asks how my delivery was. Airlines wants to know how I enjoyed the booking process. A website interrupts me to ask whether I’m enjoying the website, often a few seconds after landing on the page.
Yesterday when I contacted United Airlines using its “premier” customer service line, hoping to reach an agent quickly to make a reservation change, a recording asked whether I would take a survey after the call. When I quickly pushed “1” to agree and hoped to move quickly to an agent, I was subjected to several more questions about how I wanted to respond, delaying the very help I had called for. The request to rate the experience actually made the experience worse. Next time I will know better and press “2” for no.
What I find infuriating is that these companies place no value on our time. They’ll ask us to spend five minutes completing a questionnaire about a two-minute transaction. And more times than not, their questions are not even relevant. They’ll interrupt us with pop-ups, send follow-up emails, and occasionally remind us that our feedback is very important. If my time is so valuable to them, perhaps they should pay me for it. Otherwise, stop asking.
Behind much of this madness apparently is an industry fueled by customer-experience software companies such as Qualtrics and Medallia that make it easy for businesses to automatically solicit feedback after practically every interaction.
Qualtrics website says, “Immediately surface customer friction and guide frontline teams in the moment to better serve clients. Increase your customer lifetime value by driving company-wide improvement—across processes, products, and digital properties.”
Medalia says “Only Medallia connects every customer signal, so you can move faster, act smarter, and drive results that count.” Whatever that means.
Here we have software companies pushing their products to company employees charged with measuring customer satisfaction. But who considers the impact these questions have on the poor customer?
Have you ever seen any changes come to sites that survey you? Has any business gotten back to you thanking for your suggestions from one of their questionaiires?
These software products allow companies to automatically generate thousands of requests with almost no effort. But each request demands something from us: attention, time, and another decision about whether to respond, delete, or unsubscribe. Multiply that by the hundred of businesses we deal with or interactions we are involved in, and it becomes a constant assault.
I do have a suggestion for companies that want to improve customer satisfaction: Stop bothering your customers. Respect their time and put all the money going to customer-experience software in hiring real people answering your phone directly without all of the intrusions.
The requests are getting more frequent and more annoying. Each time I buy a coffee, I get a rating request. Each time, I cook a steak,, my “Meater” (which actually does a great job at getting it medium rare) asks how my cooking went. But,airlines only seem to send out the requests when I’ve had an OK flight. They must know when they’ve done a worse than usual flight and don’t ask me to rate it.
I generally just delete these requests. Let them assume that if I have not complained, I have nothing meaningful that’s worth my time to say.
I just don’t most of the time. I post my own reviews on the popular sites where people making travel decisions will see them. I have no expectation that reviews sent directly to the provider result in any actions.
Two big issues I have: First, clicking on a star rating in the e-mail takes you to a much longer survey on their site. Second, many aren’t specific enough- you may have no problem with the human you talked to on the phone but the process is broken and it’s not their fault, If teh survey doesn’t separate those issues I also don’t respond.
I feel like leaving a comment on a column complaining about “rating overload” may be a trap. Apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.
Completely agree these requests constitute spam; if you’ve thrilled me or angered me you’ll find out regardless. Phone surveys are the worst. Most phone encounters start with a perfunctory name exchange. If during the course of the encounter I ask again for the person’s name it’s a tell that I’m going to leave feedback. If the encounter is excellent then I’m willing to invest a little time on the hope they may be rewarded somehow; if the encounter is terrible I’m likewise willing to invest a little time on they hope someone – anyone – will pay attention. If the encounter is satisfactory no one will ever hear from me again before next time.
Comment rates a 10!