Everyone wants your feedback. No matter how insignificant your order, now trivial the encounter, any company you have a brush with wants to know how you feel about their product, how you think they did.
As someone who had a career in marketing, I get this.
I concocted plenty of surveys in my day, but I made at least a partial escape before metrics madness set in. And I blessedly never had to compute a Net Promoter Score (folks who like you minus those who don't). But today, everything revolves around the numbers.
How satisfied is satisfied when it comes to customer support? Do I really want to rate the delivery goodness (or not) of every package that shows up (or not) on my stoop. How much is there to say about a laundry pen? A used five-dollar pamphlet on Robert Todd Lincoln's home, Hildene?
Half the time these days, you can't even have a nice quiet meal in a restaurant without having a card to fill out about the food and service. (These I do tend to fill out. After all, mostly I've got a couple of minutes to kill before signing the credit recent. That is, unless it's one of those new-fangled placed that brings the pay-up device right over to the table.)
But for me, at least, I'm more inclined to review something if I'm not happy with it. Human nature, I guess. But even then, I tend to write the negative reviews in my head and then forgive and forget about it.
I'm more apt to answer a follow-up survey on a customer service encounter than a product-related survey, especially if the person was knowledgeable and helpful.
But I hate being bombarded with requests for reviews. (I really need to start using a substitute email address for online ordering. Let these requests fall into a black hole.)
One problem I have with these requests is, quite frankly, the question of what's in it for me. This is not a question I ask regularly in my life. Personally, I'm not exactly Ayn Rand's darling. Yet when it comes to these irksome requests to answer irksome surveys, well, WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?
In June, I spent a few nights at a VRBO three-day rental. The place was fine, but I really had nothing much - rave or critical - to say about it, nothing that would add to whether anyone else was going to decide yay or nay on whether to rent it for themselves. Did it really matter that I found the decor - dark sage, brown mustard, and guck brown - boring and dated? I'm not living there. Neither is the next guy who rents it for three nights.
Anyway, the enticement to get me to review my experience was the promise that, if I filled in the survey, I would be able to see how the owner of the condo rated me. Talk about not giving a hoot. What could he possibly say? I suppose if we'd left the place a mess, Andrew from NJ could have dinged me. But we didn't. So I didn't bother to fill in the survey. And, guess what, they nonetheless let me see that Andrew from NJ had given me high marks.
So a kind of dumb "reward", at least they were trying to sweeten the pot by offering me something.
Sure, it was of negligible value. I.e., zero value. But still, it was something beyond the future and likely never-realized promise of "serving you better" which accompanies so many asks for feedback.
Then, just the other day, I actually got a real something. Something I'll really use. Something worth $5 - a non-negligible amount, especially when put towards the price of a pizza.
Upper Crust Pizza is a small pizza chain. It's pretty good, and it's just around the corner. I probably average a purchase there every six
It's a good little place. Yes, sometimes they confuse orders. (Sometimes the person you're dealing with has somewhat limited English.) But the pizza and service are generally pretty good.
The company does have an interesting and rather unsavory history.
Their first store was "my" store on Charles Street, and us locals went insane when they opened, it was that good. But they expanded from there and then got into all sorts of legal trouble for not paying overtime and back taxes and other not-so-great stuff. For a while when they weren't paying workers overtime - and were calling some employees managers so they could put them on salary and work them ungodly hours - I boycotted Upper Crust. Then they had a change in ownership, so I went back. And after ordering a couple of pizzas on Saturday night for a family gathering, I got an email asking me to fill out a survey in return for $5 off my next order.
This is how you do it if you really want your customer's feedback!
And there's no reason that other outfits can't offer something of tangible value.
I'd be fine with Amazon bombarding me with feedback requests if I accumulated points every time I filled one out - points that could eventually accrue to a small gift card at some point. Comcast/Xfinity could offer me a free movie. Put me in a raffle for a drawing or something. Etc.
Be like Upper Crust!
I'm looking forward to cashing in my coupon. Bravo, Upper Crust!
No comments:
Post a Comment