I notified a government agency of my change of address. Today we received one of those evaluation forms, asking us in what manner we had contacted the agency and how we rated our experience. Were we very satisfied, satisfied, or not very satisfied? I think there were five categories, but you get the picture. You have seen many of these, I'm sure. There were about ten questions in all. I doubt they have the least value in actually measuring the quality of service, not in government, not in private businesses. The surveys are just someone's attempts to "do something," about quality control and convince people that this is a valuable public relations function that customers have "input." Which we all value so highly, y'see, having input. In the dim reaches of my memory, I think I used to believe that there was a way to do this well and get the information sough t in some useful form. I was merely irritated that these surveys were done poorly. I now think they cannot be done well at all, even by smart and well-meaning people.
As an added encouragement to actually fill out this form and send it in, in the stamp area there is a notice that postage is not necessary if mailed in the United States. Thus, either the state agency or the federal Post Office is paying for this, because you 'n me are paying one (or both) of them to do that.
They sent the form to my old address and it was forwarded to me. The Post Office has a little yellow sticker they put on, telling you to notify the sender of your change of address. I did not fill out the survey boxes, but informed them that I thus could not rate them highly on the core element of the reason I had called in the first place. The whole experience seems to capture in miniature my view of government.
10 comments:
All of these customer feedback systems are dysfunctional. You can't order a widget from Amazon or Walmart without being prompted to review your product, the delivery, the packaging, some similar nonsense. The frequent, trivial messages seem designed to be ignored by the customer. Unsubscribing works one out of three times if you are lucky. Responding in any way might bring a deluge of new messages. Why do so many merchants do this? It shows contempt for customers' time. Maybe it gives programmers something to do.
It's like retail software that keeps getting upgraded while bugs in early versions go unaddressed. Why don't they fix the bugs and slow walk new features? Maybe it's the customers with unrealistic preferences, maybe it's the programmers who want to show off their talents, maybe it's both.
The Amazon Echo Show can't merely execute voice commands, it has to interject synthesized voice "suggestions" that stop only if the user makes an effort to tell the machine to stop. It displays PSAs about social distancing. (Why does Amazon think people buy their machines?) There is no setting that can be configured to stop the machine from wasting users' time by asking distracting synthesized voice questions at times of the algorithm's choosing. People complain about such time-wasters in reviews by users at Amazon.com. Nothing changes. Bad systems- and product-design are the norm.
It is clear every time you are in a phone-in tree that it was put there for their convenience, to reduce the number of staff they had to hire, not your advantage. Please listen to the following options, as our menu has recently changed. No it hasn't recently changed. It's been the same for seven years at some agencies I call regularly.
In general, I refuse to do customer satisfaction surveys though I've learned to ask if the surveys affect someone's pay.
Customer service surveys almost always focus on 'was the person you talked to any good'? But the employee quality is rarely the problem...usually, it is with the systems and procedures that have been put in place by the company or agency.
Recently, I detected a possible gas leak and called the gas company. Guy #1, who showed up almost immediately, confirmed the lead and turned off the gas. Guy #2, who showed up several hours later, actually fixed the problem (had to replace the meter). Guy #3, who came the next morning, turned the gas back on.
All the individual employees were fine. I might question the division of labor: why couldn't the jobs of guy #2 and guy #3 be combined, eliminating a step?...but the main problem was, I could get no information as to when the next guy in the sequence was coming, even as a rough estimate. Their system apparently doesn't provide for such things.
@ Donna. David is correct. The surveys focus on the poor sap at the end of the chain, ignoring the larger issues. Sometimes I will answer a survey in a manner to reflect that, putting everything in the comments. I doubt that actually works.
The surveys we get from our congress-critters are similarly useless.
AVI - that is why I ask if the surveys affect someone's pay. Or performance review. For a while, Instacart was giving the shoppers $1 for every 5 star rating they got and I did those.
The purpose of the surveys isn't to gather information to improve the relevant products, services or processes. The purpose of the surveys is to provide retrospective justifications for decisions that have already been made, and also to give the programmers something to do.
They rarely ask any questions even close to the issues that concern me. Something similar happens on Facebook when you select "Hide Ad." They ask why and give 4-5 namby-pamby reasons that might apply. It turns out there's an "x" you can hit to get out of the questionnaire, and the ad still goes away. There really are FB ads I wouldn't mind reviewing, so there's some use on their part in getting this right.
What I'd really like is an option for "Take your self-righteous politics and stuff them."
I imagine surveys serving two purposes. They create the impression among satisfied consumers that the company "really cares;" they get a little image boost. The dissatisfied consumer gets a little satisfaction at the chance to blow off steam. Either way, it's a cheap trick.
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