Category: Words

Six words.

Just six words that have an unnerving affect on me.

They are just words, I know. Maybe I shouldn’t let them bother me quite as much as they do, but ugh! They really bother me.

I can’t seem to do anything without getting one of these letters or emails or text messages or phone calls nowadays. Oh, how I long for the days when I can just go to the shop and buy something, and as soon as I leave the experience ends there. Or use a service and when it’s done, it’s done.

‘They’ say they want the feedback so they can improve their services. ‘They’ say it is for customer satisfaction. ‘They’ say it is for marketing purposes. ‘They’ always seem to ask for this, yet wherever you go everything is always as it has been.

‘They’ say it takes five minutes to complete their ‘customer satisfaction surveys’. It probably does, per survey, but when you get asked for feedback for every bloomin’ thing you do those five minutes can add up to an hour or two.

I had one manager of a mobile phone store once tell me to give the store a mark of 9 or 10 on how well they did, when I received their survey, otherwise it would trigger an investigation within their internal review team. Unfortunately, the manager lied to me regarding the wording of a contract, after I had to wait for over an hour to be seen in the first place, so they didn’t even get a score of zero from me. I never responded. I’d already lost an hour waiting to be told how to answer the question.

I made a phone call earlier today to an energy company, and as I was trying to give a little more detail regarding my enquiry, the advisor simply cut me off mid-sentence and asked me a totally different question. I then, shortly afterwards, received a phone call from their internal review team asking how well they did. Well, I say phone call – it was from a robot. Same as with the mobile phone store, they didn’t get any feedback. (Phone calls nowadays ore recorded ‘for training purposes’, so they may hear that call, should their internal review team get round to listening to it.)

The dentists want to know how they’ve done. The computer shop want to know how they’ve done. The Bathroom-fitting people want to know how they’ve done. The petrol station want to know how they’ve done.  Even places where there is no alternative to go to want to know if I would recommend their services.

Aaaarghhhhhh!!!!!

Companies! Please!!!

If you do not know how you are operating yourselves, then it is rather a poor show, don’t you think? Instead of investing in these tactics, why don’t you just provide a good service, or, if you want to show off, a really good service, and have done with it. If you mess it up, and you will, no worries there, just have your customer services team on standby ready to handle the complaint.

Sigh.

Maybe I’m getting old now, and this is the start of the onset of grumpiness. Mind you, I must have started getting old when I was a teenager, because I have been somewhat grumpy (in certain circumstances!) since then.

So… does this question cause you to feel the same way? I’d love to know. Please leave your feedback in the comments below…

(A grumpy Six Word Saturday post)