Data, Data Everywhere, But Not a Byte to Think
I once sat in a reassembled plane fuselage in an office park while a researcher hired by Delta asked me how comfortable I was every fifteen minutes. This was years before the creation of the current “premium” seating model. My guess is they wanted to determine the least comfortable “basic economy” seat passengers would tolerate before becoming agitated. We sometimes forget that space in a commercial airplane is limited and that when Delta gives their favorite passengers extra legroom in Comfort Plus, they’re taking it away from a guy like me.
This isn’t the only instance in which the information I provide is being used against me. Health insurers’ business models depend on delaying and denying claims. If I complete a post-call survey, do I really believe the organization’s objective is to find out how friendly, knowledgeable, or efficient I thought the customer service agent was when they delivered the bad news that my anesthesiologist claim was outside its network? The cynic in me wonders whether they're trying to determine the least expensive way possible to let me down.
Almost every interaction as a consumer is punctuated with a request to provide feedback. At this rate, I’ll eventually receive a survey asking how satisfied I was with one I just completed. It hasn't happened yet, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before Ticketmaster asks me to rank my satisfaction with its egregious Service, Order Processing, Facility Charge, and Delivery Fees.
Even I, as much as I love a good deal, won’t complete a 20-minute follow-up request that includes a question about how full the ketchup dispenser was at my table for $5 off my next visit. In this age of nanosecond attention spans, how can anyone take the responses to any feedback request longer than four or five questions seriously? Anybody can write a twenty-five-question survey. The real skill is deciding which four questions to keep. Is completing a survey—where my benefit, if there is one at all, is questionable and far in the future—really how I want to spend my precious time?
These feedback requests stress me out. Will the employee who helped me be penalized if I ignore a survey? When I was leaving an Enterprise rental car facility, the manager said, “Remember—be sure to give us all fives.” If my pay and performance evaluation were based on customer feedback, I’d try to game the system, too. These companies don’t want to spend the money to create meaningful metrics to evaluate their employees, so they rely on free labor from customers to do it.
On the more benign side, I don’t get the sense that listening to my feedback is an urgent priority. My wife and I had a positive interaction with a Delta gate agent when our flight was delayed multiple times, and used the comments section of the survey to give her a shout-out.
Delta thanked me for my feedback—six months later.
Occasionally, I entertain myself by providing ridiculous answers when businesses gather data about me, in what is likely a futile attempt to thwart their targeted marketing efforts. Depending on the day, I might be as rich as Warren Buffett, or my reported income might encourage American Express to cancel my credit cards immediately.
I often attend webinars offered by the Brookings Institution, and my go-to answer to the occupation question is roadkill cleanup. To date, I haven’t been asked any details about my role and responsibilities.
Each time I sign up for an Atlanta Track Club race, I’m required to answer the same ten questions. Why are they asking for the same static demographic information every time I register?
During a recent hotel stay, my wife and I requested a late checkout at the front desk. Because nobody informed housekeeping, our nap and shower were interrupted. I’m going to start travelling with my own “late-checkout” analog door tag. I’m guessing I wasn’t the first and won’t be the last to encounter this problem, even though I noted the two walk-ins on the post-stay survey.
As it becomes cheaper and cheaper to collect, store, and analyze data, organizations default to gathering any information they can without questioning its usefulness. Perhaps the most important step companies can take is to act on feedback to improve products and services and communicate the changes they’ve made to show me that my opinion is valued. It’s a rare but satisfying moment when firms tell me that they’ve implemented a change based on my suggestion. Acting on customer feedback is where the real investment begins.
I’m not opposed to being a data point if it ultimately improves a product or service and my information is managed responsibly. What frustrates me is when companies mistake gathering data for understanding customers. Many companies have mastered the art of pretending to be customer-focused without doing the hard work it takes to be truly attentive to their customers’ needs. Technology has made it cheaper to collect every imaginable metric. Organizations are drowning in data, yet many haven’t learned the difference between collecting it and understanding their customers.
Have you been impacted by a data error that you’ve had difficulty correcting?
What is your philosophy about completing follow-up surveys?
The survey fatigue is real, as is the tension of being judged by your survey results and feedback as an employee. What’s not real is most companies’ interest in making any meaningful improvements to benefit their customers’ experiences.
So true