Do customer satisfaction surveys by phone really work?
I just got off the phone from a very, very interesting and entertaining customer satisfaction survey phone call - not. It was initiated on behalf of a service I use most days (I won’t get into specifics), and i’ve had a few problems with them in the past, so I said i’d oblige. My god was it boring. It was based on the multiple-choice, 1 for bad 7 for good formula, and I feel very sorry for the poor woman whose job it is to make those calls every day. My head would be wrecked, and my friends would notice a change in my behaviour over time from human to robot. So, do these surveys work or not, and if not, why?
My call certainly didn’t work. The 1-7 formula, along with the bored disinterested woman at the other end of the phone (I worked in a call centre myself once, so I pain), made me start laughing to myself and just answering ‘4′ to quite a long series of the questions. I upped it to ‘5′ for the portion of the questions where I felt the service was performing kinda well, but that was about it.
I just wonder how many people don’t bother going ahead with the questionnaire in the first place (perhaps cos they’re happy as larry), the amount who take part only because they’d had a problem (like me!), and the final portion - possibly students - who are bored shitless and just take the call to take the piss and answer ‘1′ to the multiple choice questions, whilst having a giggle at the same time.
Surely this can’t be a great way to evaluate a business. A series of questions which you answer numbers to? I think not.
Ongoing evaluation must be far more effective - a question here, a question there - not too much to bore the shite out of your customers, and performed over a longer period of time in a less intrusive way than a boring ten minute phone call.
What do you think of phone surveys? Old hat, or necessary evil?