It happens multiple times a day: after a trip to Target, an oil change, buying ink at Office Depot, not to mention most Amazon purchases, my garbage collector, and the doctor’s office. Could I please answer a survey regarding my experience?
No, I won’t. Why? Because you don’t care. Nothing will change.
I know this because those times when Jimmy John’s failed to put meat on a sandwich (seriously, two times we received a hunk of bread with nothing in it) and we filled out the survey, nothing happened. We stopped giving that location our business. They apparently don’t care.
The time JCPenney refunded my account twenty dollars, but the billing cycle hadn’t ended yet, so although I had a zero balance on my credit card, they wanted me to pay the twenty dollars before they would allow me to charge anything else on it. You better believe I answered their survey. They didn’t care. I cancelled my card and haven’t shopped there since.
Or the two times at Kohls, when the cashier left an ink tag on my dress—I did not set off the alarm—so I had to drive all the way back to the store to have it removed. No, “sorry for your wasted time,” no coupon to ameliorate their mistake. Filling out the survey got me nothing in return, and since it happened again, the powers that be that read the survey obviously didn’t follow up with the store.
I don’t think Target wants me to answer their survey after shopping there at eight o’clock on a Monday morning. The place looked like it had been struck by a tornado. Piles of shirts and blouses littered the floors. Two employees refused to move out of my way when I tried to look at dresses. Then when I went to the dressing room, I had to wait. Despite the employee who stood behind the counter, she did not have a key to let me in. After five minutes, I told her I was going to push the button for help. She radioed for said person with key—who had been standing ten feet away straightening bras. Do you really want me to submit a survey after that disaster of a visit? And would you care enough to send me a coupon or a gift card, or some other incentive to make sure I shopped there again?
I’m convinced all this survey nonsense is just a data thing, a ridiculous goal that stores and businesses hassle their employees about, demanding a ninety percent return rate or something like that. These companies don’t do anything with the data they collect, only that they receive the data. Nothing will change, but you want me to spend my precious time filling out a survey. No thank you.
(It reminds of me of school districts, desperate for one hundred percent completion rates for standardized tests, yet no one cares that the students aren’t even reading the questions, much less trying, on said tests, only that all students have taken the test.)
After an oil change, the dealership sent me two emails and two text messages and still didn’t accept that I wouldn’t fill one out. Two weeks later, I received another email, “a friendly reminder” that this “feedback is important to us and will assist us in providing the best experience possible.” While this visit went fine, the last time I brought my car to the dealer, some idiot didn’t tighten a lug nut or whatever it was—when I backed my car out the next morning, a puddle of oil filled my garage. We had to take it back in, to which they did the work twice, no charge, but no one seemed to care about my time. We didn’t get a refund or a coupon for the next service free.
I did fill out a survey after my cat died and I returned all my Fancy Feast to Target. The humane society is out in the middle of nowhere and it was winter. I didn’t have it in me to bring it all the way out there. When I told the customer service lady why I was returning it, she was kind and told me that’s where returned pet supplies end up—at the local human society. I filled out the survey that day, feeling like it mattered, that my cat, Kippy, would have wanted me to or something. Because I raved about the experience, I received a personal email back. So when I had a particularly awful experience—I tried to return a dress I bought from the west side Target to the east side Target since I was shopping on that side of town—the customer service prick said I couldn’t. I had to return it to the Target I bought it from. Since when? This isn’t 1982. After filling out my survey (I made sure to buy something so it would register in the system that I was there) and receiving no response, I emailed the manager that had written to me about Kippy. He wasn’t replying to that email.
It’s all a farce. They only want the response rate and they only care about the nice surveys, the ones they excel at.
(I will never answer a survey regarding a doctor visit. Now that I have access to what doctors write about me, I know how neurotic they think I am. However, considering I have to tell them every time that I have a fainting problem with blood and needles despite that it’s written on the front page of my patient summary, they would never read my survey anyway.)
Businesses don’t want to know, or care to know, that when my husband stopped at McDonald’s at 6:30 in the morning, they weren’t open yet, for reasons that remain unclear. Culver’s doesn’t want to know that they gave me a hamburger instead of a cheeseburger. Hy-Vee doesn’t care that the scanned price doesn’t match the shelf price. Menards doesn’t care that the fountain we bought was broken, that we had to go back to the store for a new one. Sephora doesn’t care that their normal-colored lip glosses, like the pinks and the beiges, are never in stock. Walmart doesn’t care that expired lunchmeat is left on the shelves. They don’t care because they know we’ll come back. And if we don’t, some other poor shmuck will take our place. They won’t lose customers on a colossal scale because we have accepted subpar service and expect that our order won’t be right.
My garbage collector ignored my survey when I had to call and ask them to credit my account after they charged me for garbage bags I set next to my garbage can—after they postponed, then cancelled, my service for the week due to a snowstorm. Yet when we called to cancel, since they kept raising our rates, they suddenly took us seriously. They harassed me with surveys about that phone call for weeks, which I steadfastly ignored.
And Office Depot? I am in the store for two minutes to buy ink. What could I possibly report about such visits?
So who is reading all these surveys? Do you care that Greg, the manager at Jimmy John’s, charged us for delivery after failing to put meat on our sandwich that we picked up ourselves, then had to give us a new sandwich? Do you care that the representative for Direct TV refused to give us a deal after raising our rates again, then the day after—and yes, it was the day after—flooded my inbox with deals to bring me back as a customer? Do you care that either my family physician or her nurse incorrectly listed a procedure I didn’t have? Will you give me back my money, or more importantly, my precious time these errors or conflicts robbed me of?
We all get it as consumers, especially after the Pandemic. Customer service sucks more than it excels. Exorbitant wait times occur in all facets: check-out lines, drive thrus, even shipping times (people still pay for Amazon Prime although their two-day shipping has turned into four or five days). Prices have increased while the quality or quantity has decreased. Sales and coupons and discounts are less and infrequent. As a society we have accepted that this is the way business is now done. So embrace that, businesses, and move on to the next customer, because I will not waste my precious time filling out a survey for subpar service when the customer simply doesn’t matter anymore.