Why Do So Many Business Email Surveys?

[Abraham]

I don't fill them out, but they're on the increase.

I can guess why, (cynic that I am) but, what's your understanding why they put them out?

Ostensibly, if I fill them out, it'll increase their excellence in service, blah, blah, blah, yeah sure...

Toyota, (I own 2) and have owned many in the past, are absolutely frantic I fill out their surveys. They come very close to insisting I fill out their surveys as if I don't have a choice.

So, now when I get a survey request/insistence - I just delete without reading no matter what business is begging/insisting/arm twisting best they can I fill out their survey.

So, what do you say about business surveys?

Thanks!

[anygunanywhere]

I don't fill out surveys. They are annoying.

[Jusme]

I don't fill them out either, I might send in a complaint, or sometimes (more rarely these days) a compliment about their service or product(s), but I just ignore surveys. My thoughts are that they may actually use whatever data they acquire, to make improvements, but I am leery about the results. I think they are more geared towards millennials, who are more likely to respond. Maybe, that's is the reason, I do business with fewer companies, because they have skewed their marketing to a different demographic. JMHO

[Soccerdad1995]

I will fill out a survey if my experience was noteworthy (good or bad). But I make an exception to that policy for any company where the representatives actively suggest that I give them a 5 out of 5 (BMW is one of these). In those companies, anything less than an "exceptional" rating results in punishment of some type for the employee, and the simple fact is that most perfectly acceptable interactions I have with a company are not "exceptional". Solving my problem or issue in a timely, professional, and courteous manner is meeting my expectations, it is not exceptional.

I resent being put in a position where I have to be dishonest to avoid punitive actions for an employee, so I just don't participate.

[parabelum]

Mostly for data analysis in order to improve customer experience and obviously, their bottom line.

[Jusme]

I will fill out a survey if my experience was noteworthy (good or bad). But I make an exception to that policy for any company where the representatives actively suggest that I give them a 5 out of 5 (BMW is one of these). In those companies, anything less than an "exceptional" rating results in punishment of some type for the employee, and the simple fact is that most perfectly acceptable interactions I have with a company are not "exceptional". Solving my problem or issue in a timely, professional, and courteous manner is meeting my expectations, it is not exceptional.

I resent being put in a position where I have to be dishonest to avoid punitive actions for an employee, so I just don't participate.

Those employees need to seek opportunity elsewhere, if their jobs are so dependent upon the whims of the general public. It's one thing to have complaints lodged against you for legitimate reasons, but just because someone decides to give you three stars instead of five, and your future is in jeopardy, is ludicrous. JMHO

[Soccerdad1995]

Mostly for data analysis in order to improve customer experience and obviously, their bottom line.

The problem is that 99% of the time that I do submit what I, the customer, perceive to be a legitimate complaint, I get zero response from the company.

My latest example being Comcast. While travelling last week, my wife wanted to watch some shows on her mobile device, but she forgot her password. According to three separate Comcast employees, the ONLY way to reset her password is by having them call us on our home phone. If we were home, we would just watch the shows on our TV, so obviously, that is a non-solution. I understand account security, but I have more than one option to reset my bank account password and transfer my life savings to another account. I think the risk of someone watching a few TV shows on my cable account is much less severe, personally.

I completed their survey, expressing my dissatisfaction, and have received no response whatsoever as of now (6 days later). If you are not planning to react to complaints then don't ask me how things are going.

[Pariah3j]

My problem is that when companies only go by the received feedback, where is the average person is alot more likely to give feed back when service is extremely poor or there was a problem/complaint not when they are satisfied. When I worked at Best Buy w/ the Geek Squad, we were graded on our feedback, it was one of the metrics for how we bonused. Problem was we could complete 100s of computers/jobs with no complaint, but the one dissatisfied person who bothered to fill out the survey just because they didn't get something they wanted for free, etc could skew our results for the entire month. Often times the bad rating was for something out of our control, such as one of the service centers didn't fix something correctly or messed up.

[vjallen75]

My wife got into it with someone on the AT&T customer service line, we have been completely unhappy with the service we were provided and I let them know that when they sent us the survey about the initial person we made contact with. We have not been contacted back about our being unhappy with the service.

Common sense would be if you had leave a bad survey they should try to make things right, right? I've come to the conclusion why bother? I've never received a call after completing a negative and/or positive survey.

[RPBrown]

I do send surveys to customers only to find out how my employees are doing. If they fill them out, we offer 10% off of the next service we do at their home. Some do and some don't. It is a good way to find out if our performance was satisfactory, but there is no pressure to fill one out.
The old story goes if you are satisfied with a service, you MIGHT tell 1 or 2 people. However, if you are dissatisfied you will tell everyone you meet for the next few days. In as much as it costs to get customers, I need to know ahead of time id you are not satisfied so I can do what it takes to alleviate the problem. Now, granted, there are always some that want something for nothing, but those I usually get a phone call from.

[Scott Farkus]

I will fill out a survey if my experience was noteworthy (good or bad). But I make an exception to that policy for any company where the representatives actively suggest that I give them a 5 out of 5 (BMW is one of these). In those companies, anything less than an "exceptional" rating results in punishment of some type for the employee, and the simple fact is that most perfectly acceptable interactions I have with a company are not "exceptional". Solving my problem or issue in a timely, professional, and courteous manner is meeting my expectations, it is not exceptional.

I resent being put in a position where I have to be dishonest to avoid punitive actions for an employee, so I just don't participate.

This. I've actually had a couple of car salesman tell me point blank that if they don't get 10's (or whatever the maximum is), they might as well get 1's. I don't understand the logic of companies that do this. I would imagine most people just want exactly what you describe - be timely, professional, and courteous and everything else takes care of itself. We don't need "10's" for every transaction - in fact, I'd probably get extremely irritated with an otherwise perfectly fine employee if he or she was sucking up to me because they needed a 10.

I've come to pretty much ignore all these surveys for the same reasons.

[bblhd672]

I do send surveys to customers only to find out how my employees are doing. If they fill them out, we offer 10% off of the next service we do at their home. Some do and some don't. It is a good way to find out if our performance was satisfactory, but there is no pressure to fill one out.
The old story goes if you are satisfied with a service, you MIGHT tell 1 or 2 people. However, if you are dissatisfied you will tell everyone you meet for the next few days. In as much as it costs to get customers, I need to know ahead of time id you are not satisfied so I can do what it takes to alleviate the problem. Now, granted, there are always some that want something for nothing, but those I usually get a phone call from.

The difference between you (I assume are a small business owner) and the ever-growing mega corporatons is that you actually care about the quality of goods and services you supply to your customers. The mega corporations for the most part are just providing electronic "lip service" with their surveys.

The biggest problem I have with most of the surveys is when you are directed to a website not operated by the company and it requires you to register or supply several pieces of information.

[chamberc]

Business only expect about a .5% response rate, so no worries. We get a lot more than that.

[mojo84]

As a small business owner that is comitted to delivering a very high level of customized service to my clients, I rely heavily on feedback from my clients. Most people are quick to throw a company under the bus and/or volunteer feedback when things go awry, which is very infrequently with us and our clients. However infrequent, negative comments or reviews can do substantial damage to a company's reputation whether the criticism is justified or not. Many times, customers will just move on and jump on any opportunity to tell whowever they can how bad a company treated them without the company knowing what went wrong.

Now to the positive proactive side. I request my clients provide me feedback through surveys every now and then so I can get a better read on client satisfaction levels and areas in which we need to improve. Surveys also give us an opportunity to learn what customers value and what they don't. As an example, many of our customers responded to us that they do not enjoy getting mounds of paper policies and endorsements. They let us know they prefer electronic versions. Therefore, we email them their policies when possible and we also set up an electronic storage system so each client can always access their policies and other relevant documents any time they want without having to access the insurance carriers website or dig through mounds of paper. This is much more efficient for us and the client.

I believe surveys are a valuable resource if companies will actually use them to help drive proactive changes and efforts to better serve their clients the way they want to be served.

Also, surveys allow anonimity that promotes more honest and direct responses. I suggest filling them out if you want to have some input and don't if you don't. It could be a matter of being part of the problem or part of the solution.

[allisji]

The old story goes if you are satisfied with a service, you MIGHT tell 1 or 2 people. However, if you are dissatisfied you will tell everyone you meet for the next few days. .

This may well be true. I stayed overnight at the worst hotel I've ever visited last week and told my whole family about it when I arrived to my vacation. A week later, on my way home from vacation, I had a very nice night at a "cheap" hotel and told no one about it.

I gave negative reviews in the survey for the first hotel. I haven't received a survey yet for the second one, but if I do I will fill it out with positive reviews.