How did we do? Look, all I wanted to do was buy some wipers for my car and pay my phonebill, not rate your staff or recommend your shelf setup to my friends with a possible score out of 10..
Dear businesses around the world, any business really,
Look I get it, I really do – you love your feedback. You want to improve your service and customer relations and in turn become the number one store for…well whatever it is you do. Because what can be tracked can be improved obviously and in the quest to be the best of the best (or even the best of the best from the rest who were left), there’s nothing like word from the horses mouth itself (especially when you’re working with horses) or in this case the customer.
But seriously, can you reserve the question ‘How did we do?’ for those times where I did more than the bare bones basic stuff and spent longer than a cup of coffee on your premises?
I mean car parts superstore Supercheap Auto is a fantastic example. I walked in over the weekend to buy some wiper blades to replace the sad looking ones currently gracing the screen of my Slowbaru and was back in my car quicker than you could say ‘No time wasting here.’ But because I’m a club card carrier member and used it when purchasing said wipers, the next thing I know I’ve been emailed a survey to illuminate SCA’s burning question ‘How did we do?’
How did you do? Well the girl behind the counter didn’t snatch the wipers out of my hands and try to impale me on them right there on the spot, so that was good. She also didn’t look at what I brought to the counter and try to sell me a lawnmower instead or hunker down and page security. Seriously, outside of ‘Transaction went exactly as planned’ what else am I supposed to say? But the survey wanted to know how I found the shelves, the product range and would I tell my friends to shop there after my recent purchase?
Heath, you wouldn’t believe the wipers I saw at Supercheap Auto! I know, amazing right! I gave them an 8.5 out of 10 because they wouldn’t call me ‘Lord’ but aside from that things went pretty well.
-The conversation Supercheap obviously thinks I’m having with mates
Now if you’re a telecommunications service, don’t think you’re off the hook, especially you Vodaphone. Because every time I’ve visited the Vodaphone website to look at my bill (I could write a whole new blog post about how hilariously awful their app is) it’s not too long before you too are asking ‘How did we do?’
How did you do? Well the phones on the website looked like phones and not AFL greats snapped in a nightclub toilet covered in white powder so that’s a pass mark there. And your words are in English which helps me to no end because my Spanish is a little rusty. I could click your links, I could press the buttons, basically I could do the things I needed to do. But you too also want to know how I’d rate the experience to friends and family?
Phones Heath! You wouldn’t believe it, but pictures of phones! And amazingly some don’t even have covers!!!!
-Vodaphone getting giddy over me promoting their website during a conversation about something else entirely.
Let be clear, there hasn’t been a single website in my entire history that I’ve visited with the immediate reaction straight after ‘If I don’t recommend this web page to my friends and family with a score out of 10 right now, I will die! It’s totes crayfish!!’
I am here, you can put that in your win column
Companies of the world, some bare truths:
-If I’m in your shop, I’m not in your competitors shops am I? As full of wonder as I am (I must be, you keep asking for my opinion on everything), there is only one of me at any given time and given you’ve seen me perusing your goods, consider that indication you’re doing okay. And unless your shelves fall on me, I’ll probably be back sometime in the future too. You’re safe there.
-Company websites of the world, unless you steal my credit card details or sell my medical data to some dodgy Bulgarian hackers, I’ll probably visit again. However I’ve never rated websites with numbers out of 10 in casual conversation so please stop asking me to do so everytime I do something as rudimentary as paying a bill. Or simply logging in for a look.
-No one wants to rate your phone service after we’ve finished chatting to a consultant for whatever, if they do they’re lying. We’ve been waiting long enough to get through to someone, we’ve met 12 managers from 9 departments just to query a bill, the last thing we want to do is hang around for another two minutes to answer automated questions about how nobody seemed to understand what we wanted.
-(For Google) Yes I have left a review or two in the past about businesses I’ve dealt with, but probably no more than three times a year at most. Please stop taking that as ‘This guy must want to review EVERYTHING!’ and asking me to do so at every occasion like filling up at random petrol stations or tieing my shoelace outside a motorbike store. ‘But how we’re the bikes???’ Dunno, I don’t ride..
(Although I thoroughly enjoy the 1 star reviews people give various places like burger joints..)
‘How did we do?’ Well honestly my love for your work increased tenfold when you stopped asking that needy and tedious question..