TOT companies wanting feedback (rant)

[alan_m]

Currently I'm attempting to get my money back for a (£60) parcel that has been "lost" in transit. The parcel has a tracking number but hasn't been scanned since an hour after it was entered into the system.

I've tried contacting the company that sent the item by phone and all I got was musak for 45 minutes with no indication what so ever about where I was in the queue. I gave up and used the alternative method of sending an email with all details - a week and a half later still no response from them.

I contacted Hermes customer service and at least they replied after 3 days but to inform me that the tracking hadn't been updated since an hour after it entered the system and as a result it had been "lost" in their network. It's something I could see for myself!

Now here is the piss take. A few hours after getting the response from Hermes I got a customer satisfaction survey email. Their survey page is actually broken but I can see the questions:-

[quote] Rate the following

The convenience of contacting customer service by email relative to other methods

How easy it was to send my email enquiry to customer service?

etc.

[/quote]

All question carefully chosen to give a fairly positive response and all about the customer service representative and nothing about losing a parcel, not updating the tracking to indicate this (the parcel is out for delivery and has been reported this way for weeks).

Then shortly afterwards I get a customer satisfaction survey email from the original retailer with the same type of questions. Its a pity their customer service cannot respond to emails but they have the ability to ask for skewed feedback.

[Dave Plowman (News]

All these surveys tend to have an efficient filter. Removes all negative ones. They are just looking for a pat on the back.

[Chris Hogg]

Unless I'm particularly pleased or annoyed with something, I don't give feedback. On one occasion when I gave poor feedback, the retailer tried to bribe me with some sort of reward (I forget what, now) if I amended my comments in a more favourable direction. I refused.

[NY]

[NY]

Not only would I refuse but I'd also add to my review "the seller tried to bribe me to give a more favourable review".

[Max Demian]

I've just filled in a survey for NS&I, run by a third party. It had no questions at all about NS&I, just general ones about investments.

I found a contradiction/anomaly in one of the NS&I documents (about interest rates for reinvestment), and sent them an email about it. (They said the 'phone lines would be very busy because of you-know-what.) I received an auto-reply which said that they only answered emails about certain issues, one of which was "complaints". There was no explanation as to how you would register a complaint (or any of the other issues), as all emails resulted in this auto-reply.

About the same time, and presumably unconnected, I received a snail mail that acknowledged the error, but said there *was* an error when it was still present.

[Max Demian]

I've just tried to sign into HMRC to check my tax details, and it just takes me to a page asking me whether I want to receive my details by post or online. No way to skip this to get to my details. Even Google &c. lets you skip things.

[Jethro_uk]

The filters rely on "AI" so are trivial to bypass. Just write a review in negative ...

[michael adams]

Most Govt Surveys - presumably written by Cummings mates seem to be a poorly designed.

As a result of badgering letters I agreed to I take part in the British Social Attitudes Survey.

Each page of the survey is exactly the same, they give you a number of choices selected by standard Windows option buttons, plus NEXT STOP or BACK at the bottom of each page.

What they explain at the start is that when you press NEXT as well as taking to the next question as you'd expect, it also provides you with further options. "Don't know", "more information needed" sort of thing.

Quite why they don't give you all the options to start with, and instead hide them in this way is a bit of a mystery.

Anyway about half way through, the Survey turns into a bit of a logic puzzle. it's headed something like "Family Relations".

Starting off its simple enough, If a man A and a woman B have a baby and A leaves home should he still support the baby.

It then gets a bit more complicated. If a man A and a woman B have a baby and B leaves home and C moves in with B should C also support the baby ? Options Pay half, pay a third, pay nothing. And so on. There may even have been another baby at some stage.

Anyway it was only at this point that I realised that you couldn't cancel option button choices. Once having chosen any one, you had to chose at least one of the options on that page , there was no NEXT offering further options and no going back. Even going back to the previous page made no difference

Having completed the survey and turned down the shopping vouchers, I also emailed them about this - the hidden options behind NEXT and the impossibility of cancelling option buttons but have yet to hear back.

michael adams

...

[newshound]

AFAIK this has all arisen because of ISO 9001 certification, the requirement to be able to demonstrate to an external auditor that a supplier has a mechanism in place to record customer feedback.

[Dave Plowman (News]

And wonder which pal of government gets the nice job of running them?

I'd be most surprised if it were civil service in house.

[Jethro_uk]

It's generally axiomatic that companies that put so much effort into capturing customer feedback deliver shit service.

[Peter Johnson]

And their despatch is automated. Nothing to do with the customer's previous experience. (I ignore them too.)

[Brian Gaff]

Yes I know the feeling. I have had similar issues with virgin. Indeed at the moment they seem powerless from removing my telephone number from somebody elses account. I cant get it done as I don't have their account details. She can't get it done as they can't find where its stored, yet every time she gets a new bit of kit, all the texts come to my iphone and not to her dumb phone. so of course do the customer satisfaction queries, and of course questions about her problem when she rings them up. Are they unable to call the person who called them on the phone they called them from? It is stupid and a case where somebody incompetent has entered data incorrectly and yet there is no way to get it fixed. Brian

[alan_m]

When I was working the company employed a third party to administer the IT. If when phoning them a "fix" could be done rapidly we always got a customer satisfaction survey to complete - always the same 6 moronic questions.

If the problem couldn't be fixed quickly by the first or second tier of "customer service" and facilities were down for a day or more then a survey form was never forthcoming.

[Brian Gaff]

Of course there are loads of bogus reviews out there for everything from fridges to sex toys and many of them seem to have a kind of formula which makes it bleedin obvious they have been written by the same person, or maybe there is a software product out there called create a good customer record, almost undetectable... grin. Brian

[John Rumm]

You assume they are concerned about your feedback or experience, when what they really want are some free testimonials so they can advertise how many of their customers are satisfied.

[polygonum_on_google]

Even worse when they send you to a third party site for the survey which requires you to sign up for their harvesting your information, accepting their cookies, etc.

[Pamela]

One for the telecoms regulator perhaps?

[Pamela]

I once gave a seller on Amazon bad feedback and the company owner rang me and left a message asking me to call him back to discuss my feedback.

Instead I rang Amazon to say I hadn't given them my number to get harssing phone calls from their merchants and left it with them to sort out.