I’m not sure what it was that set me off. I seem to remember I was on some site I do business with and spent about two seconds checking a billing date or balance. But as soon I as tried to sign out, there it was. The ubiquitous pop up demanding feedback.
I clicked it off without leaving any because there was none to leave. It had to have been the fourth or fifth demand for feedback I’d received that day, and I was beginning to notice that you can’t freaking breathe without some app or website demanding feedback. As if I don’t have other things to do with my life.
Worse yet, the feedback, itself, is getting increasingly meaningless. There’s the problem of fake reviews, which has caused Amazon to dump perfectly legitimate reviews because they determined that the reviewer knows the author. Then there are the feedback forms that don’t allow for comments. The providers probably have so much data they can’t read comments, but that makes the data even more useless since it can only reflect what the provider wants to ask. I’ve stopped giving Kaiser feedback because the last time they demanded it, there was no way to let them know that it wasn’t the immediate provider that had caused the issue I was having, it was something else.
Now, there’s a new wrinkle – providers that don’t accept anything less than perfect scores. Scroll down on this article from HowToGeek.com, and you’ll see why that super high rating doesn’t mean the guy driving your Lyft car is Superman. He’s probably just competent. At the counter of a business I regularly do business with, a sweet young thing constantly told customers that they would be called for feedback on their service and, “Anything less than perfect is a fail.” Alas, the reason customer service is anything but perfect at this branch is not really the fault of the agents. Corporate policy keeps the branch chronically understaffed and understocked. But it’s the agents who are being graded, so I feel obligated to say it’s great so some CEO can feel good about being a jerk.
The irony of all this is that I, too, am dependent on customer feedback to sell books. So I have to be obnoxious and beg people to give me a review every time I turn around. As if my readers don’t have other things to do with their time.
Some feedback is good and making it easy for folks to let you know there’s a problem or something is particularly good is not a bad thing. And I do occasionally look at reviews to help make a buying decision. But not when I’m trying to buy a five-dollar gadget. I don’t need to tell some company about my customer experience when I just went to the site to check my balance. There’s got to be a better way to give companies the information they need without them constantly nagging us to provide bazillia-bytes of information that generally only confirms what they want to believe.
And, please, do not give any of my books a five-star review unless it’s truly transcendent. In fact, don’t feel obligated to give me any feedback at all. I understand. Really.