The constant need for corporations and merchants to beg us to “Like Me” is beyond a simple annoyance. You can’t buy a product or engage a service without getting a request to respond to a survey. Again and again if you don’t comply right away.
“Like Me, Like Me, Nourish My Insecurity,” is what it says to me. Driven by corporate executives at the highest levels who don’t really know how to run their companies, so they use their customers to do that for them.
And to punish employees for the bad policies created at the top that cause poor marks on customer surveys. Employee raises, performance appraisals and bonuses are determined by survey data. Companies aren’t run with knowledge and experience of upper management. Nor with input from front line employees.
Companies are run by data, not a passion to provide the best product or service. Companies, the big ones anyway, are focused on short term financial results, which often leads to long term decline in customer satisfaction. And eventually to long term financial loss.
As soon as I get bugged by a business, begging to be told how they did, I lower my satisfaction level of their product or service. The company would be much better run if the management team took the time to actually be a customer on a regular basis. Then they would know how to configure the delivery of their product or service.
It would be especially enlightening if they called their customer service phone lines and experienced the endless queues and dreadful music, as they wait like we do, to finally talk to a person! They could do their own survey and leave us alone.
Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com.
This was a very good column. I have been a fan of your columns for several years. Keep up the good work!