05 October 2017
Are You Very Satisfied?
Really we don’t want to know.
by Lynda Goetz
Last week the National Trust published its annual report and accounts. Although it reported an encouraging increase in visitor and membership numbers (visitor numbers are up by almost five million since 2013, to 24.5 million this year) it failed to reach its target of 59% of visitors rating their visit as ‘very enjoyable’. In 2011, 71% did so. In the face of this lack of ringing endorsement, the charity has interestingly decided to move from ‘using visitor enjoyment as our single measure of experience and will instead focus on two areas – service, and emotional and intellectual engagement’. If you don’t like the answer, change the question.
However, given the increasingly demanding nature of modern consumerism, can you blame them? A simple question like ‘did you find your visit enjoyable/very enjoyable?’ does not really fulfil the current need to break everything down into its component parts and acquire the appropriate statistics for each part. A spokesperson for the National Trust told reporters that ‘Visitor expectations continue to grow… and increased numbers put pressure on infrastructure, including cafes, car parks and toilets’. Ah, of course, more people, so more car park spaces, more café tables and more loos needed. The simple question will no longer suffice as feedback. In this instance one can see easily enough the logic of this – clearly the feedback form needs to be more complex.
How complex such feedback needs to be should perhaps depend however on the nature of the transaction. The increasingly one-size-fits-all nature of modern life can lead to problems. In a letter to The Telegraph on Tuesday, one Piers Casimir-Mrowczynski recounted the experience of buying a pair of socks online. All very efficient apparently, but marred by the automated online requests for; ‘a review of the ordering process, a review of the product, a review of the product packaging, a review of the delivery experience and a three-minute customer satisfaction survey, with the option of speaking to an advisor’ (honestly, really actually speaking to a real person?). That does seem a little excessive for the purchase of a pair of socks! Sadly, though, not as uncommon as it should be. In September alone I have had requests for feedback from my oil supplier, the suppliers of garden furniture covers (which I have had for a whole month so am now apparently a ‘long-term user’) and a spare part for the dishwasher, not to mention the inevitable requests for reviews of holiday accommodation on TripAdvisor. All of these wanted to know about my ‘experience’.
Experience?! With the exception of the holiday, all I did was to purchase something online (or in the case of the oil through a local buying group). Does it really qualify as an experience? According to one dictionary definition, an experience is ‘an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone’. Unless the business or company concerned has made a monumental c…up, then little or no impression is usually made. In exchange for the depletion of one’s bank account one should hopefully have received that which was ordered, which should be ‘fit for purpose’. ‘End of’, as they say. Whether or not it was delivered in oversize packaging (as in the case of a recent Amazon parcel which would have quite easily fitted into a C5 envelope but was packaged in file-wallet-sized cardboard) or within 2, 3 or 4 days is usually a matter of supreme indifference. These purchases are rather more in the category of essential life ‘admin’. Having dealt with them I personally have little desire to re-live the experience via a time-wasting online survey which needs to know my age, gender (that’s a minefield these days), buying habits and level of satisfaction.
The rise of sites like TripAdvisor, Rottentomatoes, Trustpilot, Surveymonkey and others is of course a by-product of the internet. At their best, these sites enable us to assess whether or not we’d like to stay in a resort or hotel, watch a film or TV show or use a particular business or company to provide goods or services. However, at their worst, they are a constant bane and ever-present irritation of the digital age, perpetually enjoining you to share your experiences and promulgate your views. How on earth did we survive before we had everybody’s opinions on everything under the sun? Formerly, of course, you would have relied on the information and advice of friends or relatives, who had been to different places or purchased certain items, to decide whether you might wish to go there too or whether to use the same supplier. Your knowledge of places or things would be garnered from a few people whose opinion you trusted (or didn’t, as the case may be). If Uncle Sid said he’d been to a lovely hotel in X, you’d know to avoid it like the plague, whereas if your friend Jane advised you to buy your curtain fabric from Y, you’d be able to order with confidence. Now we are all seemingly reliant on the opinions and views of thousands of strangers who may share neither our taste nor our opinions.
Are you one of those who leap to leave their review the minute they have returned from holiday or purchased a new washing machine, or are you one of those who are reluctant to enthuse or carp publicly? It does seem that these days, as the National Trust spokesperson pointed out, people’s expectations are greater. They/we demand more. In many ways that is good, but the downside so often seems to be that we demand more for less. We want superior quality for a cheaper price; a better service but for less money. Perhaps the key to the issue is that expectations and demanding behaviour grow as personal interaction diminishes. After all, it is so much easier to throw one’s weight around anonymously, to complain to faceless bureaucrats, to whinge in online questionnaires or to get angry with people we never have to meet again; how much more difficult to do so when you had to face the same individual the next day in the shop, hospital or hotel. Whilst much is made today of ‘customer service’ and many thousands are seemingly employed in this area, the fact of the matter is that general levels of satisfaction are probably lower than ever. We can spend literally hours on the phone to customer service departments without any resolution of our problem: the larger the organisation, usually the worse the problem.
Is this in all respects a numbers game? The more people in the world, the greater the problems and the higher the personal dissatisfaction levels; the larger the business, the more impersonal the treatment of individual customers so the greater the need for increasingly complex customer satisfaction surveys? Is there any way we can increase customer satisfaction or should we just accept that democracy rules, we all have a voice and in the words of the Mitchell and Webb sketch “You may not know anything about the issue, but I bet you reckon something. So why not tell us what you reckon. Let us enjoy the majesty of your full uninformed ad hoc reckon”.
If you enjoyed this article please share it using the buttons above.
Please click here if you would like a weekly email on publication of the ShawSheet
