Survey Says!

This is a famous catchphrase from the tv show, Family Feud. It is shouted by the host just before revealing a contestant’s answer to see if it matches responses from a survey of a group of one hundred other people.

This is just one type of survey, but you probably realize as much as I do that other types of surveys are very popular now. Go to a hotel, a special event, a venue, a medical office, a restaurant, or get your car serviced and within a day or two you get a link to a survey wanting to know how the place performed. Of course, this type of survey does not match my answer with a panel of a hundred other people, but I would imagine over time that could be a possibility.

I am one of those people who try to participate and answer each survey honestly. I feel the place I visited took the time to send me a survey wanting my opinion, they must be interested in what I have to say. I very rarely give a bad review and if a survey comes along from a place I did not care for, not because of bad service, but I just did not like, I usually pass on the survey rather than give bad comments.

Yet, there are times when something happens at a place that was due to bad service or bad performance, and I think it is best to share my thoughts. After all, that is the reason they are sending the survey, to improve their service.

One recent survey I received was one of those rare times when I actually had a complaint. I took my time and wrote a detailed explanation of what happened, how it made my wife and me feel, and that we were very frustrated with the bad experience. I will only say this was at a hotel we have stayed at many times over thirty years.

The problem with the survey was that after two months, I did not receive any verification that anyone had taken the time to read it, and there was no contact from anyone apologizing and saying they would try to do better.

I did not expect to receive a refund on our stay or a free night stay, but I did expect to see that someone actually read the survey they sent me, and that someone would feel the need to reach out and express a little remorse for the way my wife and I were treated. I thought if a business took the time to send out a survey asking my opinion, someone would take the time to read my response. Sadly, this obviously is not true.

I purposely only responded to the internal company survey and did not post my response on social media. We have had very few and very minor issues over the years, and I know things happen, so I did not want to make a big deal out of it. Yet, when thinking about the fact that no one took the time to read my complaint and reach out and try to rectify it, it made me feel even worse with the bad treatment. I also felt that taking their surveys in the future would be a waste of time.

Maybe I am making too much out of this, but if you are like me, you probably know how many surveys that get sent out trying to find out what we think about a particular business. Personally, with all the surveys I have done over the years for companies that supposedly want to know what I think of their service, it is very frustrating. I sometimes get two and three surveys from the same visit, so I really do expect companies to actually read the responses.

I have finally come to the decision to do myself a favor and stop replying to all these surveys. I cannot say every company ignores the responses, but if one large company does this, I know others do the same. I do not like to be a person who only complains, but I think it would be much easier for me to never reply to any of these surveys except in a case when something went wrong. After all, even if no one reads it I will certainly feel better.

I also feel that if there is a problem and I take the time to reply, it may be best to post directly to the company social media page, Trip Advisor or Google where I know people will read what I write.

So, from now on when I visit some business and get their survey in my text or email, I am going to say....survey says!....I am not wasting my time.