Feedback

Thanks for staying at our hotel, flying on our airline, eating at our restaurant, using our customer support line, buying our brand of cheese, choosing us as your dentist, accessing our service, dropping off your trash at our transfer station, purchasing our cannabis, or picking us as your preferred provider of dog poop pick-up bags!  We are always looking for ways to improve what we do!  In that spirit, we would appreciate it if you would take our feedback survey and share your thoughts.  Rate us on the following scale:

1: Excellent 2: Superior 3: Out-of-this-world

Thanks very much!  See you soon!

How many of these do you get a day?  I’m averaging about three and—going into full grouchy old man mode—what the hell?

Isn’t it enough that I’ve paid the company for the service they’ve provided?  Now I have to do some homework?

Let’s be honest: we all know that the only person reading my responses—if they get read at all—is some summer intern doing remote work from their college dorm.  And we’re fully away that even if I give terrible feedback—merely “excellent”—it’s not going to make a whit of difference.  

So, what’s the point?  

To merely create the illusion that someone cares about what I have to say and to demonstrate to the gullible public that the organization in question is committed to some sort of corporate double-speak of “continuous improvement?”

Pshaw, I say, double-pshaw!

If the company or service really wanted to offer something of value to me following my interaction with them, they’d send me money in their post-experience message.  Or they would devote themselves to ending world hunger or addressing climate change.  They wouldn’t be pestering me to do the work that their own middle-managers ought to be doing to make their organization more responsive; I’m not getting the big bucks to write reports no one reads!

So, here’s my real and meaningful feedback: stop asking for my feedback!