"Don't send me a customer satisfaction survey in the middle of the night!!!"

One of the real advantages (among many others, of course) of being a pediatric critical care physician is that I can literally fall asleep anywhere.  There were many nights when I was on an overnight call when I took advantage of a few minutes here and there to catch a few winks.  I am also a fairly light sleeper as a result of those many night calls.  I think I was trained to hear my pager go off in the middle of the night.  Later in my career, I became accustomed to "hear" text messages in the middle of the night.  

So recently, I heard that familiar text message "ping" in the middle of the night.  I checked my phone, which I always keep on my night stand, and quickly saw that it was around 1:30 AM.  I thought to myself, "Oh, no!  This can't be good."  When I opened up the text message, I saw the following:

We want to hear your feedback.  Click this link to start a short survey.

I had scheduled a follow-up appointment with my primary care physician earlier in the day on My Chart (which was very convenient by the way - if your hospital doesn't allow direct online scheduling, you should re-think your access strategy!).  I had received a survey link earlier in the day, but I saved the text in order to respond to it later.  I guess because I ignored the first text message, the system felt that I needed a reminder...IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!!!

I know customer feedback is important!  Unfortunately, we have been inundated so frequently with customer satisfaction surveys that it is starting to feel intrusive!  For example, my wife and I recently traveled over the winter holidays.  We received a customer experience survey from the airline, the hotel, and the rental car company.  Given my current role and position (and the fact that health care is a service industry too), I generally respond to almost every survey I receive.  I know that most organizations leverage their customer service data in order to make improvements in the service that they deliver.  It's important, even if it is getting a little too excessive.  At least we are past the comment that I used to receive (way too much), "Please rate me high on "Recommend" because my bonus depends upon it."  

Customer experience data is critically important.  However, given the sophistication in technology today, there is absolutely zero reason that anyone should receive a customer satisfaction survey in the middle of the night!  The first thing that I did when I arrived at work the next morning was to check in with our patient/family experience team to make sure that we had something in place to prevent survey links getting sent out in the middle of the night...