Too many surveys?

We recently took one of our cars to the dealership for an oil change.  We've always been very happy with the Service Department at this particular dealership, and our experience this time wasn't any different than what we've come to appreciate from past experience.  The dealership sent us a video inspection of our car via text message (we were able to watch the technician walk beneath our car and point out and explain different maintenance items, such as the wear on our brake pads and tire tread) - very cool and very high tech!  We were able to pick up the car later in the day, pay our bill online, and left completely satisfied.

The day after our appointment, I received a request to complete a customer satisfaction survey via e-mail.  I work in a service industry, so I completely understood the rationale for sending out an experience survey.  I left the request in my e-mail Inbox to complete later when I had some free time.  A few hours later, I received another request via text message.  Shortly thereafter, I received a telephone call from an employee at the dealership asking me if I would talk to her about my experience.  In other words, during the short span of about six hours, I received a request to complete a survey via e-mail, a second request via text message, and a third request via telephone call. 

I will fully admit, I was pretty short with the telephone survey.  She asked if I was the one who had brought the car to the dealership.  I answered that it was actually my wife who had brought the car, but unfortunately she was not available.  She then asked if I knew whether my wife was satisfied with the service received, and I answered in the affirmative.  She then asked if I would be willing to provide my e-mail address so that the dealership could send me service reminders, rebates, or recall information.  I told the surveyor that the dealership already had my e-mail address, as they had contacted me earlier in the day via e-mail to respond to another survey.  She then asked if I would like to provide my cell phone number so that the dealership could provide service reminders.  Again, I offered that the dealership already had my cell phone number as they had already contacted me (and, in fact, the surveyor has also contacted me on my cell phone).  To be perfectly honest, the conversation did not quite go as smoothly as I am telling you now, but I hope you get the point.

It seems like we are inundated with customer satisfaction surveys.  Almost every interaction with the service industry nowadays comes with a request to fill out a survey.  I get it - having customer experience survey data is important.  How else is a service organization supposed to improve?  Unfortunately, the fact that bonuses and rewards for employees are closely tied to customer feedback is a big problem.  For example, how many times have you been told by an employee that you, as the customer, will be receiving a feedback survey and he or she would appreciate a good response?  I will take it one step further.  How many times have you been asked to give an employee a perfect score on a survey (e.g., a perfect 10 out of 10) because his or her pay is tied to that score and anything less than a 10 is not good enough?  Employers are figuring this out - I recently completed a customer feedback survey that included the following question:  "Did any employee ask you to give him or her a perfect score on this survey?"  Wow.

Again, I get it.  We have to measure what matters, and customer satisfaction definitely matters.  Unfortunately, we live in a service economy.  Almost every interaction with a service organization will come with a survey.  Too many surveys will lead to survey fatigue, which in turn will lead to customer annoyance.  Is that really what we are hoping to accomplish?

In order for customer survey data to be valid (and hence, actionable), we need a sufficient sample size.  Random selection of customers seems appropriate, but if the response rate is too low, the sample size will not be sufficient.  For this reason, I suspect that many companies survey every single customer in order to obtain a sufficient sample size in the face of low response rates.  Just a thought, but has anyone ever considered that the reason the response rate is so low is that we are asked to complete far too many surveys in the first place?

I also find that surveys are getting longer and more detailed.  Even if most surveys take less than 10 minutes to complete, they still take up valuable time out of customer's busy day.  There's probably a balance somewhere between the long surveys that feel like a mortgage loan application versus the five-point smiley face surveys that you can find in airport restrooms ("Please rate the cleanliness of this restroom!"). 

Customer feedback is incredibly important.  Customer experience surveys aren't going away - nor should they.  However, I think we have to find a better balance.  We need to appreciate that our customer's time is valuable too and refine our survey methodology accordingly.