Living in a Survey World

I spent a good deal of my new career living and dying by surveys, those annoying emails that take you to a link to fill out a survey that is far more extensive than you assumed when it asked you to give a score from 1 to 10 (or 7 in my case) for your latest interaction. Let me assure you that anything you write about that survey will not get back to the company itself. It has nothing to do with your satisfaction with the corporate overlords. It only has to do with the individual you spoke to. Surveys are part of our job performance, a way to whip us into increasing levels of happy phone voice and assurances that we are going to do everything we can to help you.

I hate surveys even more now than I did before I saw them from up close. I hate that every damned time I call to get service about my phone, my insurance, my internet, my plumber, or even my fucking doctor, I get a survey about it. Let me tell you, the last thing I want to do after having had a serious discussion with my doctor about if the results of my last test mean cancer or if I have to get a hysterectomy, is to fill out a survey about if I was satisfied with my doctor’s delivery of that information. I don’t want to share that private reaction with the corporate office and I don’t want my doctor to get review points on the local website that recommends various doctor’s offices.

And yet here we are. This is only going to get worse. We are going to end up clicking a button about yes/no satisfied about everything. Going to get groceries, using the public toilet, walking down a trail, getting off a highway, parking in a parking lot, breathing in the air. I anticipate that we will soon have pop-up surveys on our phones so that we can tell our public officials if we like the job they’re doing on this, that, or the other thing.

Don’t I want accountability? Don’t I want better service?

Yes, I do want accountability. Yes, I do want better service, although I define service in a completely different way than these surveys do. I want more complexity in a world where every interaction is so fast that it allows for little complexity. I want information, not people who reassure me without any competence that they can help solve my problem when they decidedly can NOT help solve my problem because it is a complex problem and not on their list of the six problems they know how to solve. I don’t want money to go to the customer service person who lies the best to me, and that’s what it feels like is going on, that we live in a world where lying is the most important skill.