Dear corporations, please stop asking me to rate you on your service

Continuing her series tackling socially unacceptable questions, Christine Manby rails against the mounting tide of texts and emails that ask, ‘how are we doing?’

(Illustrations by Tom Ford)

Is there anything more annoying than an unsolicited request for feedback?

These days, feedback fever infects just about every aspect of life. It’s not just at work that we’re expected to get and give appraisals anymore. From Amazon to Zizzi, from the doctor to your bank, it seems that everyone wants to ask you how they’re doing and often at the most inopportune moment.

Remember how, once upon a time, you could go to a restaurant, get your food and rely upon being left to eat it in peace? Now, the waiting staff want to know what you think of your vegan burger before you’ve even had time to put it on Instagram. Or worse, they pounce just as you’ve taken your first mouthful to ask, “Is everything OK?”, knowing that you’re not going to risk spitting Quorn crumbs on your date to do anything more complicated than nod.

Then, when you get home, having decided on reflection that the burger was terrible and you’re never going back to that restaurant again, you get a feedback email from the service you used to book the place. “How was the Butterfly Beanery?” the email asks. You’d like to tell them the truth but now you can’t because if the waiter reads your review and puts two and two together, he’ll justifiably complain that you didn’t say anything when he came to do his check-back.

In fact you gave him a thumbs-up (because your mouth was full). He’ll post a screengrab of your review and his pithy review of your review on Facebook and before you know it, you’ll be click-bait in the Daily Mail. “Is this the worst customer in Britain?”

So, you decline to offer feedback about your dining experience and instead decide to check your credit-card balance online to make sure the restaurant didn’t double-charge you for the pleasure of that terrible meal. Naturally, the website isn’t working, so you call the card provider only to be asked if you’d like to contribute to a “short survey” about their service before they’ll even put you through. “No. Obviously not,” you mutter as you jab “2” for ‘“no, thank you” into your phone. You just want to know what your balance is.

You get your balance. Two minutes later, you get an email asking you how much you enjoyed getting that balance. Or worse, you receive the first of five “quick” questions about the whole balance-getting experience via text message. Is there anything more disappointing than snatching up your phone at that jolly SMS ping to see a “request for feedback” text message from AnyBank.com?

It’s the alacrity with which modern feedback requests appear that makes them particularly annoying. British Airways frequently asks “how was your flight” a couple of hours before I’ve flown. One airline asked the same question at the exact moment I learned from the attendant on the check-in desk that my flight had just been cancelled. For exactly this kind of reason, automated feedback requests are asking for trouble.

At best, an over-eager email or text gets a roll of the eyes and a summary deletion. At worst – such as when the paving firm that failed to deliver my slabs on four separate occasions sent an email asking me how I liked my new patio moments after I gave up and cancelled the order – they can drive an otherwise mild-mannered customer to an expletive-filled rant.

Unfortunately, there seems to be an inverse correlation between a firm’s fervent desire for feedback and their actual level of service. Nothing says “we don’t really care” like an inappropriate review request that might have been avoided were any real customer care quality controls in place.

As an author, I’ve been on the receiving end of plenty of blistering feedback. Every writer knows the misery of a one-star review. It’s particularly galling when that one-star review says: “I haven’t started reading it yet.” Yes, there really are people so stupid that they respond to Amazon review requests for books they haven’t even opened. Anyway, I understand how bad review scores can affect a small business, and for that reason I refrain from dishing them out. I vote with my feet or my wallet. However, sometimes, such as when it comes to services such as those supplied by our local authority, we have no choice of provider. On those occasions, badly timed or misdirected feedback requests can be particularly painful.

(Tom Ford)

Bedfordshire County Council’s “Engagement and Development Team” recently sent my friends Mark and Jacqui’s teenage son a form that said, in a very jolly font: “The Engagement and Development Team want to hear about all the good things your workers do for you and with you.”

Mark and Jacqui’s son has autism. Since 2017, he has been without a school place. Mark has had to give up work to become a full-time carer, thus adding financial difficulties to the family’s problems. They have campaigned endlessly to get their son the education and support he deserves. They’ve attended dozens of meetings. They’ve filled out hundreds of forms.

Mark filled in this latest feedback form on his son’s behalf. He wrote from his son’s point of view, “Thank you for throwing me out of my special school instead of adapting to my obviously predictable needs as I grew. Thank you for doing this while knowing there was no hope of alternative provision. Thank you especially for the effort you took to legally cover your arses and the dearth of effort you have made ever since to aid with home education ... Thank you for, in innumerable meetings, speaking well and saying absolutely nothing. Thank you in particular for the feelings of hope and positivity later trampled underground and replaced over a year with feelings of hopelessness, neglect and a seething, career-ending anger ... And finally, thank you for being so ignorant of my condition that 13 YEARS after my first diagnosis, you still address feedback forms to someone who cannot read, write, talk about, or hope to understand.”

Now that’s what I call a review. Here’s hoping someone who might do something about it actually reads that form.

Ultimately, requests for feedback drive us crazy because very few of us believe that giving feedback actually makes a difference. And when we’ve had bad service, it just feels like an insult to be asked to jump through Internet hoops to express a view about it. So, dear corporations, please don’t ask for feedback if you don’t really want it or if you don’t intend to change anything as a direct result of it. Which reminds me to ask my editor if she’d be kind enough to turn the “comments” section for this column off.

Christine Manby has written numerous novels including ‘The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club’