Meeting Expectations

I just completed one of those “did we meet your expectations” surveys on-line purveyors love to send me. Anytime you buy a ticket or use customer service or a help line right away they want to know how you felt about it.

The short answer is if you did it right the first time I wouldn't have to bother customer relations. These surveys follow billing and/or technical problems as well as ticket purchases.

My son introduced me to StubHub which sells tickets for everything but we use it mostly for baseball games. I like to go to a Yankees game once a year and this was the first time I used StubHub to buy my tickets. I got the seats I wanted at the price I wanted to pay and the tickets arrived in a timely fashion.

So all in all I was pretty satisfied with the deal. Then comes the email survey from StubHub wanting to know all about my purchasing experience. The survey was 40 questions when one would have sufficed. Were you satisfied? Yes. End of survey.

Instead it went on and on and because I WAS satisfied I answered all the questions except those that got a little too personal. Like household income, minors in the household, etc. I “preferred not to answer.”

The other regular surveyor is Verizon. You call them with a question about a bill or a technical matter and within minutes you get an email asking you take just a few minutes to answer questions about whether they were helpful or not.

One time we actually received a phone call from a Verizon rep wanting to discuss a transaction my wife had with their billing department. My wife couldn't come to the phone just then so I asked the lady if she would mind calling back later. She said she would but we haven't heard from her since. If 10 is exceptional and 1 is terrible, that's a 1.

What happens to all those survey answers anyway? Does anyone really read them? Do they actually result in improved service?

We'll take a survey to find out. Don't wait up.