Re: Seeking Online Help Surveys Advice

Subject: Re: Seeking Online Help Surveys Advice
From: "Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 06:55:38 -0500

There is another approach to gaining the information that a survey might be expected to provide: Careful attention to customer complaints.

My wife is a quality engineer, and many years ago she worked for the personal-care section of Gillette. She said that unlike many companies that treat complaints as an irritation to be ignored, Gillette (at that time) regarded each one as a gold coin that was tossed through the transom of the office door. Their belief was that each customer who would take the time and effort to complain represented a thousand others who merely grumbled to their friends about the difficulty with the Gillette product.

The principle again is self selection, but the ones most able to help are kept and their ideas collected. A survey that annoys the customer selects the opposite way, removing the observant, the caring and the articulate.

Stuart started with the intention of helping Adobe, until they annoyed and insulted him.


On Tue, 12 Jan 2016 21:49:16 -0500, Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au> wrote:

One more way to stop people giving you useful information: make the
survey look even faintly like an exercise in harvesting personal
details for your mailing list.

Just yesterday this email arrived:

Subject: Just Launched: Adobe Tech Comm Product Survey 2015!
---
Participate in the Adobe Tech Comm Product Survey 2015 and shape the
future of industry leading tools.

Receive the exclusive survey report from Adobe & stand to win exciting
prizes!

27 Questions. 15 Minutes. 23 Prizes.

It was clearly from Adobe, not a scam - tick.
It looks like they want to base their product enhancements on input
from working TWs - tick.
There's also a slight chance of winning one of a pretty good selection
of prizes - tick.
They send a summary report. Might be interesting - tick.
Looks like it shouldn't take too long - tick.
It's 2016, you idiots - attention to detail! cross.

So apart from that last very minor nit I'm in a good frame of mind and
start the survey.

On the first page, _every _identifying question is required, including
my full name and email address and the name of my organization. Bzzzt!
No survey responses for you, Adobe.

Polite surveys ask at the end, as an optional extra, if you are
willing to be contacted for follow-up.
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References:
Re: Seeking Online Help Surveys Advice: From: Stuart Burnfield

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