I am sick of "providing feedback"
The ongoing attempts to measure everything has gone way too far. Every app constantly has pop-ups asking if you're enjoying the app.
It's not just phone apps and websites though, it's everywhere.
Went to an escape room, "Y'all take tips?" "No sir, but if you leave a 5 star review on Google or yelp and mention my name then I will get a bonus!"
Went too the dermatologist, now I'm getting both emails and texts asking for a review.
Sent flowers to an uncle who lost a pet. Got an email and a letter in the mail asking for feedback.
Theaters, restaurants, barbers, hospitals, support tickets, waste hauling, clothes shopping... A million people collecting feedback that goes into some black hole probably only used to punish some poor kid on the front line of customer service.
I'm sick of it, it's worse than the tipping culture fiasco.
Are you enjoying this app?
eBay app, every damn time. Knowing they are insincere definitely makes it’s worse.
NoAsk Me Again Later
Yup, that's usually the gist of it. Either leave a positive review, send us private feedback, or be nagged every day you use the app for the rest of your life to do these things.
Oftentimes they don't even bother to stop even if you do leave a review.
Yes - > 0 stars - > "I don't like being forced to provide feedback"
If enough people did that the trend would dissappear quickly.
I'm not posting to disagree but to point out that there is a difference between SuperMegaMonster Corporation asking for feedback and similar requests from small businesses. For small businesses like restaurants, barber shops, doctors, etc, the requests are often not just about measuring forms of customer engagement, but about encouraging positive reviews and solving problems before a bad review occurs. I know from a few friends with small businesses that positive reviews can have a very beneficial impact on their business, while negative reviews can be devastating. The owners of these businesses would rather be providing their main services than asking for your feedback, but the impact of online reviews unfortunately forces them to proactively engage you on your potential review.
Can second this as someone with a small business. If you're searching through Google Maps, or Yelp, or Facebook for a specific local service, it makes a big psychological difference when you see "XXXXXX Business, 4.7/5 stars, 8 reviews" vs "YYYYYY Business, no stars, no reviews". Even just one or two reviews can make a big difference depending on the size and nature of the business.
Large corporations genuinely use this feedback as well. Especially for tech, there is very little way to see what people are frustrated by other than just asking them.
I work at a medium size tech company and the number of users who had the same complaint is used all the time when prioritising work. “7 users reported the dashboard as being slow” puts it on the list of work to do this sprint rather than something we might get to one day.
Maybe unpopular opinion, but from the consumer side, imo this is a good change. While it does cause some annoying gaming of scores, it's also caused business of ill report to be massively punished, which wasn't always the case pre-internet.
There's a major difference in the quality of feedback that is given and feedback that is asked/incessantly demanded. Like most apps I'm using because I have to. 99% of my genuine feedback there would be that it should have been a mobile website. And for call centers, any negative feelings would be towards the company not giving support teams the means or tools to properly help. I'm already seeing AI first contacts and I just just drop the call because that is the KPI that really shows.
On the other hand, I've been doing renovations and made sure to review every contractor through the door, good and bad. I'll be incredibly detailed and include photos because I know that review will be read and make a difference to both the provider and other customers. I'm well aware that what I said will cost my carpenter some jobs but they took my money and cost me more to fix and finish their mess. I'd also want the electrician, painter and pool guys to succeed because they all went above and beyond.
The difference being these small businesses are not usually perpetually nagging me to do so.
The small online ones are usually amazon dropshippers and they are the absolute worst, for a variety of reasons.
Yeah, I'm usually annoyed by both. But I tend to ignore the big corp requests and sometimes leave feedback to small or medium businesses for that reason. It's hard to change this, we all rely on feedbacks and scores to decide what we're gonna buy, eat and do nowadays.
You know, I don't know if people like me are rare, but it feels like it sometimes. I have an easy time saying no. From an early age, I learned the power of a polite, respectful, unemotional no. Of course, I don't go around distributing negatives. I may say "Okay", "thanks for the info", or something to that effect. Sometimes I just do a "hummm" -- some kind of non-verbal vocalization that acknowledges that the message was received. I will try to avoid the negative if possible, but, when pressed, I just say it. "No" is a valid response to a request because, otherwise, it would not be a request. It would be a command.
Other than that, it sounds like you need a secondary email just to subscribe to stuff. I don't check my email that often anymore, but Gmail automatically separates everything neatly into folders. I'm sure other services do the same.
EDIT: I have no advice on tipping. I'm just glad we don't have that in my country. That would drive me crazy.
EDIT2: also if a business is annoying, block them. Emails have filters, you can either delete the emails or just send them to an "annoyances" folder that you never check. And your cell phone can block numbers.
With trepidation..... I'll put up my hand as part of the population who doesn't know how to say no.
I was socialized to "be polite". And what it usually means is,
Step 1 - disregard what you want. You do this enough so you don't even hear an inner voice telling you any different or anything at all. Just total silence. Now you're ready for
Step 2 - find out what the other person want. What will satisfy them and get them to leave you alone? What will likely anger them or embarrass them: find out quickly and do not for heaven's sake give off any whiff of that.
Step 3 - comply
Advanced step: silently negotiate compliance. Don't make them angry and don't embarrass them, but find out the minimal amount of pain and trouble I'd have to suffer that meets the qualifications for them to leave you alone.
Step 4 - rummante on it. Did you come off as a bitch? Are they now secretly planning to make you pay? Is it possible to add in a bit more pain to buy more safety, then go do it. Otherwise maintain low level vigilance anyway.
So yeah, there's many situations where there's no cost to me just saying no. But having all those extra layers so ingrained in me means that even for the most obviously not-worth-my-time requests, they still take up time. Imagine them to be like, if you worked for a company that demands you spend at least 10 minutes per customer request even if they're really inane or if they hung up within 5s you still have to spend the 10 min. Eventually the sheer amount of request stacks up and becomes a chore to "no" through.
I am not in your shoes. I won't judge you for behaving in a way that is suitable to your particular culture, context, and environment. But I will offer you an anecdote.
When my nuclear family still lived under the same roof, my mother always had strong desires for what to do as a family. But she wasn't explicit about it. What she really wanted was for me and my sister to scan her words and body language for subtle hints that indicated what she wanted to do, and to subsequently provide abundant proof that our desire was the same as hers.
I was always literal. If she asked me what I wanted to do, I would respond with my genuine preference. After a certain amount of annoying exchanges, she would either be forced to express her desire -- to which I would gladly comply -- or give up altogether. We don't get along very well.
It was more complicated with my sister. She would play the guessing game, and then the acting game. It was exhausting even to watch. They often arrived at a polite impasse that became increasingly heated. They never said what they really wanted, covertly projecting their wishes upon one another. Because they are alike, not only did my mother require a performance worthy of an Oscar to believe that my sister really did wanna go to that restaurant, but my sister required the same of her mother. There were layers upon layers of neurotic suppression. At some point, I'm pretty sure they didn't even know what they wanted anymore. It was a never-ending cycle of circular theatrics.
An entire thread of laborious conversation that I managed to avoid simply by saying no to the question Did you like that sushi place we went last week?.
Hahaha absolutely :D I think that was one of the nicest things when I found a group of boys to hang out with - they all just came right out and said what they wanted. It was refreshing. Nobody is playing games, and it allowed us to actually, y'know, sit down and play some dang games. "No, I want to play X instead". So seeemple
I'm a lot better these days, and I do click "unsubscribe" without guilt and even with some relish. But it's still really hard to shake off the "expectations" and the automatic processing. I revert about 30 years when I'm among groups of certain types of women: they're probably exhausted by being around me when I'm in that mode as well. I wonder if I'll ever truly feel free from it.
Speaking of sushi I also heard a brilliant thing last weekend. I was visiting a Japanese goods store in an unfamiliar town, and I wanted to get sushi. So after buying my beautiful washi paper sets and the store owner tried hard to communicate how not to slice off my finger on their extremely sharp santoku knife he just handed me, I asked if the sushi next door was any good. His smile froze in place, visibly tensed, and he paused for a moment to process how to politely say "no". Finally he said, simply, "I don't eat there." When I asked where he likes to go and explained I'm from out of town (hint: i obviously have no connection to the adjacent sushi place and no he hasn't offended me at all), he resumed his relaxed and friendly demeanor and named a few places. I got some really fantastic omakase sashimi that day.
I am almost pathologically conflict averse, so I feel this. I'm especially competent at Step 4 — I imagine some quite elaborate revenge scenarios from people I think that I have upset. It's really not great. (Nor is it surprising — I was bullied as an adolescent.)
That said, I, too, have gotten better about being assertive as I have gotten older. Though I worry that I sometimes go too far and am just being an asshole. Honestly, I worry that my fear of conflict makes me behave better and that, without it, I would just be a selfish dickhead.
Given that you state an aversion to conflict, it may be valuable to understand that, in many cases, expressing a negative stance can either mitigate or prevent a conflict that would surface in the future anyway.
That's sometimes what motivates me to take such a stance. Sometimes a small "conflict" now prevents a larger, more uncomfortable "conflict" later.
But that's when I'm being rational about things. There are times when my emotions get the better of me and I find myself doing something that I later recognize is irrationally motivated by conflict aversion. The joys of being high in neuroticism!
You're not alone. I find it very easy to say no. I'm not an asshole about it no matter how many times they try to pester/convince me, but I have zero qualms about saying no. That goes for feedback, tipping where I don't think it's warranted, sales, begging, etc.
I generally voluntarily leave feedback when I feel strongly about something in either direction (good or bad). Asking me for feedback isn't going to change my mind or affect whether I leave any or not.
I agree—being able to say "no" is an important skill to have.
That's why I don't mind that so many restaurants these days ask for tips before service has been provided: it's a good opportunity for me to practice saying "no", guilt-free. :-)
I'm sick of being in a society where these poor apps all need to GET feedback to justify their KPI or whatever. Everything's metric based and it means bugging the heck out of end users to get these metrics. How about just organically measure time spent? How about just being satisfied with the few comments they do organically get from either very happy or very unhappy customers?
Where I find the most frustration with these requests is how futile they are: if I tell a franchisee their value meals have extremely low value, there's nothing they can change even with 1000 feedback saying the same thing. And a lot of the "how did the CR rep do?" surveys don't let me fill in angry words about the organization: I could only hurt the CS rep who helped me by not filling in 5/5, there's nothing I can do to make things better for either of us.
Yes, it’s ironic that these organizations behave as if they are desperate for feedback but make it impossible to provide meaningful information.
Ahhh see, they're desperate for feedback to use as KPI which justify their jobs or the dept budget or their bonus, not for meaningful changes. For that, they hire expensive expensive consultants to tell them to buy AI and switch to open office and layoff staff who don't meet KPI standards.
The fun thing is that when providing feedback to a big corp, unless the company is in dire straits the chances that it’ll actually be acted upon are slim. Instead product managers take numbers pulled from analytics/telemetry, game/massage them to present a picture that supports their current goals, and completely ignore user feedback.
Ever notice how in software it’s common for some feature to get buried an extra click or two deeper in the UI and then a year or so later removed entirely? That’s the gaming I’m talking about. Burying the feature naturally torpedoes its rate of usage in analytics which in turn justifies its removal (“oh look, nobody uses this!”), presumably to make room for some other new shiny thing the product manager has in mind.
I’d really like to see this bit of corporate culture shift, otherwise providing feedback is pointless.
I just wanted to chime in with a few specifics around this.
Google allows businesses to remove (or "hide") bad reviews. I know this from some people close to business owners who take advantage of this. Here's a reddit post from a long while ago confirming it.
Yelp is (or at least was) a front for extortion. Here's another old Reddit post with someone explaining their experience.
I honestly don't know how many legitimate, consumer-facing rating systems are out there. I can just say from personal experience, finding people to perform various services on our house is frequently nightmarish. And the google reviews don't give any clear indication of who overprices quotes, who doesn't actually show up, who ghosts you without providing a quote, etc.
For internal feedback requests, I agree with the comments given. If you give someone less than 5 stars, their manager is probably going to scold them. I only review things this way when I feel someone has gone above and beyond, or if they seem to be under appreciated. But my email is continuously swamped with feedback requests too. Why the heck do I need to review my experience returning a single item to Target?
I manage a Google business account and there is no way to hide a review. It’s unfortunate in this case as there is a dishonest review there.
Are you based in the US? Maybe that "feature" is only available in certain regions.
I'm in the EU.
US here. Wouldn't be surprised if EU laws about this are stricter.
I consider providing the feedback a work. I don't usually work for free. Only for someone who needs it or who I like.
Same. I don’t complete surveys unless I get something in return for my effort. The satisfaction of helping out a pleasant employee is enough, but if the transaction was totally anonymous there had better be a gift card or something like that in it for me.
It's not just feedback emails - I also dislike being added to marketing lists every time I buy anything, whether I ask for it or not. Sometimes even when I already opted out ... I immediately unsubscribe to every single one of them. And if there isn't an option to unsubscribe, I report it as spam and move on.
If you wanna dive into the litterature on this here are a few pointers I've enjoyed when studying 'the metric society':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Metric+Society%3A+On+the+Quantification+of+the+Social-p-9781509530403
At a meeting in my new bank the bank person pointed out in the end of a pretty useless meeting how I should be aware that giving him anything less than 9 or 10 on the scale of how great the meeting went would be considered a very low score.
My reply was an email with the link to the wikipedia article for Goodharts law with subject line: please forward to your superiors.
Yes I am an irritating person, and no I don't expect to be granted a loan.
That's the net promoter score, and it's one of the most asinine scales I know of. I always answer them with a rant on how they're asking the wrong question.
I view it as a symptom of something being fundamentally broken in how companies interact with customers. The question they ask is not "were you satisfied with the thing we did", it is "will you actively help us grow, because growth is the only valid measure of success". A healthy society would not have invented NPS.
(You may also enjoy this image.)
Thank you for sharing my misery. I spend alot of time trying to at least learn the concepts behind the trash of modern neoliberal society and now I also the 'net promoter score'.
I could perhaps understand the 'would you recommend' question as being less ambiguous and more stable across people, for example, in a case where someone wasn't satisfied, but felt the service was better than any alternative.
But then it ends up using a ridiculous calculation, where answering that you'd be more likely than not to recommend something, eg, 6/10, ends up being counted as being just as bad as saying you would never think of recommending it.
I would hope that their lending is based upon something more rational than whether or not their employees had enjoyable interactions with you!
I know from speaking to bank employees in private that there is quite a bit of leeway in how you set up your personal budgets and thus loan eligibility.
Considered the lack of scientific basis for the basic assumptions of neoliberal economics it should be of little surprise that something quite close to social norms and traditions - as opposed to rational - are at play in our financial systems.
If you use an email service with a word blacklist, add words like
Review
5 star
Feedback
Survey
And any other words you see repeated, so those emails go to your spam folder.
Hey friend! We're heading out to survey a site with a newly discovered 5 star, largest T-Rex fossil ever found! We'd love to have you join us to review what we've found so far and provide feedback, thanks!
I'd like to subscribe to your five star T-Rex newsletter. :)
In a survey of this year's most exciting scientific news stories, after tons of enthusiastic feedback from other members, we will discuss the discovery of a 5 star super mini galaxy....
A long long time ago I saw a similar tip, so I set up an "optional" folder for any email that contains the word "unsubscribe". I've found it pretty effective at weeding out anything that isn't important.
No joke, any time they ask for feedback now, I go out of my way to give a 1* review, and within the app, leave them feedback that they need to stop harassing me about reviews.
The responses are pretty funny, basically just poorly worded phrases that say they'll let the team know, when in reality they're just going to ignore it.
But I subscribe to the idea that I should act like I wish everyone would, and maybe someday there'll be enough pushback to stop this insanity. I know that isn't likely, but a man can dream.
I do this when it’s particularly annoying and if it’s one of those stupid app prompts that ask you if you are enjoying it or not so that it can corral bad reviews to a private service, I say yes first and then leave a review trashing the practice as the first point.
I have an app that would not continue working until I left feedback so I left negative feedback and explained why.
I'd like to mention that in my business area, local banking, it's actually very important to get feedback. We basically read every review and reach out if necessary. We learn a lot about our business and make improvements when necessary. We are owned by our members and this data is super important to us. We even have people in the customer facing areas that will report verbal reviews back to us for further analysis.
We never badger for feedback, but we do ask.
The thing is:
On the other hand, I completely agree with you. Enough is enough! - Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a plane
If there is an app that keeps on asking for feedback all over again, I will give some - I will give themost negative available and write a review that clearly says I was asked al over again and again to give feedback and it became too much. I would also add that app is actually useful (if it is) in what it's supposed to do. But still leave most negative (0-1 star) feedback available.
I'm quitelucky though, as I live in EU where thiskind of spam is limited a bit. I may opt-out of questions roght when I do a purchase on an eshop, for example. Some eshops go as far as not making it default - if I don't specifically say I want to do a survey, they won't send me anything.
I really think that feedback, surveys, reviews should stay, but shouldn't be shoved our throats anytime we use an app or shop or whatever. Ask me once and be gone forever. Forever includes future versions, just goddamn remember my choice!
My biggest issue with the scoring is they want something binary and give you a range of 1-10. This isn’t new when I worked at a chain pharmacy almost 20 years ago my manager would explain that anything less than a 5/5 was failing if you called into the phone survey at the bottom of the receipt.
Not that I have expected this to change it’s probably becoming more common. I had my car serviced and they told me I’d be receiving a review email and anything less than a 10/10 was failing.
I know part of the issue is the consumer we all want the best.
My other issue is I don’t want to click a link in your email. Give me a code that I can put in on your website or something else isn’t a link I have to make sure is valid. I know this is more steps and the people that it would get is less than the people that just click the link. But we really should not be conditioning people to just clicking links. Maybe I’m just overly cautious but better safe than sorry.