Sometimes we wonder if we should create surveys. There might be some critical information floating out there that we’re missing. So, when someone calls with a survey, it’s an opportunity to see how the things are designed. What was my image of the company before? After? Worse after? Definitely. Could this be handled to improve a company’s image rather than tarnish it?
This, it seems, is a great example of how not to conduct a survey. It’s so bad that it makes the power company’s management look like clueless doddering bureaucrats. No? If it were my survey and the client said they’d already completed it online, I’d say, “thank you” and hang up. Trusting clients is generally considered good business, isn’t it?
The power company called with a phone survey on a lazy Saturday afternoon. It was the same survey I’d already taken online. I told her so. It did not matter. I told her my answers won’t match. It did not matter, for surveys must be done, right now. The message: your time is not important to us.
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“Are you aware of SMUD’s mid-month ‘this is what you owe so far’ notification service? You must answer either yes or no.”
[SMUD is our local electrical utility that seems to spend more on dubious ideas followed by unrelenting market research than they should]
“So… This would be the same service that you covered extensively in the online survey… the very same one I already answered online…”
“You must answer yes or no.”
“Yes, then. But my answers won’t match and you’ll be statistically out to lunch…”
“Very good. You must answer on a scale of one to seven, a scale where seven is best and one is worst”
“Seven is good, right?”
“I will note your answer as seven.”
“That wasn’t my answer, but please by all means note it if it brings you joy.”
[silence]
“That was not your answer?”
“No, but you can keep it if you like. It’s really not that important in the grand scheme of things.”
“You must answer on a scale of one to seven, a scale where seven is best and one is worst”
“Four.”
“Four is your answer?”
“Yes.”
[the survey continues]
“Please say how you would improve the service”
[now was the time for a complicated, run-on sentence that exactly expressed my opinion but would be wasted on the corporate pinheads reading it, if any]
“I would include data for more than only the previous year, then include a climatological forecast relating to energy usage to make the service more predictive within reasonable statistical limitations”
[typing sounds that stopped suspiciously quickly… not likely enough time to actually write what I said]
“Now I must ask these questions for statistical purposes”
“Does that mean that this survey isn’t statistical by its very nature?”
[silence]
“How much money do you make?”
“None of your business.”
“Is that $10-$20k, $20-30K…”
“No, it means I won’t answer this and you’ll have wasted all this time if not answering invalidates the survey”.
“Very well, no problem”
[I could imagine her pulling out her hair]
“What is your ethnicity, which ethnic group do you identify with?”
“Group? You mean only one?”
“Yes, you can only identify with one group”
“I don’t identify with any one of your groups. You don’t have a ‘multi-ethnic’ box?”
“No, you must identify with only one group”
“What if I pick the wrong group? Will you cut off my electricity? Please, check them all so I’m in the right one!”
“I can’t do that. You can only be in one group”
“Well, skip the question then. It’s racist to say everyone can only hang out with one group, shunning all others. We live in a multicultural world and to force everyone to identify with some corporation’s ethnicity box is an injustice”
“Does that mean you belong to…”
“No, it means you need more boxes…”
“Very well, no problem. Please rate the importance of our mid-cycle billing notifications in your life”.
“They’re not important. Energy costs vary with the weather, something I can’t change. I can either roast or use more energy when it’s hot. Maybe it’s so I know if I’ll need to break the piggy bank at the end of the month?”
“So on a scale of one to seven…”
“Let’s skip this one, it’s really silly when you think about it…”
“You must answer on a scale of one to seven, a scale where seven is best and one is worst”
“Mu.”
[silence]
“That is not an insult. It’s a Buddhist term meaning ‘unask the question’, that the question’s inherent assumptions render it invalid so that any answer will be nonsense.”
[silence]
“Fine. Three, then.”
“What do you think of the clarity of the instructions for the new program?”
“Hmm. Let’s say 3.5”
“You must answer on a scale of one to seven, a scale where seven is best and one is worst”
“That was a number. Numbers can contain fractions. Oh. You want integers? Why didn’t you say so? If want integers, you really should say so!”
[silence]
“Two.”
“Very well, no problem. What is your level of education?”
“What does that have to do with my electric bill?”
“you must have an education”
“that’s not the point, what’s the relevance to my electric bill?”
“you must have an education”
“Fine. I have five PhDs”
“So I may put down ‘Nursery school to 8th grade?'”
“No.”
“So I may put down ‘some high school no diploma’?”
“No. Do you know what a PhD is?”
[silence]
“please skip this question, too”
“For statistical reasons, can I confirm that I called you at this phone number…”
“SMUD [the electric company] should know my phone number. Do you mean you don’t know the number you’re calling?”
“No, I do not know the number I’m calling. Please confirm that we talked at [reads my phone number, the one she’s calling]
[note to self: if she doesn’t know my phone number, how can she read it off to me?]
_____________________________________________________
After a few more times asking to “skip the question” she concludes the survey. It was not a brief ten minutes as promised, far from it. It’s probably my fault, because I didn’t just blather random numbers between 1 and 7: “four. six. three. four. two. six. seven. six. six. five…”. Done!
I wondered how she really filled out the survey, what she wrote in her notes. I suppose from the audio file that I was unconventional enough that she could have checked whatever she wanted. Who would know?
The whole time I wondered if she undertook some horrible journey to arrive here, risking her life and her family’s so she could read survey questions to strangers in broken English? Maybe she was in another country, having foregone the perilous journey. In any case, I couldn’t quite place her accent.
Why can’t telemarketers tell you where they’re from? It would make things a lot more interesting. It might start a conversation and time would be wasted? It might also make me more willing to talk to a total stranger with absolutely no sense of humor. You just never know.
At the end, I guessed Indian. I mumbled “Happy Diwali” (it really is Diwali season, after all) and hung up. I don’t know if she’s from India, but wishing a telemarketer a good festival celebrating the triumph of light over darkness seemed somehow fitting.
There went another missed opportunity for cultural exchange between [check the box corresponding to your ethnic group] and someone from a faraway exotic place [origin undetermined].