Rate expectations are tiresome
The constant pressure on us to give businesses online reviews means that feedback is increasingly pointless
THE other day I went for an eye test. Within a few hours of returning home I had already been asked for my feedback on the “experience”. But it wasn’t an experience. I hadn’t swum with dolphins or enjoyed an 11-course gourmet lunch. I had spent half an hour looking at lines of increasingly smaller type and then had a funny puff of air in each eye.
It was less something to “experience” and more something to endure in order to be able to read a menu without having to illuminate it with my phone torch.
The same thing happened after I bought a car. “How did we do?” chirruped the email which landed moments after I left the forecourt.
The answer is – well, fine. I parted with a lot of money and now have an engine and a set of wheels. Nothing really to write home – or to the car franchise – about.
Businesses’ desperate desire for feedback, ratings and reviews feels like it’s got a bit out of hand.
I’ve had entreaties to rate a Whatsapp phone call, enquiries about how I found my experience of booking train tickets and, God help me, a demand from a supermarket to “Tell Us How We Did!” having lost an hour of my life in the Christmas run-up battling to score a few sprouts.
When did companies get so needy? When did this demand for customers to report back come as standard?
And why is every business, from utility suppliers to shops, dentists to hairdressers, buying into it?
The answer, of course, is that online reviews for many firms are king. Good ratings and positive comments can hugely influence whether they succeed or fail.
But just how accurate are these millions of bits of feedback anyway?
Quite often they’re incentivised –you’ll go into a prize draw or get cash off a purchase if you take part – and rightly or wrongly I always feel a poor review somehow won’t carry the same weight as a good one.
I feel slightly uncomfortable reviewing staff, too. Will they get a bonus if my words are glowing? Lose their job if I give them only an eight out of 10?
Is it, for some firms, simply customer service on the cheap? A no-frills method of monitoring employees without having to spend cash on proper training programmes?
Of course we’ve been reviewing pubs, restaurants and hotels for years, first in quaint little guest books or by letter and then online.
And customer feedback can be crucial. A complaint when things go wrong or praise for outstanding service is entirely the right thing to do.
But a demand for feedback for every little life interaction just sees me killing off the email without opening it; don’t we all have better ways to spend our time?
And if we review everything then surely we review nothing?