Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Define Satisfaction…

Do you enjoy getting phone calls asking you to give your feedback on customer satisfaction? Does anyone enjoy these? I suppose if I had an axe to grind, I might relish the opportunity to give feedback, but most of the time it is just plain annoying.

Why is it then, that the Volkswagen dealership where we take our car for service feels a compulsion, bordering on obsession, to get our feedback every single time we have the car in for any type of service? If we take it in for warranty work, they call to get our opinion. If we take it in for regularly scheduled maintenance, they call until we relent and give them our input. Even the odd oil change when timing and convenience leads us to take it there rather than a local shop triggers a barrage of phone calls that has begun to cause paranoia in yours truly. I know their caller id listing. They call me at work, they call my cell phone, they call at home. When I walk by a phone booth and it rings, I break into a run…

I mean really, what’s so hard about this? I obviously keep coming back. Does that sound like dissatisfaction to you? If I ever decide to go elsewhere, one of the reasons I’ll list is the terribly annoying phone calls. Sure, I could answer them the first time and get them off my back, but really, I have better things to do while at work than to pick up the phone and answer, on a scale of 1 to 5, 20 questions covering topics such as how easy it was to make an appointment, how clean the lobby was when I picked up my car, and whether the music playing at the cashier’s booth was pleasing or not…

Maybe the next time they call, I will pick up the phone, ask them not to call me anymore, and tell them that if I get another call from their silly customer satisfaction survey folks, I’ll never set foot in the dealership again.

Can I get an amen, or have I gone off the deep end?

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