Disgruntled cogs in the machine

Air travel: the modern human experience most likely to make you feel like a robot.

But what happens when they throw an automated customer experience survey into the mix?

Recently, I had an arduous flight back from Heathrow Airport – nothing unusual there, you might say. After a long layover, my flight was delayed – twice – until we were the last flight to leave the terminal. It was the usual torment: obsessively checking the departures board only to see yet another hour delay appear without warning or explanation.

The reason for all the delays was a technical fault. And while I’m glad that safety was their first concern, they could have alleviated a lot of confusion by just letting us know what was going on.

When automation goes wrong

So far, so typical air travel complaint. But when an email arrived in my inbox the following morning, asking me to complete a customer satisfaction survey based on my flight, it provoked some mixed – and less-than-satisfactory – feelings.

On the one hand, it stirred up memories of the poor service I’d experienced at the airport the night before. On the other, I felt it was a step in the right direction – at least they cared enough to ask me what I thought, even if it was too late to do anything about it.

How may we pretend to help you?

Receiving the email made me think about customer surveys in broader terms:

• When are they a good idea?
• When should companies let sleeping dogs lie?

If you are going to administer automated customer experience surveys, how can you ensure the survey doesn’t further irritate your customers? Especially after a bad ‘real world’ experience like mine.

My airline got their survey strategy roughly 80% wrong. Much like my experience of their service in person, the intent to be helpful was there, but there was no follow-through.

Email Surveys 101

It took me well over 20 minutes to get through the survey.
Lesson number one: It should never take more than 10 minutes to complete a basic customer survey. And a clear time estimate should be stated on the first page.

While the survey had a completion status bar at the top of each page, the bar had no real-world orientation – it looked like a download progress bar, but this doesn’t work for page-based progress.
Lesson number two: Tell me how many pages there are in total, and where I am in relation to the start and end of the survey.

There was no ‘previous page’ option to change my answers as I proceeded.
Lesson number three: Always provide a back button so I can amend my answers if necessary.

Most irritatingly, there were several questions that were vague and ‘brand-y’, asking me how ‘flexible’ I found staff to be, whether I thought they were ‘genuinely friendly’ and would ‘go the extra mile’ for me. What I want from an airline is standard good service and courtesy – not friendship.
Lesson number four: Ask me questions that are relevant to the customer’s point of view, not a marketing department’s mood board.

Free stuff always works

But then, we did get free snacks – and free food, no matter how unappetizing, counts for a great deal when you’re a cog in the air travel machine.