Discussion question: Think of a survey in which you were asked to serve as a participant. (You may have been sent a questionnaire in the mail, such as a consumer satisfaction survey, or you may have been contacted in person or by phone.) Did you cooperate and respond? Why? Why not?
Response: Of course I have. I work in healthcare and we have quarterly meetings on how we can approve patient care. As patient care is #1 when in healthcare. I try to complete every survey I get. Companies WANT to know how your experience was. They need to know. Companies better themselves from the customer/patient feedback. It is crucial for them to know where they are going wrong and make improvements. Every time you provide feedback, advice or your opinion, you are helping them to improve themselves. In our meetings at work, they tell us if there was any specific feedback on each one of us, (of course, anonymously) the good and the bad. That was we can improve ourselves and if we got good feedback, we can feel a sense of accomplishment and good about ourselves. It is also a good way for companies to reward employees with incentives. Your opinion matters and expressing it always helps, whether the opinion is good or bad.
Hi Kelsie,
When I think “customer satisfaction survey”, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the emails I get after buying something online or having to rate a customer service rep I’ve just chatted with online. I usually don’t respond to them though. I find that surveys usually take longer to fill out than I’d like and it’s just easier to ignore them. It’s interesting to hear that your company takes the feedback seriously. I always figured my responses were more of a way for a company to make me feel like my opinion was heard even though they never actually read what I wrote. I think I’ll respond to the next survey I get- all thanks to you!
Hello Kelsie,
This example was an enlightening look in how academic studies are applied in real world situations. If I may explain, I looked at it like this. Researchers applied principles we are learning in our this course to create a survey relevant to improvement of the organization. Participants were then given an opportunity to give the company feedback, one of the principles many of us have learned about in communications courses. After that the company set about striving for improvement which is truly the basis of technological and organizational improvement.
Hi Kelsie. You replied “Of course I have.” but I think that there can be many reasons in which the answer could be exactly the opposite. I’ve frequently been asked to take surveys for which I either felt my answers could be detrimental to some desire I had, or could be used in a manner I wouldn’t approve of. Some surveys I’m thinking of specifically are those that came last year from non-governmental organizations asking for data that would then be used to support that groups argument for government actions. Part of the problem was that I didn’t want to support that groups efforts in any manner and I didn’t believe they’d pay attention to a survey that failed to do so, and another problem was that despite claims of anonymity I felt there was sufficient question of such so as to not be willing to provide certain sorts of information.
As another point, as someone who has been an EMT, and whose wife is also a CMA like yourself, I understand the restrictions of HIPAA and its intent to protect personal and confidential information. I also know that despite that intent, and the punishments that could be enacted, I have seen routine infractions of it go unpunished in a variety of institutions.
It may simply be cynicism on my part, but I always question not only can my answered be used for good purposes, but will they? I’ve had too many surveys from employers that ask for critique and proceed to ignore all of it received.
Hello Kelsie
I’ve worked in Insurance sales and have always loved the feedback we get from the survey whether its good or bad. I believe you learn a lot of what you are doing wrong from the negative reviews. There are times where I had a client that I felt I handled very well but then the survey came in and realized that was not the case. I believe surveys give the customer a good way of giving their honest review of you without being the rude obnoxious angry customer.
Hi all. Great post. I agreed with every point you made. I also participate in monthly surveys but on the opposite end of the customer. I manage a group of technical support analyst and we implemented customer surveys via survey monkey years ago. Without those survey metrics it’s impossible to know if your customer service is efficient or not.
I’ve not been on the sending side of surveys before but when I receive them I was always a bit doubtful that they actually went anywhere. This is a good look at what actually happens and I’ll be sure to do them in the future.