With the Guardian.
I won’t. I hate reviewing stuff. I can barely muster enough opinions to write this column once a week, let alone generate any copy about draft excluder tape. Can any of us? But we’re invited, wheedled, then asked again with brittle desperation to review everything from supermarket self-checkouts to orthopaedic surgeons. Beleaguered minimum-wage service industry workers give out QR codes to rate their performance and businesses live in fear of TripAdvisor and Trustpilot; Amazon customers write one-star reviews of books they haven’t read because the envelope it came in was torn or the cover was the wrong shade of blue. Alternatively, you can step into the idyllic parallel universe of Airbnb, where review reciprocity often acts like a nuclear deterrent, so that every cat-hair-filled fleapit and unreasonable slob gets five stars. It’s endless and pointless.
Indeed. I never respond to such requests. The latest was from Evri on how well my package was delivered. It was delivered, what do you want me to say?
It’s ridiculous and I don’t play the game. When I was auditing track safety training, this was one of the key indicators that I had to check for. Everyone I spoke to issued feedback sheets at the end of the training session. When I asked what they did about them afterwards, the answer was always the same – “We keep them for audit purposes.”
That, ladies and gents, is why we have to put up with this crap. Somewhere there is a quality auditor asking for evidence that the company concerned has engaged in customer feedback. No one actually gives a damn how many stars you give them or what feedback you might proffer, so long as they meet their targets.
Ah, I’m afraid nearly six years in the training department has made me totally unable to NOT leave feedback when asked!
I’m usually asked to give simple feedback after I’ve contacted a company by phone. I sometimes do. My issue is 1) is the feedback being used to penalise the member of staff if I didn’t rate them as excellent (good is good isn’t it?) rather than indicate that they did a good job and 2) my rating is for the agent that I’m dealing with, not the cr*p process that they may have to follow in order to handle my enquiry, which is sometimes what I’d really like to comment on.
I sometimes review things that I like without being asked. I remember you doing Harry’s razors and the Truecall gadget for your phone. I recently bought a piano online from Rimmers Music, their service was excellent and they had the best price, so I gave them a good review. They didn’t solicit the review other than having a button on the website.
Quite. And I was happy to do that. But otherwise, I’m not going to waste my time filling in a form and choose how many stars to give.
On a vaguely related note, with the auditing, our client, whose site I’m based on has recently reintroduced a policy where in order to show that we are taking Health and Safety seriously we have to log a certain number of ‘Near misses’ a month.
So, since we work safely (generally), we have to artificially create hazards to report…
Network Rail did that. It reached absurdity when one location recorded a lack of toilet paper in the gents as a near miss. I kid you not.
Had this with a Rio Tinto site about 10-15 years ago.
Same deal, too few “near misses” (or maybe they were called “near hits” ?), and questions were asked. Questions were also asked if too many (“piss taking” suspected), so obviously there is an optimum.
Like everything else, it came in with big fanfare and extensive reporting, then faded away to nothing over about 2-3 years.
It is probably due back under another name.
“The latest was from Evri on how well my package was delivered. It was delivered, what do you want me to say?”
Well, given how well Evri (formerly Hermes) normally deliver packages (i.e. not very)…
The only glitch with the piano purchase was that TNT delivered it a day late. Since it was set to be delivered the day after I ordered it, which was sooner than I had been expecting, I wasn’t too miffed.
It’s a nice little number for those auditors, isn’t it? We get them at work and it seems like they’ve just pulled some standards out of their arses and then told us we have to pay them to check we’re following it
The principle here is fine. If carried out properly, it is designed to ensure that an organisation has a functioning safety management system in place. A good auditor is simply looking for evidence to support this and should have a pragmatic approach when reviewing that evidence. If there are no – or minimal – near misses being reported and everything else is fine, then the system is working as designed and job done. Like anything to do with H&S, we are plagued with who idiots don’t understand how it is supposed to work and over react.