Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

Sometimes, you just know you're lining yourself up for a whole heap of trouble.

I generally avoid customer satisfaction surveys like the plague and on the odd occasion that I do complete one, I usually end up wishing I'd stuck to my guns and ignored the thing. The most recent example of this was when I returned to India from the UK and opened up an e-mail from the Premier Inn chain asking me to say how much (or how little) I'd enjoyed my stay at one of their hotels. I gave up when, several pages into the thing, the little bar at the bottom of the screen told me I was four per cent of the way through. So I stopped right there and just replied to their e-mail. "Good hotel" I wrote, "but you need to improve your customer satisfaction questionnaire, it's far too long."

India does a good line in surveys too. I asked one of our suppliers recently to undertake a compensation package re-structuring exercise for our employees. In plain English, there are so many tax dodges in India that I wanted to make sure we were all availing ourselves of as many as possible and so I called in the experts. Two presentations and a couple of meetings later, I think most of our staff are now keeping more money in their pockets and paying less to the Exchequer, so hoorah to that.

But of course, after the compensation restructuring exercise there was the inevitable, "How are we doing?" survey. I ignored the first e-mail, hoping it would go away, but when the reminder came through last week I quickly ticked the various boxes and sent it back. I only have two rules when it comes to these things. Rule number 1 - nobody (unless you happen to be a member of my immediate family or a Washington Redskins Cheerleader) ever gets a "5/5" or a "you're doing fantastically well" type rating. Rule number 2 - I don't believe in wasting time on these things so I'll flick quickly through them.

Having sent the form back I then received a follow-up e-mail which read:

"Thanks for participating in our Client Feedback Programme. We appreciate your inputs and would certainly work towards fortifying our existing relationship with you. For the same purpose, we wish to meet you in person and understand better the experiences and expectations which have so far determined your perception of our Organization. We therefore request you to confirm an appointment on 17th June, Tuesday at 1100 hours. However, if the recommended timings are not feasible, we would request you to suggest a more suitable time and date, in accordance with your convenience."

Now that communication may not seem odd to somebody schooled in India (and I mean that with no disrespect to either the writer or Indian-born and Indian-educated readers) but it certainly subscribes to the old rule, "never use one word when half a dozen will do".

In any event I responded that 11.30 this morning was fine and then, when the witching hour arrived, found myself presented with the answers to my survey (the ones that implied "could do better" anyway), and asked in so many words to explain myself. Hence the title of this blog entry, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" which refers to another Monty Python sketch.

I explained to the two girls who had been tasked with the unfortunate job of coming to see me that I hadn't expected to be interrogated, that I liked their company generally (which is why we still used them) but that it had been me and not their company who had initiated the meeting about compensation re-structure and hence the reason why I had ticked the box "disagree" against the line which asked "You don't wait for me to initiate everything, you anticipate."

I had also ticked the "disagree" box next to the line which read, "You make us feel as if we are important to you." Come on, we're talking about a business deal here. I don't need to feel important and it didn't cross my mind that I was supposed to feel important. I didn't, but it wouldn't stop me from using the company's services again because I think that the company is good at what it does. I told the two representatives as much and one of the girls closed the survey.

But some companies in India might like to think about just how they use their own customer satisfaction surveys and beware of either antagonising their otherwise amicably disposed clients, or at the very least, wasting their time. As I said at the beginning, sometimes you know you're just lining up trouble and not only has that survey cost me a meeting in the office, it's also caused me to sit down and write about it now.

Originally published on Blogger on 17th June 2008.