The email landed in my inbox one afternoon, as I frantically sandwiched work in between feeding the dog and doing the school run, its subject saying: ‘A quick reminder for you, Antonia Hoyle.’ Oh God, what now? Had I forgotten to pay a bill? Missed a deadline?
It was worse. I hadn’t left a review for a company I’d purchased skincare supplements from – and six days after their initial request, they sounded disappointed, adding reproachfully: ‘We would like to remind you that writing a review of your experience will help us improve our customer satisfaction.’
Presumably they were referring to customers other than me, because, having already forked out a small fortune on the supplements, I felt decidedly unsatisfied that they now wanted to take up the time I needed to earn the money to pay for their extortionate product in the first place.
They’re not alone. Each week I am bombarded by email requests for feedback on seemingly every single service or item I’ve ever bought, from my picture frame provider to my delivery driver. And with Christmas shopping well under way, the flood of demands is coming thicker and faster than ever.
Apple, Amazon, LinkedIn, airlines, even GP surgeries – like the neediest partner, businesses are relentless in their pursuit of flattery. Play hard to get and they can pile on the pressure. When I didn’t reply to my anti-virus software supplier’s request for information about my ‘experience’ recently, they emailed four more times over the next fortnight begging me to ‘please take a moment’ and share my ‘thoughts’.
Six days after their initial request, they sounded disappointed, adding reproachfully: ‘We would like to remind you that writing a review of your experience will help us improve our customer satisfaction’
My thoughts are that I slightly resent having £99.99 deducted automatically from my account every year for a program I have a nagging suspicion I could download for free, and that if I don’t reply on the first time of asking I’m unlikely to do so on the fourth.
Some requests come with a sweetener, like the ‘surprise instant free gift’ the phone firm offers in return for a review of their headphones, or the travel company that promises me £100 off a holiday costing thousands (provided I take it in the next 12 months) if I write about my last trip.
Others are reverential in tone. I’m almost swayed by Nigel at Interflora, who asks for two minutes – ‘and I promise that’s all it takes’ – to answer ‘quick questions’ about a birthday bouquet, while my courier, after delivering my son’s trainers, wants me to judge the driver herself: ‘Rate Jenny to let us know how it went.’
Of course, when posted online reviews help customers make up their mind – more than two-thirds of respondents in a study last year declared trustworthy reviews the most important factor that would influence a purchase, ahead of price, speed of delivery, discounts and variety of stock.
Before I buy something, I occasionally check Trustpilot, and if a small business impresses me, I’ll happily let them know. But reviewing everything would equate to a full-time job. The endless unsolicited emails begging us to do so feel like the modern day equivalent of cold sales calls, and often, it seems the biggest beneficiaries are the corporates cajoling us into providing content for free.
I’m very happy with Jenny, but couldn’t a company boasting a turnover of more than a billion pounds last year boost its business with a bigger advertising spend instead (and pay its staff higher wages, while they’re at it)? And the reason I was buying children’s trainers in the first place was because the pair I’d ordered from Marks and Spencer had turned up in odd sizes. I spent more than 15 minutes on the phone to customer services waiting to find out how to get a refund on my pair of size five and size six shoes after checking out as a guest.
I then emailed the complaints department to ask for my £4.99 next-day delivery charge to be reimbursed, before making a 40-minute round trip to my nearest M&S store to return the shoes. Yet their ‘customer experience’ team still emailed me six days later saying they’d ‘love to hear’ about my order and asking me to complete a ‘short five-minute feedback survey’.
In fact, it takes me four minutes, 14 seconds – all I write is that my shoes were different sizes – but given an opening question was ‘How have your experiences made you feel?’ a full psychological profile would probably have been welcomed.
Obviously, when asking us to review them publicly, businesses risk being rubbished online. However, a study by software company ReviewInc found some negative reviews are not only useful – customers find a company with a 4.7 rating more authentic and trustworthy than a perfect five-star – but that 65 per cent of people don’t leave bad reviews after a negative experience anyway, so the likelihood of being slaughtered is low.
The challenge is to persuade people to leave reviews at all – only 1.5 per cent of customers do so, according to a study published in 2014 by the Journal of Marketing Research.
Which would explain the incessant badgering. But please, companies, spare us the guilt-trips and stop obsessing. I bought those skincare supplements on the recommendation of a friend – and she didn’t send me any emails at all.
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