Note to Survey Writers: THINK AND REVIEW PLEASE

I am a travel geek who flies a lot and I stay a lot in hotels around the world. I hope that I can provide feedback whenever possible. However I really get annoyed at different players who think that having paid for the hotel or flight that I MUST fill out a badly designed form written by some junior flunky who has no idea what she/he is doing yet its in their remit to do this thing. Then they manipulate the data into forms that will please the bosses who in turn will crow in public how their product is so wonderful.

Politely BS. (I really wanted to write a different few words here but this is a family oriented website).

I think survey monkey should be banned from the hands of any person writing a survey. But worse I think that the survey tools that are out there are so BADLY USED that we should stop responding to them.

Let me pick on Marriott Hotels. I am a fairly loyal customer of Marriott. I probably give them about 10-15 room nights a year. The most I have ever given them is 30 direct and then a further 45 from different people who I directed there. I say this not to get them to do more for me - but to give some context to my interaction with them.

So after a stay at the Marriott in a major Asian City 2 weeks ago. The hotel is in a great location - but it is a little long in the tooth. Playing trainers game - the place was really tired. The rooms left a lot to be desired. I also attended a convention there.

But what is so stupid and bad. Their survey tool asked me a whole load of totally irrelevant and repeat questions.

The Marriott survey asked me more than 20 pages of questions (frankly I lost count - there were probably more than 100 actual questions I had to answer. The questions were largely not relevant. The design of the survey completely haphazard. The tool was also a memory hog in my browser.

THAT IS ALL VERY STUPID AND UNNECESSARY.

Here is an example of the screens and the stupid questions asked.



Marriott - shame on you. You can do a lot better. Please think more carefully and smack the hands of your marketing dept for putting out such rubbish. Your customers and staff deserve better.

However while I am picking on Marriott - the number of these that I fill out every month are reflective of the same poor thinking. This one just happens to be an extreme example of the stupidity of using this format.

Cheers

Trust What Consumers Do - Not What They Say

If this theme sounds familiar - it is. I believe firmly that consumers lie when asked questions. Not deliberately but well its because people find it very hard to express what their behavior will be in certain circumstances. Indeed time and time again people when questioned give different answers from their actual behavior. This week Gerry McGovern tackled the subject head on in his weekly piece.

I have to say I agree with him. One of my friends is a professional focus person. He is paid on a regular basis money to participate in focus groups. Some times 4 times a week. He makes a nice bit of pocket money for a retired person.

Interestingly that Erick Schmidt of Google said "People want Google to tell them what to do" did he gather that information from behavior - possibly, did he gather it from surveys - absolutely.

In Gerry's view, the worst way to design a website is to have five smart people in a room drinking lattes. The longer you leave them in the room the worse the design becomes. The next worst way is to have 15 customers in a room drinking lattes. What people say they do and what they actually do are rarely the same thing.

Why? Mostly because they say one thing and behave differently as a result of trying to be good. People will verbalize the higher more proper result but still behave differently. Its a bit like saying you will go on a diet....

And that my friends is the truth, or at least what I am saying....

With thanks to gotsole for the image.