Companies, why don’t you want my feedback?

Monday, July 30th, 2012

I’m one of those people who think everything can always be a little bit better. Apparently companies aren’t interested in hearing about customer experience, since it’s basically always completely impossible to find a working, decent customer feedback point on any commercial website.

How sad is it that the only way to properly get into contact with a company is via Twitter (which is, of course, limited to 140 chars making it basically impossible to tell them about your issues/problems)? How sad is it that some companies actually artificially limit the number of characters you can enter in a feedback form on their website? Hello! Interwebtube bytes are free! No reason to limited the number of characters to one-thousand characters guys. What’s that? Your time is too valuable to read through entire essays from frustrated consumers? Oh, that’s just fine! I’ll take my business somewhere else, thank you!

If any Quality Assurance Managers are reading this, I’ll make it real easy for you:

• An easy to find, CHEAP/FREE phone number on your site. One I can call for questions, feedback, etc. DO NOT try to sell me shit when I call you with a question or complaint. Just.. don’t. I will take my business somewhere else.
• An easy to find question/feedback email address on your website.
• If you absolute must have a form, make sure it doesn’t ask for my phonenumber, it doesn’t limit the type of question I can ask (try including an “other reason” option?) and I don’t have to jump through hoops to validate my information. I don’t want you to have my address, phone number, email address, or anything else. You don’t ask that information from customers who call you with a question, do you? Then allow – don’t force – me to fill it out on your forms. I just want to let you know that there’s a problem with your website! Today I had to fill out an online form and I had to provide my land-line phone number! “Hello?! 1999 called using their land-line! They want their ancient technology back!” Who still has a land-line, seriously?!

Companies, seriously… why do you make it so exceptionally hard for me to provide you with feedback? I’m trying to help! I want to let you know about broken restitution forms on your website, I want to let you know about why I went to the competitors so you can improve your products. I really do! So stop with the bullshit online questionnaires that pop up on your website when I least expect nor want to see a “Please participate in our questionnaires!” when that’s not why I’m on your site!

Stop wasting money on crappy Quality Assurance Managers. If your website doesn’t have email contact information, someone in your company needs to be fired.

END-OF-RANT