Yesterday I had an appointment. Last night, when I got home, there was the inevitable email with the request for a rating and a review. I groaned inwardly. Sometimes I delete ratings requests, sometimes I fill them out to be a good customer. Last night I hit the delete button. I just wasn’t in the mood.
I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had it with getting requests for reviews every time you have any kind of appointment or use any kind of service. For example, our computer calling app at the office requests a review after every call. Seriously? I’ve long since stopped doing that, but I’ve found myself wondering: if you really wanted to give a meaningful evaluation of a video phone call on a 10-star scale, what would distinguish a six-star rating, say, from a seven? If the image freezes and you have to wait for 10 seconds for the other participant in the call to unfreeze, how many stars should get deducted? Should you adjust the rating if the frozen picture of the other participant is hilariously unflattering? What should be the impact, objectively, if there is some kind of audio fuzziness or other glitch in the call?
Say what you will about old-fashioned desktop phones–they may have cluttered your desk, and the fact that the cord often had to be unsnarled was annoying, but at least they didn’t beg you for reviews every time you hung up the receiver. Ma Bell evidently had too much pride for that.
The review request overload leads me to two conclusions. First, any time you see some commercial enterprise bragging about their reviews, take it with a hefty grain of salt. It’s going to be the product of responses from only a tiny fraction of actual customers, and those people who did respond probably didn’t really give much thought to the ratings they were assigning. And second, I wonder what would happen if businesses started to advertise that they will never, ever, bug you for a review if you use their services. All things being equal, I’d gladly choose a service provider who agreed in advance to leave my email inbox free of sniveling requests for reviews.
Webner House 