The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Brrrrrrrr
Wednesday - January 30, 2008 04:01 PM in
It's one of those days in Minnesota when we like to say, "it keeps the riff-raff out." It was -15F when I woke up this morning, and just might hit zero before the sun goes down.
So, in a desperate attempt to find a "hook" for today's blog entry (hey, it isn't easy coming up with something new every day--even if the last couple months have been a little sporadic), I Googled "cold weather survey."
And stumbled across this form, which the U.S. Antarctic Program uses to gather feedback about Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) clothing. You can rate the usefulness of gear like "Boots, white, bunny boot" or "Mittens, green, furback gauntlets" on a scale from "Very Useful" to "Useless."
I might critique some elements of the survey design--for example, with only nine choices of items to rate, they should use a drop-down menu instead of having the person type the item name; and they might want to consolidate some of the free response. But really, with a survey this specialized, they're not gathering tons of statistically meaningful data. It's really more like a suggestion box.
What's really interesting about this is:
1) Even government science agencies are looking at customer service these days,
2) They make only a minimal attempt to ensure that people completing the surveys are actually part of the target population (people deployed to Antarctica) and not, for example, shills working for clothing manufacturers, and
3) I'll go to almost any length to find some way to connect customer surveying to current events.
Posted by Peter Leppik
And stumbled across this form, which the U.S. Antarctic Program uses to gather feedback about Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) clothing. You can rate the usefulness of gear like "Boots, white, bunny boot" or "Mittens, green, furback gauntlets" on a scale from "Very Useful" to "Useless."
I might critique some elements of the survey design--for example, with only nine choices of items to rate, they should use a drop-down menu instead of having the person type the item name; and they might want to consolidate some of the free response. But really, with a survey this specialized, they're not gathering tons of statistically meaningful data. It's really more like a suggestion box.
What's really interesting about this is:
1) Even government science agencies are looking at customer service these days,
2) They make only a minimal attempt to ensure that people completing the surveys are actually part of the target population (people deployed to Antarctica) and not, for example, shills working for clothing manufacturers, and
3) I'll go to almost any length to find some way to connect customer surveying to current events.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 04:01 PM by | | | |