If you are reading this, you survived that two-week period when relationships come under more pressure than your wallet.
Where, spending day in and day out with kids leaving the Lego just where your stockinged feet will land. Where you have despaired at the Christmas TV schedule but watched all the same. And where you start planning revenge for next Christmas!
But, imagine this: You visit your local butcher to get some bacon and sausage for your weekend fry up and as you come out you are approached by a person wearing a tabard and holding a clipboard.
“Good morning, sir. Your feedback is important to us, and we have a few questions relating to your recent purchase in order to improve our service………”
There then follows a series of questions along the lines of “How long did you have to wait to be served?” “On a scale of one to 10, how was our display of cooked meats and pies?” “Did your server welcome you warmly?” Welcome me warmly? Mention Nigella Lawson or Delia Smith in the same sentence as “ask your butcher…..” and see the eyes rolling upwards!
Of course, my local butcher gets the feedback they need when I turn up next week for a piece of beef. Like all good shops, they know their customers and which online conglomerate would start your purchase with “How’s your Uncle Albert after his hernia operation?’
The phrase ‘We welcome your feedback’ is about as welcome, these days, as ‘your call is important to us, please continue to hold’. You, the customer or, more likely these days, ‘service user’ are a nuisance.
How dare you call our customer helpline when our efforts are focused on flogging you as much as we can? And how many companies have freephone number for sales but make you pay to ring customer service?
Not only do businesses send out emails after the most mundane of interactions but if you don’t respond they send them again and again.
Indeed, so many communications from businesses or services we deal with are little more than them publicly projecting values without making much effort to put this into practice.
“We welcome your feedback” actually means “tell us how great we were flogging you that £2 tree decoration although it won’t make a halfpenny’s worth of difference – we just want you to think we care”.
Speaking of virtue signalling, I loved the comment from the CEO of my bank who sent an ‘all customers’ email to say he was focused on “on giving customers confidence in digital experiences and a humanity they can’t get elsewhere”. No, I don’t know what that means either and here’s me thinking a bank did, er, banking! He has since had to apologise for the increased call wait times.
This all becomes even more infuriating when you ring your electricity provider to say your leccy is off and the robot answering service advises you to check the website for ‘frequently asked questions’.
A) I can’t switch on my computer as I have no electric, and B) when I have looked at the ‘frequently asked questions’ it doesn’t include the most frequently asked – “why don’t you employ more staff to answer the phones?”
Of course, there are shining examples of excellent service although, in this cat’s experience, these tend to be found in local shops or with family-owned national brands including our very own Lakeland with its HQ in Windermere. I know there are others, Lakeland is one I have personal experience of.
I know readers can identify many others who not only provide good service but go beyond to deliver excellent service. But equally there will be many who can tell tales of woeful service or, sometimes worse, those who want you to think they are great when, actually, they are not.
And as for the “we value your feedback”, leave me alone. If I feel inclined to tell you how good are bad you are, I will choose how and when I do.
And, by the way, my local butcher is always smiling and friendly with sumptuous produce. I just never mention Delia and Uncle Albert is doing well…..
About Cumbria Cat
Born in Cumberland and, from later this year, will be back living in Cumberland, having spent most of the past 50 years in some place called Cumbria, this cat has used up all nine lives as well as a few others.
Always happy to curl up on a friendly lap, the preference is for a local lap and not a lap that wants to descend on the county to change it into something it isn’t. After all, you might think Cumbria/Cumberland/Westmorland is a land forged by nature – the glaciers, the rivers, breaking down the volcanic rocks or the sedimentary layers – but, in reality, the Cumbria we know today was forged by generations of local people, farmers, miners, quarriers, and foresters.
This cat is a local moggy, not a Burmese, Ocicat or Persian, and although I have been around the block a few times, whenever I jump, I end up on my feet back in my home county. I am passionate about the area, its people, past, present and future, and those who come to admire what we hold dear, be it lakes and mountains, wild sea shores, vibrant communities or the history as rich and diverse as anywhere in the world.
