Survey Says!

Lately, almost every time I talk on the phone with some employee of a large company, I am asked afterwards to rate that employee on their knowledge, their courtesy, their efficiency, etc. Sometimes, I'm asked to remain on the line after the call with the live person so that I can take a brief survey, rating them 1-to-5 or 1-to-10. Sometimes, it happens in a follow-up call to me. Both kinds of surveys are conducted by a computer voice.

With rare exceptions, these surveys are only about the specific staff member to whom I spoke. They are almost never about my total experience dealing with the company. They do not ask how many times I had to call and how long I waited on "hold" to get to that staff member. They do not ask how confusing it was to determine which button to press to be connected to the proper department or even what the proper department was. Yesterday, I was asked to rate a woman I spoke to at Spectrum Cable, a firm I believe has as its only goal to make you wish you were back with Time-Warner Cable.

Yesterday's Spectrum journey began with a robocall to me. It was a message delivered by the recorded voice of their lady-who-answers-the-phone — the one who sounds like she's still bitter she didn't get to be Siri. She informed me that there was a problem with my system and that I should call the "800" number she gave me to resolve the situation. There was no hint as to what was wrong or even what division it was in — my Internet service, my phones, my cable TV, me paying my bill, etc.

I called the number — and it would have been nice if it had connected me directly to someone who could tell me what the heck this was all about. It did not. It connected me to the same Main Menu you get when you call Spectrum without being asked — you know: the one you call when your Internet is out, your phones are out, your cable TV is out…

The wanna-be Siri told me to press 1 for Technical Support, 2 for Billing, 3 for God Knows What, 4 for Something Else, etc. Having zero idea what this was about, I punched 1 for Technical Support, whereupon I was asked to press 1 for Internet Connectivity, 2 for Telephone, 3 to Get Ready, 4 to Go, 5 for Texas and so on. Since I still had no idea where the problem was, I picked one at random.

Then the lady's voice told me that due to a high volume of calls (i.e., they don't have a large enough staff), there was a wait time of 6 to 9 minutes. Given the choice of having them call me back (I would not lose my place in line) or spending 6-9 minutes being told my call was very important to them, I went for the callback…and they actually got back to me in about four minutes. I found myself talking to a live lady who asked me how she could help me.

I said, "I was hoping you could tell me that" and I explained about getting a call telling me there was something amiss but it didn't tell me what. She looked me up on her computer and it took about three minutes for her to load my information. Apparently, the Spectrum company's technology doesn't work any better for them than it does for me. I wonder who they call to complain.

Finally, she told me what the problem was. It's a problem we fixed a week ago.

So they wasted some of her time and a lot of my time for no reason. Shouldn't someone there be able to fix this computer problem — sending out alerts for things that are no longer alert-worthy — in about twenty minutes? And if they can't fix that, what makes them think they can fix the problem on my cable TV that causes the signal to pixelate every time Steve Harvey is on? That's not a bad thing in itself but, jeez, that's like half the shows on TV these days. He has the talk show, he has the game show, he has the show with the kids…any week now, I expect them to reboot Gidget with him in the title role.

I hung up and then some computer at Spectrum waited just long enough for me to get back into working before it called me to take a brief survey. Thinking I might get an opportunity to complain about the previous waste of my time, I plunged into yet another. All the questions were about how nice and polite the lady in Tech Support was.

Well, I didm't want to give her a bad rating. She didn't do anything wrong except to go to work for that company. It wasn't her fault the computer called me about a non-issue. It wasn't her fault the callback number didn't reach the department I was supposed to talk to. It wasn't her fault that Steve Harvey just signed to put on a fur coat and take over for Smokey the Bear…

So I gave her a good rating and then I had sixty seconds to record comments. I was about twenty seconds into itemizing my complaints for whoever listens to such things — and I'm not convinced anyone does — and then the computer hung up on me. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Too bad they don't do follow-up calls to their follow-up calls.