I went to a concert last week. I should probably try to be cool and say it was some super-trendy band, but I can’t be bothered to trawl the Internet to see who the young, cool types are listening to these days, so I’ll admit it was Bon Jovi up front. For the record, they were brilliant, but this isn’t a gig review so I’ll get to the point.
The event was at a venue in London called The O2, and their marketing folks sent me a survey the following day. It was long. Really, really long. Many clever people have written entire books about survey length so I’m not going to get into that, other than to say that whatever the ideal survey length is, this wasn’t it. But that’s not my main complaint. My main complaint is that it was created without any thought for the respondent, i.e., me.
From my perspective, the evening went like this; arrive at The O2, meet my friend, have a glass of wine, go into main arena, more wine, scream like a teenager for 3 hours, and then spend ages queuing for the train home. Done. Of course, I remember more than that, but to me, those are the “sections” of the evening.
But the survey asked me about virtually every second of the evening, including, in no particular order: getting to the station, finding the venue from the station, walking into the building, finding my way to a bar, using the toilets, buying drinks/food/merchandise outside the arena, finding my way into the arena, buying drinks/food/merchandise inside the arena, finding my seat, talking to staff, using the toilets, leaving the arena, finding the station, the train journey home.
To say I wasn’t engaged is an understatement. I lost the will to live half way through. Now, I fully understand that they want to get lots of feedback from me, but the survey was designed to fit into their processes, silos, and definitions. I am able to separate the venue from the concert itself in my head (I do not, for example, blame Jon Bon Jovi for the bar running out of wine, nor do I blame The O2 for him not singing my favorite song), but I don’t have any interest in how the people at The O2 split responsibility for their facilities. Keeping the survey to a few, key, stand-out moments for me would still provide their team with some useful, actionable information, without boring me to the point where I stopped giving accurate answers.
When you create a Voice of the Customer program, don’t try to shoehorn that voice into your pigeonholes. Look at the experience from the customer’s point of view, and don’t force them into an opinion about something they didn’t even notice.
Oh, and if you run a concert venue—don’t run out of booze!
