If one more company asks me for feedback I just might lose it

My partner is always annoyed when people fish for compliments. He says “If you impress people, they’ll tell you. You don’t have to ask.” Likewise, when I call someone to place an order or file a complaint, I let them know if they’ve met my needs. And if they do, I thank them. So why does every single interaction by phone or online result in a request to fill out a friggin’ survey?

Every call is recorded anyway. Presumably, someone listens to those calls to ensure a level of competence and appropriate conduct on the part of the representative. Why can’t they use those calls to figure out if their customers are satisfied without asking us to complete an assignment?

It would be one thing if the surveys were helpful. But none of them have a rating for being overly obsequious or assuming I’m either married or single. Nor do they offer options like “the rep was nice but your product sucks.”

In other words, the surveys are not designed to make the service better. Rather they appear to be designed to make the company feel better by providing a largely useless data point. Additionally, most focus solely on the helpfulness of the customer service person who answered the call, which is only half of the equation given that the issue that prompted the call has nothing to do with the representative.