I get many of my home services (Internet, phone, etc.) from Spectrum Communications. Occasionally, I have problems with their service. This has been true with all the other companies I've had providing services like DirecTV, A.T.& T., Charter Communications, Time-Warner Cable, etc. I've never found one to be markedly better than the others but I have to live with one of them.
Here's something they all seem to do in one form or another and it probably bothers me more than it should but, hey, that's what ranting on blogs is for.
I call them about a problem. I may have to call them several times but eventually, it gets solved. At various times during this process, I find myself talking to a computer that asks me to rate the employee with whom I have just conversed. They ask me was the person polite? Did the person provide a satisfactory solution to my problem? Did the person seen knowledgeable? Did the person explain the problem to me in a way I could understand? Et cetera.
And the problem with these questions is that, 85% of the time, what I really want to say, but the computer doesn't give me the opportunity to say, is "The person was fine. It's your company that's the problem!"
I have the same problem with some food delivery services. I order something to eat and after it arrives, I'm asked by text or a recorded voice on the phone to rate the person who delivered the meal to me. Were they on time? Were they polite?
There's no opportunity to rate the person who prepared the food — the person who put mayo and lettuce on it despite my clearly typed message, "NO MAYO AND NO LETTUCE!" The timeliness of the food's arrival is treated as the responsibility of the delivery person whereas its lateness, if late it be, is more likely a function of the food-preparer not getting it done promptly…or it could be that the company is just screwed-up. I am only being asked to rate the person who is probably least responsible for quality control, paid the least and the most easily-replaced.
And often, my options are all choices that do not apply. Spectrum always asks me if the person I spoke to provided a satisfactory solution to my problem. Sometimes, they do. Sometimes, they can't. One recent call to Spectrum resulted in the Spectrum employee on the other end of the line telling me it was beyond their ability and jurisdiction to fix my problem and they'd have someone in another division call me.
So how do I answer whether that person provided a satisfactory solution to my problem? My options are Yes and No. So it could be "Yes, they weren't able to fix it so they said someone else would call me" or "No, they weren't able to fix it so they said someone else would call me."
And then no one else called me. How do I rate the person who never called me? That's a rhetorical question because they never ask me to rate him or her.