I’ve talked about telephone surveys before but they seem to be increasing rather than reducing. I have many problems with telephone surveys not to mention the sheer number of them. It’ll usually start something like “Blah Blah Blah, we’re doing a Blah Blah and should only take a few moments of your time.” Asking for further clarification on the time involved I’m usually met with “Oh no more than 20 to 25 minutes”. In a typical working day I have only 16 half hour slots so you want me to spend 1/16th of my day telling you everything about us so that we can receive loads more unwanted mail? No thank you very much.

Many a time when turning down surveys I’ll be met with abrupt rudeness, sudden disconnection or annoying statements like “Are you really the one who makes buying decisions” or the classic “can I talk to your boss?” which is really going to get on my good side.

For those that get through this far, and some do, we enter the twilight zone of me saying things like “What was that?”, or “What did you say?” or “What were the options again?” as I can’t often hear clearly because we work in an open office and so usually do the people at the other end of the phone. While I’m on the subject, why are there 10 options. “Now remember 1 means unhappy and 10 means very happy” - Ok - so what does 6 mean? or 7? or 8 or 9 even? Plucking numbers out of the air between 5 and 10 or 1 and 5 surely doesn’t help anybody or the survey and the pressure you’re under to get the survey closed quickly doesn’t give you time to think through the range of options. I’ll often need to backtrack much to the annoyance of the caller. Then we enter the phase of mind-numbing meaningless numeric responses where those around me will hear me say things like “5,3,8,9,1,2,5,3,9,1″ or “happy,happy,happy,unhappy,no opinion,happy,happy,happy,unhappy,” etc etc.

What I want to know is in this day and age why aren’t ALL surveys conducted over the Internet? I have processed a few and they are far better - usually I can start and come back later if I need to, saving the responses so far, I can easily read and understand each question and fully consider my responses -leading to a far better survey submission. It’s got to be a win for everyone.

Isn’t it time to put telephone surveys to rest?