I think I have identified a new species of junk mail — the customer satisfaction survey. More and more it seems I find these things in the mail along with incessant credit card applications, dubious offers to refinance mortgages and school loans, and the expensive but irresistible American Girl Doll catalogs. I’ve made it a general policy than unless I have some beef with the organization, and actually plan to use them again in the future, I immediately throw these surveys in the trash.

Some people might say that these companies are only trying to improve themselves and we consumers have an obligation to help them. I figure why should I spend my time trying to help out their business. If they want to hire me as a consultant that would be fine, but why should I provide this service for free. Isn’t my time worth anything?

Not only have these surveys proliferated, but it also seems that many organizations have become very aggressive about trying to get high ratings. I remember one healthcare organization that had posters everywhere begging for high ratings and the staff continually seemed to be talking about it. I would prefer it if they were more concerned about my wife Diane’s medical condition than their rating.

Recently after making a major purchase, we must have received six phone calls encouraging us to give the seller high ratings on a survey that was to arrive by mail shortly. One caller was actually argumentative. I asked myself why are these people wasting our time? It seems to me that these folks are really missing the point. If anyone desires excellent customer satisfaction ratings, then they should provide exemplary services, (including terrific prices and added value), respect for their customer, and follow-through on their promises. Trying to beg, harangue, or intimidate customers into giving high survey ratings just tends to annoy us. They are trying to get the appearance of customer satisfaction without doing the real work. It’s sort of like a doctor, touching up the x-rays rather than correcting the problem, or a teacher teaching the test.

I know that most companies are only trying to get information in order to improve their organizations. Customer satisfaction is, of course, one of the main factors in customer retention and loyalty. Most places where I’ve worked routinely conduct patient satisfaction surveys, focus groups, and other such evaluation activities as a matter of course. I think these are all great methods, but I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone for opting out of participation.

Many corporations have tied employee salaries and bonuses to good ratings on customer satisfaction surveys and this seems to be driving the extra effort to get high ratings. As you might expect, some people are not above trying to rig the results.

In May of this year the Charlotte North Carolina Observer reported that Beazer Homes USA, offer to pay some new homebuyers $100 to give them high ratings on their customer satisfaction survey. Evidently, this was done, so that some executives could earn a bonus that the company had tied to good performance on the survey.

A few years ago Volvo Cars of North America, piloted a program to eliminate customer satisfaction surveys to evaluate its dealers. Most automobile manufacturers traditionally grade dealers based on customer satisfaction surveys, and many pay bonuses based upon these scores. Volvo, for example, gave a 14 percent discount off of sticker prices on new vehicles to dealers with the best customer satisfaction scores. Automotive News quoted Volvo’s Executive Vice President, Marti Eulberg as saying “Customers have been surveyed to death.” She also felt that dealerships put way too much emphasis on these scores. Some sales people had even been known to substitute their own cell phone numbers, in the place of the customers numbers, in order to intercept calls for the customer satisfaction survey. In this case, the carrot on the stick turned out to be rotten.

In February 2004, Automotive News reported that Ford Motors shortened its customer satisfaction survey by half and was looking at possibly dropping the dreaded top box scoring method, in which its dealers only got credit, if the customer checked the top box, indicating the highest possible level of satisfaction. The same article reported that some dealerships were coaching customers to give top scores, undermining the objectivity and value of the survey.

So it seems that our experiences are not so unique. As many industries have moved towards “relationship marketing”— looking to build a long-term collaboration with their customers, the key issue seems to be trust. Can you trust the organization to do the right thing by you? Let’s face it, bullying people into giving high satisfaction scores is a poor way to develop trust.

Terry L. Stawar, Ed.D. lives in Georgetown and is the CEO of LifeSpring in Jeffersonville. He can be reached at tstawar@lifespr.com or 812-206-1234