After a recent flight, Jet Blue sent me a survey. There were several problems with the survey. For one, it was poorly written. It asked me a series of questions and asked me to provide responses on the old sliding scale, from “less than expected” to “better than expected.”
Given that I am a relatively active traveler who flies Jet Blue extensively, most of my answers are naturally of the middle of the road, “as expected,” variety. I have come to expect a quality experience from them, as compared to say Spirit Air.
The final straw in the proverbial hat was the overall length of the survey. While I am often willing to provide my feedback to a vendor (understanding how important it is to my own business), there is only so much time I will dedicate to this task. The survey was extremely long. It dynamically updated the questions based on my responses, and the page continued to grow in what felt like an exponential manner. This was the survey that felt like it just kept growing and growing and growing.
While I clicked on the link in the email with the best of intentions of providing feedback to what I feel is a superior airline company, the experience was so horrendous that the survey began to be more of an intrusion than was worth my time. In addition to all this, there was not even an offer for some basic, menial coupon, with some insane restrictions, that I would never use to help lube the process.
Lessons to consider: Be conscious of who you target for surveys. Ask relevant questions that demonstrate some basic consideration of the usage patterns of the sample population. Be brief and respectful of that participants time. Provide some incentive to reward the participants for their time and feedback.
Oh yeah, crazy amount of javascript code in surveys to enable the dynamic display of questions … provably a bad idea. The company fueling the survey, Market Metrix.
Tags: customer satisfaction, design, JetBlue, Market Metrix, surveys, user experience review