Feedback or a Pat on the Back?

I went through the drive-through at my bank the other day. I sent a check in through the tube to be deposited and they sent me back a receipt. As I extracted the receipt, the teller said to me, "You might receive a telephone survey today. Please remember to rate us excellent on every question." I nodded and thought nothing of it. But then, as I pulled away, I heard the teller for the guy in the line next to me say the very sane thing. And this got me thinking...

Why do companies offer surveys? Is it truly for feedback or is it really for a pat on the back? The instance with my bank was not the first time I was asked not only to fill out a survey but to fill it out a certain way. Most likely, it is pressure put on the retail workers that forces them to ask for positive feedback. If they don't get perfect scores on these surveys, management comes down hard on them. And then we as consumers end up saying we are more satisfied than we really are, merely out of sympathy for the line workers. The company issuing the survey gets the results of the survey back and think they are doing just fine.

If the survey actually measures the value of the retail worker, there is some justification for it. A bad survey can alert management of a poor employee. But what if the problem is management itself? What if the employee is just acting out the systems that the manager has in place? Often, this is the case in retail. The line worker is just doing what he or she is told. Yet, they and the managers above them as well as the managers of those managers have an incentive to guilt the customer into exaggerating satisfaction. How is this helpful?

Perhaps we are confusing the purpose of a survey with the purpose of a review. We want all reviews of us to be positive, because they are used as marketing tools for future customers. A survey, however, should be used for constructive criticism. We don't want our employees to get excellent feedback? What on earth can we do with that? We want to know what we're doing wrong. What want to know what we can improve. We want feedback, not a pat on the back. Just once, I would like to purchase something and have the salesperson say to me, "You may receive a telephone survey. Please remember to say exactly everything about the sales process that you were DISSATISFIED with."