love me

I'm not liking this new trend in customer service where every product I use wants my constant feedback. Don't get me wrong—when I'm fired up about something, I relish a platform to speak my mind. However, when I don't have a particularly strong feeling about the way my online chat with a Sprint representative met my minimum expectations, just about anything sounds more fun than taking a brief survey to rate on a scale of 1-10 how adequately "Stephanie" in Mumbai answered my question today.

I get it: You need to be able to identify where customers aren't satisfied so you can make the changes you need to keep them. But endless probing about your performance comes off as a little needy and insecure.

For some companies, it's not enough to get feedback and fix problems where they exist. No, they demand perfection. If you don't give them an "excellent" rating for every category, they want to know why or what they can do better. I'll tell you why. Because excellence means doing more than simply what I asked. For that, you're "average"...maybe even "good." It's like when you were in school and the whole class did badly on a test and asked the teacher to grade it on a curve, and then the teacher said you wouldn't want that if you knew what it really meant—that most of you would get a C, not an A. As for what you can do better, it's not my responsibility to brainstorm ways you can impress me. Why can't you just be happy with your "good" rating knowing that I'm satisfied?

This is a slippery slope, my friends. Next will be the customer satisfaction survey to rate what we thought of the actual survey. "Well, question 5 was a little too personal for me, and I think only having the options of 'poor,' 'good,' and 'excellent' to choose from just smacks of racism."