Comment by jlund-molfese
6 hours ago
In the old days, you'd take a survey on a McDonald's receipt and get a coupon for a free fry or something. These days, every product will sign you up for a newsletter without consent, ask for a review, or beg you to spend your time on a survey after the smallest interaction. Everything from the Art Institute of Chicago to Cava (a fast casual restaurant). And it's not just once, they'll send you reminders too. In-app, the prompts stack up on each other. I dread opening Jellyfish because I know I'll have to click through more than one pop up every time I want to check something quick. No, I still don't want to go to your conference, I'm trying to get work done.
Why can't they at least offer something of small value, like 10% off your next food order, or some API credits, so it's a fairer exchange? I guess because everyone's doing it, no individual product gets penalized for annoying their users.
There are exceptions of course, like Kagi. But they're far and few between.
When they send these 30-question surveys, surely they must be aware that the people who respond are not a random sample of the customer population but a sample of the subpopulation that is willing to take a 30-question survey for them?
Simple. Your mistake is assuming that these surveys used to gather actual information.
The 30 questions satisfy all of the bikeshedding smoothbrains in the survey-design-committee. The survey itself isn't used to make informed decisions to improve the product, but entirely to justify the manager's impact and thus everybody's bonuses.
I have trash mail box that I don’t really open besides clicking confirmation links.
I also use Firefox relay just to vary stuff a bit to throw wrench into tracking.
Often, they'll ask for the review before I even had the time to really use the product. Like, I've just laid my hands on this thing, how am I supposed to know anything yet?!