6 Reasons Online Surveys Are Meaningless

It's an unrecognized epidemic in this country, an ungodly hybrid offspring of American obliviousness and the social media boom, the "Fugly, Retarded, Redheaded Stepchild," if you will (that being the scientifically-preferred term).  Online surveys.  Sure, they have been around for quite a while, but you, as a savvy netizen, could spot the telltale signs it was bogus - words were misspelled or atrociously punctuated, an unidentifiable cartoon creature was daring you to click it, or the whole popup flashed and shook in an infantile bid to seize your attention (premised on the assumption that you, like a toddler, would inevitably touch a shiny, moving object).  But, hey, what did it matter?  Nothing actually rode on those surveys, which were mostly just attempts to get you to click on a link and possibly pay for something you didn't need or want.

You can totally trust anything pushed by a spokesthing called 'the Annoying Thing.'

Times have changed.  In the flurry to stay connected to absolutely everything pointless absolutely all the time, even if theoretically you really don't want to be connected to things like flash-mobs or Pauly D, the unsuspecting populace has bought into the conceit of these polls' validity.  This is because the powers behind the digital revolution (think of them as a combination of the Matrix, the Dark Side of the Force and that giant floating eyeball of fiery doom in Lord of the Rings) have subliminally implanted the idea that reality is only real if it is trackable, quantifiable.  And the masses have taken the bait.  Actually, it's becoming hard to tell who's putting on who, and whether the companies behind online surveys are buying their own bullshit, but corporations and the marketers who work for them have decided, presumably, that it doesn't really matter: you go with the trend because it's popular, not because it has any relevance or truth.

*Censored to protect the guilty (me).

Yes, these are "legitimate" polls from my Facebook sidebar.

Recently, this trend has assumed the form of customer-feedback surveys, which, if you haven't noticed, are distributed by fucking everyone now, including the homeless guy who accosted you for 73 cents and a half-smoked Pall Mall.  While I am no advertising guru, I did take some classes on statistics and research methodology, and my Bullshit-Meter is pretty finely-tuned, of course.  And I can tell you most of these polls are about as scientific as throwing darts at a spinning wheel of possibilities.  While blindfolded.  And hammered.  And the darts are carrot-sticks.  Aside from extremely vague, sweeping generalities, you are not going to get any actionable data from them, for several reasons . . .

1) They are self-selective.

Nobody has to take these surveys, and no specific criteria ensures that a wide, representative range of people will.  It is random, but not in the way you want as a statistician.  You want a random sample from across your entire spectrum, not just coincidentally-high numbers from the 'R' and 'G-BI' parts of ROY-G-BIV.

In other words, never trust a fucking rainbow to do shit itself.

2) They discriminate against all kinds of demographics.

You know who doesn't use a com-pu-tor much?  Your great-grandmother Gladys.  Try convincing her to - on her own, assuming she has a computer and Web access and any familiarity with "the Google" - go online and take this survey about a place she barely remembers visiting anyway.  Or what about people without regular computer access?  Scoff all you want, there are still plenty of citizens even in the Godblessed, good ol' US of A who don't have that, and they must use their coveted half-hour of Internet time at the public library to work around the porn-filters.

While trying to hide a boner in a public environment.

Guess who else doesn't respond to surveys?  People like me, who consider them a waste of time.  That means precisely jack-shit about my opinion of the company in question, I just don't feel the need to provide a detailed workup of my experiences with said company.  I still may go to them and spend more money there than several survey-subjects, so whose opinion matters more?

3) They disproportionately represent negative responses.

Quick: which are you more likely to do, compliment or bitch about a stranger?  What if it was also relatively challenging and time-consuming to do so?  And there was no particular reason to?  Well, that is exactly what it's like taking these surveys.  How awesome does your experience with a business need to be that you are going to take home the receipt and, within the allotted 3 days, go online, find the website, enter all of the codes and identifying info, then sit through a 12-page survey of repetitive, inane queries?

The food was excellent, I loved the ambiance, and then my server blew me.  Keep up the good work!

In short, most customers aren't that motivated, because - spoiler alert! - they don't care.  But you know what does light a fire under their asses?  Anger.  Indignation.  A perceived slight or grievous wrong.  Pure vindictive vitriol is the best fuel to keep a person slogging through a seemingly endless stream of asinine questions.  Yes, it is important to address genuine complaints, but thinking you are going to get an accurate overall picture of your company's customer-satisfaction rate from these polls is akin to querying the magic 8-ball until it gives you the reply you want, except backwards.

Nope, wrong again!  *Shake.*

4) They are usually inadequate, poorly-worded, or redundant.

How many times when taking a survey, any survey, have you said to yourself, "Wow, it's really amazing how perfectly this set of predetermined responses accurately represents my precise thoughts and feelings on every subject, omitting no potential alternative?"  If you are at all like me, you can count the number of times on one hand, at best.  Or more likely your tongue.  I will wager the tally is far larger in the, "Wait, what the fuck does this question even mean?" column.  That's the bitch of language: it means something slightly different to each person, especially morons, which is who you are courting with these surveys for the most part.  Add to this the fact that many of them essentially ask the same thing over and over.

When language becomes a barrier, you increase the risk of it skewing your numbers, because subjects either don't understand what they are being asked or grow tired of it and simply start clicking to get the shit over with.  Or they just quit.

5) They do not account for repeated results.

There is nothing to stop the same customer from taking the survey over and over again.  In fact, given the relentless ever-mounting pressure most companies put on their employees to garner quantifiable results, they are actually demanding repeat respondents. Not only does this become difficult if you work somewhere that the same people regularly visit ("Can you please go online and rave about me for the sixth time this month, ma'am?  Thanks!"), it wholly undermines the validity of the poll numbers.  Yes, you can track when people repeatedly take the damn thing, but are you really going to write filtering algorithms to account for them differently?  My bet is no.  There is a reason you aren't allowed to vote as many times as you want in an election.

Because Gary Busey would go to the polls enough times to elect himself president, that's why, and you damned well know it.

6) They bribe you to take them.

Hardly a one of these surveys fails to promise the chance of some reward for taking it.  Otherwise, seriously, why would you bother?  Are you inbred?  But enticing respondents with free food or prizes or cash or handjobs automatically means these people are probably not there first and foremost to supply honest, thoughtful opinions.  They want the handjobs.  Who doesn't?

Ok, fine, finger-bangs for you.

Some people will take their time and try to be sincere, some will be malicious and scatter their answers all over the map simply to fuck with the numbers, and some will just rush through it as quickly as they can, because they have no vested interest in the outcome aside from getting the fabulous prize.  It could be argued that any survey runs the same risk, but when you put a pot of gold at the end of the untrustworthy rainbow, you are giving the respondents one more reason to be less than truthful.

While these flaws may not all apply to each feedback survey, it only takes a few to undermine their integrity and thus usefulness.  That is the bitch about statistics.  The geniuses who came up these things may opine that somehow this massive mishmash of biases somehow average out to an accurate profile, with each oversight or blunder negating another, but the truth is fairly apparent: as "experts" in the field of schilling shit, they have figured out the easiest people to exploit are the ones who ask you to help them exploit their own customers.  So, they tout the superlative importance of constant user-feedback in the form of verified poll data, cite the explosive growth of social media awareness, and then warn the corporation contracting them that all of this is absolutely necessary to business success, despite the fact no business relied on this crap in the history of business prior to approximately 4 years ago.

So what?  you might be inclined to think.  What does it matter if the surveys suck worse at their jobs than George W. Bush?  Well, it really wouldn't, except that companies are now putting huge emphasis on them.  As in, these are being considered key indicators of business performance.  Trust me, I work for a franchise where this is the case.  And a mere lack of negative responses doesn't help.  Hell, even above-average marks do not count for us.  Only receiving the best possible scores constitutes a win in our column, which is like saying your sports team only moves up in the league standings if they beat the competition by a massive margin every game.

Sorry, Kobe, that's just not good enough.  Can't you score more points?

Anything else goes against us, as a store, as a team, and as individuals.  For the love of Gallup, we have a specific quota of survey responses we must accrue per month, otherwise we are failing, no matter what.  Our managers' bonuses rely in large part on the volume of traffic our marketing-provider's website sees.  Our budget is affected by this.  Our livelihoods are threatened over this: the masses filling out online surveys.  Not sales figures, not repeat business, not labor costs . . . surveys, the trump card, the I-Ching, end-all-be-all of performance measurement.  Surveys that in all probability don't even mean a goddamned thing.

Sure, the restaurant may look busy, but how can you truly know it's successful if they're not filling out surveys?

Oh, and some of these surveys even have the temerity to ask you, at the end, if you want to participate in future studies (ie. receive spam from the company for the remainder of your natural life).  A few will even invite you to sell out your family and friends for such "studies."  In other words, it's ultimately about how many people you can add to your company's mailing list, pure and simple.  Because, you know, e-mailing fliers is the only way any business has ever succeeded.