I hate surveys. Being asked pointless questions, often under inducement of something that’d be less painful to just buy is annoying. Knowing the results are just going to end up in a spreadsheet from which I’m categorised and profiled to extract more money from me, just winds me up. To add insult to injury, given everybody else hates surveys too, being chased repeatedly pours petrol on the fire. When I used to travel more, staying in a hotel a few nights a week, I’d be in this ever compounding doom loop of surveys, chasers for surveys, chasers of chasers for surveys, and that was for stays from 3 weeks ago with a tsunami of new ones still to come. Then I’d need to review the nailclippers I bought two months ago, that they’ve now nagged me 5 times for. Arrrgh!
So, having established that surveys are annoying, pointless and executed in a way that is downright entitled and aggressive, we’re going to do the unthinkable – send you a survey!!
Please allow me to explain!
I’m on a bit of a journey into human psychology and suspect we risk an excess of logic in our business. Objectively, I believe we have technical features a decade ahead of everyone else, our economics are unrivalled where we need to get tasty with price, and we have amazing people. So why aren’t we a monopoly? By logic we should be but there’s other factors at play and they’re often really individual. I want to understand the non-logic from your perspective.
I know in my own life there are companies I will go out of my way to avoid dealing with for reasons unique to me. I’ll make illogical choices because of what makes me, me, and whatever cumulative life experience went into whatever incident potentially didn’t even happen to shape my relationship with them. Where I do deal with people, as long-term relationships evolve, there’s a kind of give and take develops, and understanding needs and expectations there is critical as they’re terribly easy to breach. It is an interesting field that has piqued my interest, especially as it signals less logic and less automation, which runs counter to everything we’ve done to date.
We also know that as – what the colouring-in department would call – a ‘brand’, Simwood, and I in particular, are provocative. We’ve genuinely had members of the public phoning our office to thank us for truth-spilling blog posts, but at the same time competitors like to whisper in dark corners about the latest things I’ve said or done that they’ve chosen to be offended by and revel in the Simon-hate. I’ve said before that if you don’t stand for something you, by definition, stand for nothing but some people prefer non-confrontational blandness, or perhaps pick their fights more carefully, while others might love us fighting their corner. Either way, your view on this one example area will alter your affection for Simwood while having diddly squat to do with our uptime, capabilities or pricing – the logical factors we continue to optimise.
To give you a non-Simwood example, when you order from Five Guys, the burgers are expensive because they have a high perceived value and the fries come in three sizes. Whichever size fries you order affects the size of cup you get, which they always fill, but they always put an extra scoop of fries in the bag. Why? The human brain disproportionately values the fries they didn’t need to give you. A technical person would make the cup bigger. A finance person would take away the extra scoop. A consultant would charge for the extra fries. And all three would destroy value in the eyes of Five Guys’ customers through the application of perfectly sound logic. I’m really hoping to understand some of these kind of factors in our business so we can better shape what we do to suit your needs and expectations, and ensure long-standing customers feel treasured – ensuring we don’t take away free fries in pursuit of efficiency, and quietly appreciate things that you value and don’t get anywhere else.
Likewise, there are things you might tell a friend about why not to deal with us. Counterintuitively, we’re not necessarily looking to fix those as they may result from core values, e.g. we filter more nuisance calls than other carriers and that annoys you. However, we trade on our transparency and openness and can envisage giving prospective customers a list of these reasons. That isn’t to say of course there aren’t some humdingers in there we want to fix immediately because we have a blindspot to them!
You have my assurance I’ll be looking through the results personally (as will our whole team) and we’re open to changes which seem counterintuitive, which I hope makes this about as non-survey as a survey can be! Your brutal honesty would be very much appreciated. You can complete it anonymously but given trolls and our wish to fix anything untoward, I really hope you’ll put contact details in.
