Are you overwhelmed by the constant requests to complete customer satisfaction surveys? If you are, you might want to know that, at least to some extent, our universities could be blamed for facilitating this development.

A long-standing practice in universities, much dreaded by academics, is the student teaching evaluation, usually conducted at the end of the semester. These evaluations are proudly mined by academics who apply for promotion, selecting positive, or flattering comments to bolster their promotion chances, whilst relegating any negative comments to the dustbin of history.

The completion and collection of these surveys are prone to corruption. Since this system only captures students’ personal perspectives, it does not assess whether their critical thinking skills have improved. It is not uncommon for some academics, on the day of the evaluation, to organise a morning tea for their students, or offer other inducements to influence their views.

To obtain an academic promotion, it is certainly not a good idea to be a diligent academic who marks examinations rigorously. In marking examinations, less capable students are able via these student surveys to punish the teacher who acts with greater academic rigour than others. One of the authors of this piece was once advised by university administrators to review his marks (and examination criteria) because about 15 out of his more than 270 law students had failed the unit. This was clearly regarded as ‘bad for the business’.

These practices, which have long been standard in academia, are now widespread across society. Once you have bought something or used a service, you will be asked to fill out a survey soon afterwards. Typically, these surveys are described as essential tools for understanding the value that customers derive from the service, and for providing insights into the experiences and preferences of the service providers’ clientele.

Although we have had reservations about this practice for a long time, it is only lately that the practice started to be annoying because of the number, intensity, and persistence of these requests. One of the authors of this piece recently took his car to the dealership for its annual service. A few days before, he had received an extensive list of questions which the dealership urged him to answer ‘to facilitate’ the process of admission. And when he collected the car, the friendly employee, responsible for managing the service, told him that he would receive a customer satisfaction survey soon. ‘Would you please mention that I did an excellent job looking after you, sir,’ he said. And he promptly offered him a chocolate to compensate for his willingness to comply with the request!

Nowadays, customer satisfaction surveys are common, and usually aim at soliciting responses that complement individuals just for doing their job. The practice has securely ensconced itself in government circles and invaded private businesses as a noxious species. It is not unusual, depending on a person’s activities, to receive four to five such requests each day. On the day he took the car to the dealership, the author of this opinion piece also received a request from his dentist to complete a form, available in their convenient patient portal, in anticipation of his impending visit to the surgery; an invitation from a bank to tell them how well they did when he last visited the branch; and from an online retailer inquiring how they could improve his customer experience.

If you were to conscientiously consider all these requests, you could easily spend two hours doing somebody else’s job without compensation. It is likely that this practice has increased the cost of the goods or services because someone needs to design the survey, and read, assess, and interpret the responses and, in some cases follow up with a telephone call (provided, of course, there are still ‘humans’ manning the telephone), especially if the survey reveals that the customer did not have a good experience. Of course, this assumes that the surveys’ responses are read in the first place.

What is really irking is the fact that these surveys, in the guise of improving the customers’ experience, requires people to disclose a lot of private, personal information. Usually, if you leave a question unanswered, the survey will not let you move forward. In such cases, the customer is stuck and is hopelessly frustrated, resulting in him or her to abandon the evaluation altogether. Also, the last question on these surveys is usually an invitation to please make any other comments you might have. It is effectively an invitation to write a short essay for the purpose of justifying the customers’ views!

As a reader of this opinion piece, you may find the above comments to be unnecessarily acerbic, or amusing. In fact, you might even be on the side of those who believe that these evaluation surveys are copacetic tools for the purpose of achieving excellence in service delivery. We could support this perspective if actions were based on reasonable and well-considered feedback from customers. But, often, the failure to bring about any measurable change in the operations of a service provider suggests there is no guarantee that the surveys’ responses have even been seriously considered.

While preparing for a routine surgery, one of the authors of this opinion piece was asked to fill out a twelve-page admission survey covering every aspect of his health history. He also discovered that most of the information to be disclosed had been retained on the hospital’s system since an earlier admission, which had occurred may years earlier. Surely, this constitutes a violation of Australian Privacy Principle Number 11(2) according to which an entity that holds personal information about an individual; and:

the entity no longer needs the information for any purpose for which the information may be used or disclosed by the entity … and

the information is not contained in a Commonwealth record; and

the entity is not required by or under an Australian law, or court/tribunal order, to retain the information.

the entity must take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to destroy the information or to ensure that the information is de-identified.

Maybe some years back, he checked a box in a hospital satisfaction survey that asked, ‘Would you like the hospital to keep this information?’ so that future admissions could be quicker and easier. Unfortunately, many of these surveys do not even ask the person surveyed if the information provided can be kept indefinitely recorded. In fact, we strongly suspect that many of the calls from services we did not request are the direct result of surveys in which details about us were not kept confidential but passed on to other groups or organisations.

The real issue is this: Does this customer satisfaction mania really leads to, or results in, better and more efficient management services for the public? It is entirely understandable to feel sceptical about these survey requests because they interrupt individuals’ busy schedules and involve disclosing sensitive, personal details that are no longer under their control once shared. We doubt that the completion of these surveys enhances customers’ experience.

So, if we are right, customer satisfaction surveys are a questionable higher education by-product that is now used prolifically in all sectors of society. Of course, in the case of higher education providers, these surveys assume that students are mere customers of an educational service that somehow entitles them to a university diploma. It is certainly a case of our universities having an ‘impact’, but is it the kind of impact we really value or is it merely an exercise in virtue signalling and smugness? What do you think?