My flight was delayed three hours last week. Not fun—but I consoled myself with airport sushi (a gamble I survived) and conversations with several American Airlines employees. Naturally, the next day, a survey hit my inbox.
They wanted my feedback.
Here’s the thing: they already know my feedback. They know I missed my connection. They know I was delayed three hours. Why pretend like they need me to repeat the obvious?
And it’s not just airlines. Airports now install machines in bathroom stalls so you can rate your restroom experience after touching the screen. Gross—and pointless.
Everywhere you turn, someone wants a survey. After every call, every purchase, every email, every bathroom break, there’s another “tell us how we did.” We’re all fatigued. But the real problem isn’t that customers are tired of surveys. The problem is that companies don’t actually use them to improve service.
The Dirty Secret of Surveys
Here’s the dirty little secret: most companies don’t care about your feedback. What they care about is a number.
An aggregate score they can plaster in a press release, wave in front of investors, or tie to executive bonuses. If your feedback is glowing, great—it fuels marketing. If it’s nuclear, maybe you get a follow-up. But the middle? Straight to the void.
There’s an entire “Voice of the Customer” industry built on this flimsy math: if customers give you higher scores, then customers will buy more stuff. Sounds nice. Doesn’t work that way.
I’m living proof. I’ve given McDonald’s a great drive-thru score before. Did that make me a McDonald’s evangelist? Absolutely not.
When I Was on the Other Side
As a customer service executive, I lived this game. A big part of my bonus was tied to Net Promoter Score (NPS)—that one-question survey asking how likely you are to recommend a company. Because my pay depended on it, I had one mission: move the number up.
And there are a thousand ways to goose that number without actually making customer service better. None of them involve the hard, expensive, long-term work of fixing systems, training employees, or aligning incentives.
What We’ve Lost
When surveys become the product, service takes a backseat. Instead of asking: how do we take care of our customers? companies ask: how do we protect the score?
That’s why service feels worse, not better, despite millions of surveys flying around. Because companies already know the truth from the data they have: delays, missed connections, canceled orders, broken promises. They just don’t want to confront it.
Until they do, your bathroom-stall feedback machine isn’t worth the touch.
Amas Tenumah is a digital philosopher, keynote speaker, customer service thought leader, and long-time CCNG member/content contributor. Amas’s thoughts are featured on NPR, NBC, Fox-business and other outlets. He has spent over 20 years in customer service and now advises executives on service modernization. Amas is also an author and has written books including Waiting for Service, The Curated Experience, The Joyful Stoic, and No One Wants Customer Service.
