The other day I received an email from a website I registered with, asking me for feedback. The website provides training in different technologies and a lot of times they have special offers and even free courses that I am more than happy to take.
I consider asking for feedback as being a good example of service design. It shows that the company is looking to improve and they are open to suggestions. They want to learn what their customers want in order to implement the changes and perfect their services to fit the customers’ needs.
Most of the times this goes well. People like to be asked about their opinion: this gives them confidence and the feel that their opinion matters. In my case, I know if I was the one asking for feedback I would like people to respond and this is why I usually reply to the feedback questioners.
There are a few things that make me ignore the feedback requests and this email had one of them: spelling and grammar mistakes.
After some introductory phrases which were more or less grammatically correct I was asked to answer the following question:
Would you mind answering a simple question for me?
If you could recieving training the you wanted it, what would it look like?
And this is an example of service design that went wrong. At first I felt good for being asked for feedback and I genuinely wanted to reply. I even ignored the spelling and grammar mistakes in the introduction but when I arrived to the first and only question in the survey I gave up.
I know that there are dyslexic people and even foreign people which have a difficulty with spelling and grammar (and I am one of them) but when it comes to the image and credibility of a company they should be aware that most of the email services provide a spell check and if not, Microsoft Word has also incorporated a spelling and grammar check.
What is your opinion on this? Do you usually give feedback when being asked? What makes you ignore the feedback questioners?
Picture by Jacques Strappe
5 comments:
I don't think those errors would put me off giving feedback. Usually it's a time thing. Like right now, I have some time as I'm just browsing the web, and I can leave a comment. If you emailed me on a busy day asking for feedback you'd have to wait. If it is just customer service... I might forget entirely.
I wonder if you may be more harsh about spelling as you're more critical of yourself. I see so many spelling errors in print and on the web... I enjoy finding them, but I don't take much offense. However, my blood would boil if I put something to print with spelling errors. That's why I hire a professional proofreader!
I really think proofreaders are under-employed in thie country... the newspapers have alot to answer for.
So funny, I have a typo in my comment! Seems I care much more about print than the web :)
Cristina,
To give a simple answer to your question.... whether it is an e-mail to be replied to or a site looking for feed-back I am always less inclined to respond if the site/e-mail contains grammatical errors or is poorly punctuated.
In the case of websites this is most important, they are generally trying to express a professional outlook and to have spelling and grammatical errors is quite simply... unprofessional.
With e-mail it is a little different, if the communique is from a professional outfit then I expect just that, professionalism, not a half-baked and sloppy piece.
Unfortunately with personal e-mails I am noticing more and more that people are using 'text lingo', this is most unfortunate and does not auger well for the correct use of language whatsoever. Moreover it is completely needless as there is no limit to the number of characters entered and therfore no need to use this horrible abbreviated lingo. Even with sms I become annoyed when people spell my name as Mat or use d insted of the...
So, not alone is it unprofessional and inconsiderate, it is also destroying the language and the ability for oneself to express themselves correctly.
Thank you very much Heather and Matt for taking the time to comment.
Heather I believe you might be right to say that we are harsher about spelling as we are more critical of ourselves. I also believe our spelling represents us or in this case the company we work for.
Matt I think you are right in that the 'text lingo' is destroying the language but I tend to be more forgiving when it comes to personal emails than I am when I receive a professional email.
I don't come from an English speaking country so I would be the first to make mistakes but I am trying my best not to.
I believe that taking the extra time to spell check what we write might make a big difference in terms of trust and getting the expected answer.