Muse: Undercover Suckless Police

Yes, I’m bouncing around. A few weeks ago, I was talking about nuts.

Today, I’m talking about something totally different.

But that’s the idea. At least for now. It’s part of my creative process for understanding what’s next.

Everything sucks

I’m a pretty level-headed guy. Even-keeled, some would say.

It’s tough to knock me out of my stability orbit.

But if there’s one thing that gets to me, it’s sucky service and lack of give-a-damn.

Not that we need another example, but our pool pavers are lifting up. It’s becoming a pretty big safety issue. So I called the pool company two days ago. It kept ringing and ringing. No answer. No voice mail. I hung up and filled out the form on their website. I still haven’t heard anything, two days later.

We’ve come to expect this level of crappy service.

No return calls, no email replies, never-ending phone trees (“Press 1 for this, 2 for that.”), ticket systems, and other sucky suckiness. The bar is so low.

Secret shopper suckless police

So this got me thinking.

Is there a way to highlight issues like this for businesses so that they can be better and less sucky?

I see it as a mix between secret shoppers and “best place to work”-type certifications.

Traditionally, secret shoppers are people who anonymously visit a business, interact with the staff, and report back on their overall experience. It’s mostly a manual process.

“Best place to work” certifications are often done by emailing a survey to the employees of the company. Then, based on the responses, the company is deemed “best place to work” (or not). We did this at Forge3 a few times.

If we combine these two concepts into one, could we build a system (and company) around testing various pieces of the customer experience in a more automated, objective way?

Let’s use my wobbly pool pavers as an example.

I’m sure the pool company doesn’t strive to be sucky. My guess is that they don’t even know that the phone kept ringing endlessly or that my website form submission seemingly got stuck in a black hole.

But if these things were tested, objectively, by an outside party, and then turned into a report with pretty graphs and related details, wouldn’t that be helpful? I think so.

Perhaps there’s also an element of ranking businesses across industries. That way, they (and their prospects) can see where those businesses rank when it comes to delivering a good customer experience.

Or, is “good enough” the new standard?

I was talking with a friend the other day about some of this. She agreed that most service sucks.

However, she brought up something that might be both true and disappointing.

Do businesses simply not care about this stuff anymore?

Is general suckiness “good enough” to get by?

I certainly hope not, but maybe I’m younik.