I go to my favorite Apple Store and purchase some widget or other and before I get home there is an email wanting me to respond to this "important" document so they can make their service TO ME better. Order something on-line and before you get off their "page" you are asked to spend only a moment to answer a few questions about your experience. It's a corporate disease. Well, it's one of them. It infects businesses all over. We want to know what you think. What you think is important. Ya think?
It's marketing, pure and simple. I could stop here, but of course, I won't.
Here's how it goes. You receive a service, buy a widget or a new pair of socks and overnight get this questionnaire in the mail or via email because they really want to know what you think about their performance. Here's the hook: you really want to believe they want to know what YOU think, and that they have a room full of analytically trained people waiting to read what you say about their performance, and who have the power to change things you want changed. Right!
The marketers, aka, customer manipulators, know this about you and believe that even if you had a bad experience, IF you return your questionnaire with all negative answers, you will probably come back anyway to see if they fixed anything. Gotcha! The whole idea is to keep you connected to their shop. They couldn't care less what your reasons are just so you return.
Another way of seeing this amazing phenomenon is to recognize it for what it is: data mining. I don't care what you do when you have an experience with anyone in the public sector someone is collecting data about you to use "against" you. Well, maybe against is too strong a word but never in history are the words, LET THE BUYER BEWARE, more relevant.
there is only one way to make sure your personal dedicated information stays that way when you go shopping: bring cash. I'm giving this plan some serious thought. Recent items in the news about personal records - including credit card numbers - being stolen from your favorite retailer should be giving us all pause about this broken system that lays us all open to fraud. It's so easy to use a credit card for everything and pay one bill a month. Every time you swipe that sucker the great dark digital money troll licks her lips and whispers in her sinister soto-voce, thank you very much. And she ain't talking about money.
There is one bright spot on the horizon. It's called the Near Field Communication payment system, (NFC). To use it to pay for something you hold some device "near" the terminal and probably jump through some other hoop and Cha Ching! They have your money. No credit card is even touched. However in some of these systems the customer must yield some piece of identifiable data.
The latest iteration of such a process is called Apple Pay. As far as I can determine, it is the most secure of all the present systems. Banks are so "up" for it that they are assuming all the risk for any fraud that may occur. Here's the funny part about that: many retailers won't authorize Apple Pay and use some twisted English to justify such a bizarre position, claiming that they are more interested in some alternate process that will more fully increase customer satisfaction. WHAT THEY REALLY WANT IS CONTINUED ACCESS TO MORE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION AND IDENTIFIED BUYING HABITS. It's data mining folks. With Apple Pay there is no data to mine and therefore the resistance.
Like I said - bring cash. Refuse to give away your zip code, telephone number or email address. A guy at Radio Shack told me once that he needed my phone number or he couldn't complete the "cash" sale. I turned to leave and he caved in, of course. He was lying.
Before long there will be cameras at checkout positions with face recognition capabilities and you will have to wear a mask to keep your private information private.
So here I am out here on the internet with my bare face hanging out. Groan!
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