What’s in it for Me?

I get quite a lot of requests from businesses asking for feedback and for me to fill in a survey to ‘help them to improve their services’.

What I find more and more is that the first thing I look for is what’s in it for me? Why should I spend 3, 5 10 or even more of my precious minutes of the day filling in survey’s to improve services that I sometimes hardly use?

Is it wrong to expect some kind of incentive to give something and receive something back? Have I become too consumerised in my want for something for nothing? Well for me it’s not nothing, time is precious, time is money, so why should I give it away to make someone else more money by giving them advise and tips on how to make their products or services better? Some companies pay good money for that kind of insight and others want it for free.

So if anyone out there reading this is thinking of sending a survey to get better insight into how we use your service, just so that you can make it better – and no I don’t think an improved service is reward enough for my time, that should be a given, not an add on if I complete a survey – then please consider why the person you sent it to should fill it in.

You never know you may just get better results.