Work continues apace on Act II. My next release will be everything up to the skirmish between the Enterprise and the planet killer, and I’ll also be re-releasing the video thus far on YouTube later this week.
Meanwhile, I’m going to do something I normally don’t do, and that’s to mix my personal blog with my professional life. Some of you may know that I work as a software engineer at Vovici Corporation, an enterprise feedback (read: survey) company based in Northern Virginia. Recently my colleague Jeffrey Henning—an opinion leader in enterprise survey feedback technologies and methodologies—wrote an excellent blogpost on the mini-rant I’m about to blast after the jump. If I can spread the word just a little bit to help nudge companies towards curbing what I feel is a particularly odious practice, I’ll have done my good deed for the day. 
Have you ever visited your car dealer’s repair department (or, for that matter, any other type of service-oriented facility such as a bank or retail establishment) and found yourself on the receiving end of a hard sell from a customer service representative, asking you to be sure and answer “all fives” or “all excellents” on a survey that they say will be e-mailed to you shortly?
Something like this (OK, exactly like this) happened to me just recently at my local dealer, and it’s not the first time, either. In fact, it’s not the first time at more than one dealer—these high-pressure tactics appear to be employed at all of the company’s dealerships (or at least it’s definitely happening at the three I’ve been to in the Northern Virginia area over the past seven years). You see, the company ties all sorts of financial incentives to these surveys, and dealerships tie the salaries of their customer service representatives to the survey results. In lean times like these, dealerships (and employees at these dealerships) are scrambling for every penny—hence the hard sell at the cashier’s booth.
Maybe it’s just me, but when I’ve already dropped $500 to fix a seven-year-old car, I’m not particularly well-disposed towards being pressured into giving “fives across the board” when up until now the service manager hasn’t bothered to give me the time of day. It’s an irritating practice, and one that will cause me to vote with my feet and go to another auto brand when I replace my vintage 2004 auto next year. Unfortunately, I fear that I’ll find more of the same at the auto brands I’m considering: Buick (the LaCrosse), Chevy (the Volt), VW (the Passat CC) and Saab (the 9-3) (assuming Saab still exists next year!).
If you’ve been to your auto dealer recently and have not been subjected to the hard sell for high marks, I’d love to hear about it!