Influencing Ollie’s Dog Food Survey
On May 1st, I lost my best friend in the whole wide world, my whole heart, Calix. He was the best boy and gone far too soon and far too quick. Heartbroken feels like an understatement.
In his absence, in my grief — we did a thing. And, strangely, it was related to survey design.
When he passed, I began the what would seem like mundane, but feels like torturous process of cancelling all his subscriptions (afterall, he was the best boy - he had a lot). When it came time to cancel his food delivery, I was met with a REQUIRED cancellation survey.
Annoying? Yes. But, I understand why they want this data. And, I wanted to cancel, so I dove in:
I selected “My dog passed away,"
SKIPPED the next question: “What will you feed now?” (for obvious reasons), and
When asked, “How like are you to return?” I marked: 10 - absolutely will.
Thinking I was done, I hit “Cancel my subscription.”
I was instantly met with a glaring red box.
Why?
Well, you see: “What will you feed now?” is a REQUIRED question. AFTER telling them my dog had passed away, I had to go into a dropdown to indicate that I would no longer be feeding my dog anything. Yes: I had to select “Nothing” for that question in order to cancel.
To add insult to injury, I then had to click through ANOTHER screen that asked me if I was sure I didn’t just want to pause my subscription.
Ya’ll there is survey design that is bad because it will get people bad data. There are poorly written questions, there are answer categories that don’t make sense. THIS type of mistake. THIS level of insensitivity is next level bad.
THIS type of survey causes harm. It causes harm to people who are already hurting. Needlessly. It’s an easy fix. If you mark that your beloved has passed away, you should see a condolence screen and nothing more. It’s simple code. But you’d have to be thoughtful enough in your design to think of it.
I was so upset by this lack of sensitivity that I decided to wipe my tears and make one of my TikTok survey reviews for the company.
I’ve done this hundreds of times: this being reviewed bad surveys on TikTok. Typically, nobody cares. This time, over 100,000 people decided that they cared.
And, I’m proud to share that company reached out IMMEDIATELY and updated that survey. No other dog mom or dad will ever be asked that insensitive line of questions again. (thank god… and, the power of social media).
Survey design is about getting good data and making good decisions and telling compelling stories. It’s also about people and making sure that your survey experience does no harm.
As I learned in my comment section, this thoughtless design and others like it, have been harming people for years.
Is this an extreme instance? Yes. But, this is also precisely why good survey design matters so much.
