I’ve been sitting on this rant for nearly a decade. But the pieces finally clicked into place when I found myself in that familiar early-morning airport purgatory—too tired to think, too wired to sleep.
There’s something deeply ironic about being asked for feedback at the exact moment when you’re least capable of giving it thoughtfully. Yet this is how most companies “listen” to their customers: through rigid, transactional surveys that prioritize convenience over insight—instead of adopting conversational surveys designed to meet people where they are, emotionally and contextually.
The Feedback Theater
Let me paint the scene more vividly:
It’s 4:15 AM. My Uber driver, who clearly drew the short straw for airport runs tonight, hasn’t said a word since muttering “terminal?” when I got in. The airport is eerily quiet except for the occasional announcement echoing through empty corridors. I’m clutching an overpriced coffee that somehow manages to be scalding hot and tastes like cardboard.
That’s when my phone buzzes with an email from the airline:
“We value your opinion! Take our 2-minute survey about your booking experience.”
Now, here’s what’s fascinating. In that moment, I experienced three simultaneous realizations:
- I absolutely do not want to take this survey
- I professionally study feedback systems for a living
- I’m going to take this survey precisely because it’s my job to understand why it fails
What followed was a masterclass in how not to collect feedback. The questions were so generic they could have applied to any service:
- “How satisfied were you with your booking experience?” (1-5 scale)
- “How likely are you to fly with us again?” (1-10 scale)
- “What could we improve?” (with a 100-character limit)
This wasn’t a conversational survey—it was a compliance form pretending to care.
The most telling part? Nowhere did it ask about the actual pain points of early morning flights—the sleep deprivation, the stress of morning traffic, and the fact that every airport Starbucks is understaffed at this hour.
The Three Lies of Traditional Surveys
This experience crystallized what I’ve long suspected about most customer feedback systems: they’re built on three fundamental lies.
Lie #1: We’re Listening
The average survey is designed like a multiple-choice test where all the answers are wrong. By forcing responses into predetermined boxes, we filter out the messy, human truths that matter. When was the last time a 1-5 scale captured how you felt about anything?
Lie #2: This Data Is Useful
Companies collect mountains of survey data that gets reduced to dashboard metrics no one acts on. A “7.2/10 satisfaction score” tells you nothing about why customers are frustrated or what would actually make them happier.
Lie #3: We’ll Use This to Improve
Most feedback systems are compliance exercises, not improvement mechanisms. Universities do course evaluations because they have to, not because they genuinely want to transform teaching. Airlines send post-flight surveys because it’s expected, not because they’re reevaluating their 6 AM boarding process.
Now, I don’t usually quote Mark Zuckerberg, but something he said on Freakonomics Radio struck a chord with me. He was describing how feedback is used at Meta when testing product variations:
“At the end of that test, they get all this feedback back that is both quantitative — so how their version of Facebook performed on everything that we care about: how connected do people feel; how much do they feel informed; how happier; all these different things — and then we get qualitative feedback back as well. And if their version is an improvement, then we roll that in… The real company strategy is to learn as quickly as possible what we need to do in order to bring the world closer together.”
Now, whether or not Meta actually lives this value is a different debate—but the underlying idea is powerful.
At Meta (for all its flaws), product teams don’t just look at whether a feature’s usage metrics went up or down. They combine quantitative data with real user stories—the frustrations, the workarounds, and the emotional reactions. Then they iterate based on that complete picture.
This approach works because it acknowledges two truths:
- Numbers without context are meaningless
- People don’t experience products through rating scales—they experience them through stories
Designing a Conversational Survey Experience
So what does effective feedback look like? After years of studying this across industries, I’ve identified five key principles:
1. Ask When It Matters
My airline asked about my booking experience days after I booked—not when I was experiencing the service. Good feedback systems capture in-the-moment reactions through
- Smart timing (ask about flight experience right after landing)
- Contextual triggers (a pop-up when someone spends 5 minutes on your help page)
- Behavioral cues (surveying customers after a support call ends)
2. Make It a Dialogue
The best feedback feels like a conversation with someone who genuinely wants to understand. This means:
- Following up on interesting responses (“You mentioned X—can you tell us more?”)
- Showing previous answers as the survey progresses
- Allowing branching paths based on responses
3. Embrace Qualitative Data
At my firm, we’ve found that one well-written paragraph from a customer contains more actionable insights than 100 multiple-choice responses. Tools like:
- Voice-to-text responses
- Video feedback
- Open-ended follow-ups
…yield dramatically richer data.
4. Close the Loop
Nothing kills feedback culture faster than the black hole effect. Companies that do this well:
- Share what they learned from surveys
- Show what changes resulted
- Thank participants personally when possible
5. Make It Human
A major healthcare client recently redesigned their patient surveys to ask, “What’s one thing your care team did that made you feel cared for?” instead of “Rate your nurse’s communication skills (1-5)”
The response rate tripled, and they discovered patterns no multiple-choice survey would have revealed.
The Future of Feedback
We’re standing at an inflection point where AI and new interaction models could revolutionize feedback—if we use them wisely. Imagine: conversational surveys that adapt in real-time, probing further based on tone, emotion, or specific keywords. Voice interfaces that let people give feedback naturally while commuting. Systems that analyze both what people say and how they say it (tone, emotion, emphasis).
But technology alone isn’t the answer. The real transformation needs to be philosophical. We must move from seeing feedback as data extraction to viewing it as continuous dialogue.
A Call to Action
Here’s my challenge to every company still sending out 20-question Likert scale surveys:
Try an experiment—replace your next survey with just two open-ended questions:
- “What’s one thing we’re doing well?”
- “What’s one thing that frustrates you?”
Actually, read every response. Not word clouds. Not sentiment analysis. The actual words. Implement one change based on your learning, and tell customers about it.
I guarantee you’ll learn more from this exercise than from your last 10,000 survey responses. Because at the end of the day, people don’t resist giving feedback—they resist being unheard.
The companies that will thrive in the next decade aren’t those with the most data points, but those that build real feedback loops where customers feel genuinely heard. That starts by killing the traditional survey and building something human in its place.
The question is: Are you ready to have that conversation?