I received an email this morning from Quality Inn (Dear TORI), inviting me to complete a “short and easy” guest satisfaction survey about my recent stay. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered to even open the email, but since I had been quite annoyed about their wireless log in process, I decided to let them know. After all, they seemed quite sincere — at least according to their literature in the room — in their desire to provide complete guest satisfaction.

What amuses me about their survey is its sadistic blend of attempting to be user friendly while simultaneously deflecting actual ease of use.

Take the status bar, for instance. Here they’ve provided feedback for the user on how far along the user is in completing the survey. Thoughtful, no? We all like to know where we are when inside processes. But guess what? Each little blue box represents a page. Not a question, but a page of radio selections to make. Eighteen glorious pages in all. I didn’t actually notice this until it was too late, and I felt trapped by all the selections I had already made.

I forged ahead, determined to find the text field that surely awaited me in the end, a place where I could be free of the constraint of likert scales. A place where I could really, sincerely but firmly explain how irresponsible and back-asswards their wireless log in process was.

And there it was, finally, on the 14th page. My chance to be heard. I began eagerly to type. But wait, what’s this? Suddenly I see a red number advancing on the page. I stop to read the text above the field. (click graphic to see full size)

Neat! They’re actually going to help me complain less! How thoughtful! Imagine all the work they put into that form to let me know how little feedback I could actually give with clear instructions on how to avoid the error of over 3 sentences of comments! Why, that was probably about the same amount of effort it would have taken to actually give me, oh I don’t know, an grossly extravagant 1024 characters with which to pen my feedback.

Truly, brilliantly awful! And extra points for the subtle meanness in actually making the form look like you can write more, when bam! Sucker. That’s what you get for not reading that big hunk of instructional text.

In the end, it’s so perversely duplicitous it’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad. They probably are truly interested in providing great service. But acting interested in providing great service isn’t the same as providing great service. Think they know their form is torturous? I’d tell them, but I’ll for sure need more than 256 characters.