I work in data analysis and reporting on various feedback systems is part of my regular role. Every company’s data culture is different, so you can’t simply say “X is the reason why they’re doing this”. It could be:

• Maybe they are incorporating the data into agent/product reviews.
• Maybe they are trying to guide product & feature development on a quantitative basis
• Maybe at one point a product manager wanted to be “data-driven”, so a feedback system was set up, but now it’s basically ignored now that they haven’t been with the company for over a year and nobody wants to take ownership of it. But it’s more effort to remove than just leave in place.
• Maybe it’s used when we want to highlight our successes, and ignored when we want to downplay results we don’t like

What I’ve found is that there are a lot of confounding factors. For example, I work for a job board, and most people use the Overall Satisfaction category as more of a general measurement of how their job search is going, or whether or not they got the interview, rather than an assessment of how well our platform serves that purpose. And it’s usually going very shittily because job searching is a generally shitty process even when everything is going “right”.

When I worked in customer service this info was used in performance reviews. Also if I got an outstanding review my boss would give me a gift card or something.

This practice comes from Japan. In 1980s, certain companies, like Toyota, understood the importance of product and process quality. And one of the practices to ensure that everyone is ‘on the same ground’, and that the product under development would surely satisfy the consumer’s needs, was close communication between the stakeholders and receiving the feedback.

Long story short, it was part of their broader ‘Quality first’ strategy. However, it is only viable if the organisation is properly managed, and all Quality management things are put into practice (the hardest part).

This is just my understanding from a book I read during my free time. My knowledge may be incorrect.

Who wouldn’t want a ton of feedback about the service provided?

I wish my costumers provided me with all their genuine feedback, all the things they hate about our app and why. All the things they wish it did but doesn’t. All the bugs they have found and never reported. Feedback is such a vital and scarce information

I think in almost all cases it is just used to reward (or more likely) punish employees through pay or continued employment. I don’t think they actually care to improve their products, processes, etc.

TLDR if you don’t give all 10s the employee gets in trouble and eventually fired, even for things not in their control

I can tell you that at least for stuff I work on, every single comment entered into those little dialogs is read by a human that actually works in a meaningful role on the product.

Comments that curse and complain with no topic in mind are useless, and easily ignored. Take two seconds and tell them exactly what is bothering you and what you’d rather see, and things might actually get better.

Anyone that gives anyone in the service industry less than a 10 on those support/delivery surveys is a cop.

At the company I work for we actually make and sell products on Amazon. We ask for reviews for 2 reasons: 1. Star rating = sales. Pretty simple. 2. We compile customer complaints and try to resolve them. Our sales team goes through all of the negative reviews and tells the production team, fix this, and we actually fix it (if possible).

Our company is only about 100-120 people. The CEO/owner actually does work and is involved instead of just watching and looking at numbers so it’s definitely not your typical corporation.

In my opinion, it is another way to get value out of the user instead of giving value.

Managers have to do very little work in terms of understanding the skills of their employees if we do it for them.

A huge step I found in terms of my mental health was to refuse to give reviews anymore, in any form. I am now able to enjoy my experiences a lot more without looking for reasons to critique them.

Are these huge piles of feedback actually analyzed and acted upon? Is customer feedback some sort of corporate cargo cult? Or maybe clever marketing by vendors of feedback tools and services?

Probably all three depending on the organisation. In theory you want customers and if you can make them happier in an easy way you should do it to retain them and recruit more. In practice, a lot of managers seem to do cargo cult stuff copying other better managers.

I imagine if they have a lot of data they’re processing it further, finding trends, and then just pulling samples for a detailed look.

This is the thing that most companies seem to obsess over these days: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score

I think it’s just a fad.

Either marketing itself, i.e. make the company seem more approachable by openly asking for feedback, but then mostly ignoring it. Or genuine attempt at optimising their process to improve customer satisfaction.

I think in most cases is to gather data to be able to better predict performance of a feature. Like discord asking what you thought of the call. It is probably to optimize the bitrate of the streaming audio or video stream where it is acceptable but still as low as possible. Also i think it is to just have metrics, some graphs to compare and such.

Feedback on what works lets businesses allocate resources to things that will get new/keep current customers and save in places that don’t matter as much. It’s the core principle of any business and everything else, while useful and important in its own way, is secondary.

Now whether or not it feels like businesses are acting on that feedback in a way that makes a difference is a whole other beast.