Got an email today with subject 'Got a minute? Please take our SAP “1-Minute” Survey'. As I'm a sucker for the surveys, clicked on the link. Oh boy...
First of all, in one minute you could only randomly click on the buttons just to get through - the thing is like 6 pages long and has I believe around 20 questions. If you really think about the questions then it's at least 20 and typing in comments can easily turn into 30-40 minutes. By the way, it does not show the progress, so every time you click 'next' button you hope this is it, but no, it goes on.
In any case, I'm more than glad to spend time to provide feedback that will help to improve future events (and give credit for past event where it's due), but why is there a need to piggyback some kind of SAP PR focus group questions, like this one:
How likely am I recommend SAP to a friend? Hm... Would you recommend Microsoft? Or Oracle? Or Apple? Recommend in what context? There was not a single time in my whole life when someone asked 'say, would you recommend SAP?'. What does this question even mean? How could someone recommend or not recommend the whole company unequivocally? If someone can do that with certainty they either have some personal interest in the recommendation or are rather uninformed.
Also the scale is reversed (normally it goes from left 0 to right 10), but that's small potatoes. Then there is this gem:
Usually I take surveys seriously, but here the authors seem to be some kind of pranksters. There were probably 10 people at that event who can answer to this question intelligently. How could I possibly know whether SAP is "market leader"? I don't run market research for living. And what does it have to do with TechEd? Am I supposed to feel SAP is a leader more now than before the event? In such case put me down for "fail".
Ah, wait a second, this might be a trick question! OK Google -> is SAP market leader in cloud computing? And Google says... no - it's some kind of AWS. Wait, so is it then "not very accurate" or "not at all accurate"? Google!!!
Not sure if the same survey will be sent out for TechEd at other locations, but if I may ask the masterminds behind it kindly:
(a) be honest, if survey takes 15-20 minute then don't ask for a "minute";
(b) or better yet - KISS;
(c) don't stuff the event survey with the unrelated questions.