Silversea Survey - Be Forewarned

[HappyCamper777]

I received an invitation from Ms. Barbara Muckermann, Chief Marketing Officer Silversea, to participate in a survey about travel that should take no longer than 15-minutes to complete for the opportunity to win a $250 gift card. Since I enjoyed the last five question survey this summer, I was happy to oblige.

 

Oh my, was I ever misled! The survey involved over 80 screens to read, review, and respond to. How anyone could possibly complete such a survey in 15-minutes or less is beyond me. In addition, the survey never collected contact information, so I have no idea how a respondent would receive their gift card if they were selected as the winner.

 

Lastly, I feel totally disrespected and taken advantage of by Silversea for not only far exceeding the time estimate, but because the survey exceeded its scope of "travel". In addition, it was by far the most poorly designed and written survey I have ever participated in. I'm flabbergasted a CMO would allow such a survey to be distributed. It was that bad.

 

The following pages will contain each screen so that you can review and judge for yourself whether you want to participate in such a survey.

 

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How these next questions fit within the Ms. Muckermann's promise that the questions in the survey are about travel, I will never know.

 

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Now, after you read the email message below, tell me, do I have a right to be disappointed in, and feel misled by, Silversea?

 

[SWFLAOK]

Yes, you totally and definitely are correct in feeling disappointed and misled by this survey. I would never have made it to the end before I was fuming and hit the X. The CMO either didn't take this survey herself, or has way more time on her hands than the average person, and doesn't mind giving out her personal information to anyone who asks for it. The questions pretty much tell me that Silversea isn't going to be the cruise line for me. They're definitely looking for a much younger crowd who spends all of their time on social media, and watching shows and movies and Podcasts, and all of that stuff that you can't do very well on a cruise where the internet doesn't work very well. And where there should be many other interesting things to do so you don't need to be wasting your time on the internet. If these questions are indicative of where Silversea is looking for their future customers, I wish them luck. At this point, I expect my first cruise next month to be my last.

[JohnGinPBG]

You should not feel disappointed or misled by this survey. It's simply market research and every company does it. The Silversea CMO didn't create the survey - it was 99% likely done by an outside firm. They know that probably 10% or less of people will complete the survey, but that's OK. If you don't want to answer the questions, don't.

 

As for their objective with this survey, Silversea wants to learn about their future customers. I sailed on the Shadow this summer and would estimate that the average age of the passengers was about 65. Twenty or 25 years from now, these folks will not be cruising. Silversea needs to reach out to the next generation of cruisers at some point and they're just trying to gather some information that will help guide their future marketing.

 

Don't take it personally. (And I can't believe you posted the entire survey.)

[les37b]

OP was the survey via a personal email? The link quite probably contained a unique URL which identifies who sent it. If it didn't, then yes, very naughty

 

I'm amazed you took the trouble to post the entire survey. Now that really must have taken you ages to do. Thanks for doing so though.... Saves me the trouble of starting it should it be sent to me. It really was one of those tl;dr moments!

[57 varieties]

We received it, filled it in and have fingers crossed to win [emoji6]Not a big deal.

[jpalbny]

Yes, Chris got this and was pretty annoyed that she spent about 45 minutes to do it.

[UKCruiseJeff]

I must admit I find it odd that any SS customer would agree to share such information for the extremely minor risk of winning $250. Customers completing the survey should do so "with their eyes fully open" and understand what information they have provided and that they have given permission to SS to do anything they want with it. SS are not obligated to keep the information private and under "lock and key" for example. Quite the opposite. The link in the email tags you and your personal identity with the detailed profile you have given.

 

When completing the survey you will be sharing extremely private information that many consider extremely personal, and are also agreeeing that the information provided becomes "the sole property of Silversea" and are giving permission to Silversea to do whatever they wish in the future with the information at "it's sole discretion" without knowing what those uses might be. This includes sharing and selling your information to and with whoever they choose to. You have given them permission to do so.

 

Once you have given this information "away", you cannot "get it back again" and the information provided is effectively "public property". Most sensible people wouldn't give this information to a stranger in the street with a clipboard and would presumably treat this survey with exactly the same degree of caution.

[Stumblefoot]

Thank you for taking the time to post the survey in its entirety! Folks here are so nice to share what they receive and I for one appreciate it.

 

Reading through the survey, I completely understand your frustration for why a company as esteemed as Silversea would mislead its customers as to the intent of the survey. I completely disagree with JohnGinPBG as it is pretty clear SS went far beyond what was expressed as the intent of the survey, measuring much more than the supposed subject of "travel". And, why a CMO would let such poorly designed research go out to her customer base is beyond me. All I know is that based on JPAlbany's comment, you just saved me 45-minutes of my life. Thank you HappyCamper777.

 

UKCruiseJeff - Based on your previous comments on surveys, what do you think of this one's design? I can't for the life of me figure out what SS was thinking sending this out. It has categorization questions at the beginning and end of the survey, in general the writing is poor, some selection choices are repeated within the same question, and in many cases the answers aren't fully inclusive relative to the question.

 

From my perspective, it's as if the survey was designed by someone who has little to no experience in the world of marketing research. I think a first year business student could prepare a better survey than this. I don't see how SS extracts much value from such a survey, let alone cross-tabulate the data with any confidence in the results.

 

Finally, it looks like a survey that could take up to 60-minutes to complete for some respondents based on its length and depth. How could a CMO think most people could complete such a survey in 15-minutes or less? Shame on Ms. Muckermann for making such a claim, let alone misleading her customers.

[mysty]

Just wondering if the intent was to share aggregated results with other interested parties (perhaps for a fee). One big omnibus survey.

[Stumblefoot]

Just wondering if the intent was to share aggregated results with other interested parties (perhaps for a fee). One big omnibus survey.

I don't know Mysty, but one thing I found odd was the footnote at the bottom of the email message. See below (highlighting done by me):

 

* NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. ACCREDITED TRAVEL AGENTS 18 YEARS AND OLDER.

 

It seems as if the survey was intended for travel agents but somehow was sent to passengers.

[UKCruiseJeff]

 

UKCruiseJeff - Based on your previous comments on surveys, what do you think of this one's design? I can't for the life of me figure out what SS was thinking sending this out. It has categorization questions at the beginning and end of the survey, in general the writing is poor, some selection choices are repeated within the same question, and in many cases the answers aren't fully inclusive relative to the question.

 

 

Hi, yes we started and owned a research company that assisted clients better "harvest" high-value reationship customers through enhanced satisfaction and better information about their "needs". You might recall, Silversea have been clients.

 

Where does one start. This survey is an absolute dogs dinner and does not appear to have been designed by someone with rudimentary survey design knowledge or skills. It appears to have been designed by a large committee of assertive people all intent on including their own rather random questions overseen by an agency who was unable to control and advise and without the courage to manage and resist that volume of question demands.

 

For example, it doesn't have a single purpose but seems to have several which is why it is overly long and rambling. A questionnaire should be easy and quick to complete and might not enhance satisfaction but should certainly not overly irritate. For example it wishes to both identify patterns of groups of segmented customers for general marketing purposes but also seems to try to segment individual respondents perhaps for highly targetted future marketing. It is almost always a mistake to combine several different objectives into one survey.

 

That asside, participants should also keep in mind how insecure ostensibly secure IT systems have proved to be over the last year or so. The mailed identifier links the answers provided by each individual to their Silversea file. That person has already lodged and entrusted to SS a considerable amount of potentially security compromising information. All customers have for example given SS, their date of birth, address, place of birth, passport numbers and credit card numbers as well as the contact details for the next of kin. I'm not bothered about them having my pillow preferences. :) That information will be triangulated by SS with the information already provided when people page through and complete the questionnaire. The information once compiled is available to Silversea and anyone who takes that information from them. I think that information would be worth a considerable amount on the Dark Web. Much more than $250.

 

For what it's worth SS has already been hacked because much of the Nigerian scam stuff I humourously receive and share on The Cooler is addressed to me at "silversea@mydomain.com" and so I can say authoritively that SS systems have not treated my information securely. I informed SS some years back but received not even the courtesy of a reply.

 

People will obviously reach their own conclusions ....... ;)