The After-Cruise Evaluation

[fin]

Recently I finished a trans-Atlantic 11 night cruise aboard the Jewel, and accordingly was not surprised to receive an email from them wanting an electronic evaluation of my experience. It had been for the most part a positive event and so I undertook to respond to their questions.

 

I realise that all industry is coming to depend more and more heavily on computers to do more and more chores, and certainly NCL is no exception with their on-line booking, on-line reservations, on-line shore excursions etc. But there are some serious shortcomings, imo, in the evaluation.

 

Therefore I hope someone from NCL Management will take note of this. I opened their evaluation and answered perhaps ten or maybe as many as fifteen pages of questions before I wanted to skip some. The software will NOT allow you to leave a single question unanswered before going to the next page.

 

Further, it was at this point that I noted the bottom left window stating that I had completed 27% of the questionaire. It had taken well over a quarter hour, and I had neither the time nor the willingness to spend the next hour answering more and more questions without being able to pick and choose which ones I felt like responding to.

 

So I recommend changing the software so that someone who has undertaken to voluntarily give them valuable feedback is not locked into a mindless step by step process with no ability to skip pages which they do not feel like answering. It could read "You have unanswered questions on this page...do you wish to continue"?

 

I strongly suspect that the percentage of cruisers completing the process would be much improved.

[Addictedtwo]

Thanks for the "heads up" I have no intention on spending over an hour on a review that is going to accomplish next to nothing just like most on questionares.

[ecclectic-eccentric]

I agree that the questionnaire was lengthy, to say the least. I did complete the whole thing, (I don't think it took me anywhere near an hour), but I, too, remember feeling like I'd been at it forever, looking at the percentage completed and thinking "WHAT?!" I muddled through though, because I wanted to give my opinion.

 

What I didn't care for was that it seemed you had to give an answer, even if you had no experience of what the question was about. Oh well, I tried. (And it was a very slow day at the office, so it was still more interesting than anything else I'd have been doing...)

 

I find it interesting that there was not even a "form" response, despite the fact that I took the time to address a particular area where I thought they could have done better. I'm not looking to "get anything", I wasn't filing a complaint, but it seems like they should at least have some kind of generic "we're exploring the concerns you raised" sort of email response, I dunno, just to make it look like they're paying attention to the survey, I suppose.

 

ee

[*Wink*]

Maybe they could have a default answer of "no answer" to each question. That way you can skim them and decide if you want to change it.

 

Just a thought.

 

Seems like with today's technology, they could really streamline this evaluation.

[terrymtex01]

We sail on the Pearl in 9 days and when we get back and get the email to fill out the questionaire I'm going to see if they changed it from the one we filled out online last June. I do remember it taking me about 20 minutes to complete but I remember things differently that some that have posted here. I remember having the ability to put a response that was something to the effect of N/A. I don't remember what it was.. but I do remember not having to place a value on every question.

 

As far as getting a response from actually filling out the questionaire, there was a thank you at the end of the one we filled out. I am not for sure if you are thinking that they should respond individually to every one who wrote something on the survey, but if you think about how many ships they have and at a minimum of probably 1200 to 1500 Pax on each ship roughly each week.. and even if only 50% filled them out, the man power it would take to respond to every one who actually wrote something on the survey would be a very expensive and huge undertaking.

 

Being from an industy that has a company do these surveys for us I can tell you they surveys are not looked at on an individual basis, rather a report is generated and given to the company that has requested the survey. In other words, they do not take my survey and give it to NCL for NCL to look at my specific answers. They compile stats from the specific answers I give and then take the parts where I have given them a narrative response and put those all on a seperate report. If you put on the survey.."well.. we were in stateroom 9232 and we had horrible room stewards who we would swear never entered our room to do any cleaning". NCL does not look at that and say.. OH.. we need to check on that ship for the room stewards for that cabin and make sure they are doing their job. They would see if they were getting a lot of people saying that about one ship, or about their fleet and take measures to correct it. These surveys are to make improvements fleet wide or maybe down to the level of a specific ship if they found a pattern for a certain ship, but it would be virtually impossible for them to address every concern that came though on the surveys.

[98Charlie]

I filled out the e-questionnaire after our recent Sun cruise. I did think that it was a bit lengthy but it only took maybe 20 minutes to complete. And yes I did fill out the narrative portion completely.

 

Charlie

[ecclectic-eccentric]

I truly did not expect a personal reply, but rather some kind of form letter that shows that someone, somewhere down the line actually does look at them. Otherwise, why should we bother typing any kind of a response which they requested?

 

I've filled out a lot of surveys over the years, and I always try to provide realistic feed back. A number of times (not always, of course), I've received acknowledgement, at least, that the comments were reviewed, albeit via form letter/email, which is fine with me. I'm sure the bigwigs don't scrutinize every last survey...or even the littlewigs, for that matter:rolleyes: , but I hope that the "comments" section isn't just to placate the customer. I'm sure that many who reply have a truly constructive criticism or a great experience they would like to see continued.

 

Just my thoughts...

ee

[terrymtex01]

I truly did not expect a personal reply, but rather some kind of form letter that shows that someone, somewhere down the line actually does look at them. Otherwise, why should we bother typing any kind of a response which they requested?

 

I've filled out a lot of surveys over the years, and I always try to provide realistic feed back. A number of times (not always, of course), I've received acknowledgement, at least, that the comments were reviewed, albeit via form letter/email, which is fine with me. I'm sure the bigwigs don't scrutinize every last survey...or even the littlewigs, for that matter:rolleyes: , but I hope that the "comments" section isn't just to placate the customer. I'm sure that many who reply have a truly constructive criticism or a great experience they would like to see continued.

 

Just my thoughts...

ee

 

I think the problem is that they are read, but they are not read as if someone took your specific survery and looked at your responses and then read what you typed and thought.. Oh.. we need to let ee know we are going to look into this issue he/she had. They are given pages and pages of the typed responses, all taken off of the actual surveys submitted. So when they read that you had trouble with your room stewards or your food at dinner was too cold, etc, they do not have your information there with your comments to send you an email saying "We are going to look into that food issue or whatever the case maybe. They are looking for trends, etc.

 

Maybe what they should do is put a "disclaimer" at the beginning of each survery to advise of this. That there will be no response from takinig the survey other than a thank you and that if you want specific concerns address, please contact NCL at, and then give a toll free number.. or an email address, etc. Maybe that way when folks didn't hear back from a concern they put on the survey they wouldn't be surprised.