Seven surveys. One holiday.

Why understanding people takes more than measuring a slice of their journey.

This summer I booked a summerhouse, bought ferry tickets and crossed Øresundsbroen with my Brobizz. A few practical arrangements for a week away with my family, enjoying a well-deserved break. Then the feedback requests started arriving.
Seven, in total. For one holiday.

How clean was the summerhouse? How was the stay? Would I recommend the booking company? What did I think of the ferry? And, twice: how was my experience of crossing the bridge?

At first, I was happy to help. I had things to say about the summerhouse. Perhaps a thought or two about the ferry. But by the time I was being asked to reflect on driving across the same bridge in the opposite direction, I had run out of both observations and goodwill. The bridge had done what I needed it to do. It had got us to the other side. I wasn’t sure what else to say.

But this isn’t really about a bridge. It’s about the gap between what companies measure and what matters to the people on the other end. Each company saw a transaction worth asking about. I saw a holiday with my family.

Seven requests for feedback. Not one asked about my actual holiday.  

Whose journey is it, anyway?

From inside each company, my trip looked like a separate customer journey. The summerhouse provider saw a booking, a stay, and a cleaning. The ferry saw a crossing. The bridge saw a car passing through. Every journey began when I became their customer and ended when the survey landed in my inbox.

You can see the same logic in how companies keep us informed. An order confirmation. Then an email from the shipping company, confirming that they have received the order. Then that they are packing it. Then that it has shipped, and that I can track it ”here”. TOMORROW your package will arrive. NOW your package has arrived. And finally, please rate the delivery.

It is a journey told from the company's side, step by step. Most of those steps ask nothing of me and tell me nothing, or at least very little of what I need. From where I sat, there was only one journey. It began long before the first booking, with a family that needed a break. It carried on after the last email. And the sea, the road before the harbour and my kids in the back seat shaped how every part of it felt. A disappointing score might mean the ferry was late. Or that we arrived stressed after a difficult drive. The number alone can’t tell you which – or what to do about it. People’s journeys rarely line up with the edges of a company. If we only ask about what happens within those edges, we risk missing what makes our part matter.

Counting is not the same as understanding

Companies understandably focus on the parts they can control. A ferry operator can't do much about the road before the harbour. But the boundaries of what a company controls don’t have to be the boundaries of what it understands.

The ferry company doesn’t need to research my entire holiday. But it does need to understand what its crossing made possible and what might have shaped my answer. A score can tell you how someone rated a crossing. On its own, it tells you little about why.

The usual answer is to collect more. Get as many responses as possible, then work out later what matters. But a pile of answers is not the same as insight, especially when most of the people answering feel indifferent and click through just to clear their inbox.

What if we started the other way around? What do we actually need to understand? Maybe most people only need to give a thumbs up. Maybe a long conversation with the few whose trip went wrong would teach us more than ten questions on something that felt irrelevant to everyone else.

This isn’t an argument against surveys. It’s an argument for knowing what they can tell us and when we need to listen differently.

Start from the life, not the company

At IS IT A BIRD, we try to begin with people’s lives, not the boundaries of an organisation.  

When we worked with Dansk Metal on how to stay relevant for their members, we didn't ask what members wanted from their membership. We asked what a meaningful working life looks like, and what gets in the way. Through focus groups and interviews at members’ workplaces, we explored the everyday context in which the union needed to be relevant. Members spoke about work-life balance, social benefits, education and acknowledgement – not just their relationship with Dansk Metal.

That wider perspective helped us identify four unmet needs and opportunities for the union to play a more meaningful role in members’ working lives. It also added nuance to existing data on loyalty and satisfaction, giving Dansk Metal a stronger foundation for prioritising initiatives and services.

The question shifted from “How do members feel about us?” to “Where could we make a difference in their lives?”
It's a small shift. But it changes what you hear.

So before the next request for feedback goes out, three questions to keep in mind:

- What do we actually need to understand, and about whom?

- What was the person doing before we entered the picture, and what happens after we leave it?

- Is a survey the right way to ask, or is this a conversation?

Seven requests. One holiday.
Not one of them asked what the trip was for.

Want to understand where your organisation fits into people’s lives? Let’s talk.

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