"She's Great!"

As a proud member of the marketing team, I am tasked with gathering testimonials from satisfied clients.  I am here to tell you I do read them all and share them with the whole team here at Vrakas/Blum Computer Consulting.  We love to hear when a client is satisfied and love to share their words with the team. 

It all started when I came across a testimonial that simply said “She’s great!”.  I thought, what does great mean?  Great at her job?  Great in her response time?  Great at needlepoint?  Don’t get me wrong I would love someone to tell me I am great but would I publish that on my website or brag on social media?  Probably not, but why?  Great question, Kelly.  Glad you asked. 

“Great” all by itself can be taken many different ways.  “Great…you again (insert eye roll here)” or “Great, I will see you there!”  Two sentences that start with the same word and have completely different connotations.  What if “She’s Great!” was meant sarcastically?  Wait, I asked myself a question….The answer is simple really, it tells you little about the person’s ability to help you in a crisis or if they are even good at what they do.  If you read a bio that had a testimonial from an actual client and all it said was “She’s Great!” would you call immediately and let them loose on your accounting software or move to the next one that says “Her responsiveness and her knowledge of the software is GREAT!”.

I am not saying you should always write a novel lamenting on their particular skills when filing out a survey.   Maybe add one or two more descriptive words to give that person and her supervisor a greater knowledge of the great qualities that aided your particular situation.

In all fairness I have filled out my fair share of surveys and I would bet dollars to donuts at least 80% of the time I answered the same way and did not think twice about it.  I will do better in the future and hope that the person reading the survey will thank me.