I recently got sent a survey from Sony. Customer surveys are good but the problem with the survey is that Sony only put down answers they wanted to hear. In some respects, this confirms what I thought about Sony (and many organisations like it). They ask for feedback but ask for it in such a way that it creates confirmation bias in their own minds.

What is the point of creating a survey if you don’t give people a way to create real answers that change the way Sony works?

This survey was for an A7iii that I bought some 2 years ago as a second camera.

Let’s take some examples:

Compact full frame mirrorless cameras aren’t the only mirrorless cameras

This is the first challenge in Sony’s survey. If you think its an oversight, you’ll see some of the later questions tailored in the same way.

The reality is that not everyone buying an A7iii would have purchased them 2 or 3 years ago, they are still on sale so to say the competition is solely compact mirrorless isn’t correct. This question should just have been mirrorless because if you were buying an A7iii with battery grip, your competitors weren’t going to be “compact mirrorless”

Okay, so maybe they made a mistake? Let’s move on and find out. (ignoring the options selected, it just the quick selections I made to get to the next screen)

Okay, so you notice anything missing here? No option for an integrated grip or larger sized camera? What about grip ergonomics, an issue constantly raised about Sony cameras? Nothing about that. The problem is if you select none of the above, it takes you to the next question, there isn’t an option to add things they missed.

The questions they are asking are targeted at what they want to hear, not what the market may want to tell them and that in itself is a problem, even if they are getting everything right.

Apple wanted to constantly make smaller phones because of pocket size but missed the fact that many females want bigger phones and pocket size isn’t an issue for them because they carry handbags. There is no worse mistake than assuming you already know the answer because you don’t. The answer changes.

It’s this kind of approach from Sony that makes me realise Sony isn’t planning on changing in the near future and could bleed some of their pro users like Canon and Nikon did if they don’t wake up.