At something like 8 am last Saturday morning, my phone rang with a number I didn’t recognize. The same number called me the night before, so I figured I’d answer it and see what they wanted. As it turned out, the call was from an automated survey system, and they were trying to get me to rate the process for a recent furniture delivery.

Now, I get up pretty early, so the call certainly didn’t wake me up. But for a lot of people, 8 am on Saturday or Sunday is prime sleeping time. And the last thing anybody wants is to be woken up by a non-urgent call — from a robot no less.

The right way to handle this is rather obvious. If you must resort to using an automated system to call customers and ask about their experience, then be sure those calls are only being made during very safe hours, perhaps 9-6 on weekdays and 12-6 on weekends. And of course, make sure those schedules take the customer’s local time zone into account. Otherwise, your survey might become an unwanted wake-up call, and this otherwise simple interaction could really hurt customers’ perception of your brand.