I've had many sites pop this up within seconds of being on the site. Though the attention span of some might be short, I suspect the data collected by these surveys is highly unhelpful simply because you have not yet experienced the product.
Given they're all from the same company usually whose name escapes me right now, you'd think they'd be better at it?
One of my lobby conversations at a SEM conference dealt with those quick survey popups. The guy I was talking to swore that by putting one on their landing pages conversion increased by like 30%. His theory was that it helps to refocus users who are about to bounce. Give them a second to digest the page and right before they click the back button bring SOMETHING up to grab their attention. They'll just click the survey away and will come back to the page fresh again.
I've never tested it, so I have no idea if it works. It's an interesting hypothesis at least.
It could even be true, for his customers. For all you know, he sells inflatable sex dolls, and it's important to focus users to get that sale. The tactics that work for sites selling more mainstream products are probably different.
The worst part about their worthless surveys is that it's pretty much impossible to give feedback about the actual survey itself.
It's easy to see how this happens; a clueless exec at big-corp decides they need data, survey company gives them a sales pitch they can't refuse, exec never bothers to actually check out the product.
These worthless surveys are almost exclusively on the websites large enterprisey companies that got off the clue-train years ago.
Lots of unhappy customers in the survey. And we gave that to you for free- we could optimize your web page - for a fee. Even take the survey out- or to the exist- after we are done.
Given they're all from the same company usually whose name escapes me right now, you'd think they'd be better at it?