Tuesday, October 21, 2008

5 Things About Customer Correspondence: Pushing The Limits Of My Patience & Composure Edition

  • Here's the thing. If you are going to complain about something, say an invoice I sent you for example, would you bother to actually read it? Just give it a half-assed cursory glance? (Show of hands please.)
  • Would you pepper your email with sentences whose grammatical anarchy is such that like a zen koan, or some deep Zoroastrian text, each reading implies a different meaning? Requiring a Rosetta Stone or haruspicy to translate, perhaps?
  • Although, and to be fair, I must say that it was clear that some of it was apparently questions, as thoughtfully indicated by the string of between 4 and 6 question marks.
  • Likewise the carefully constructed strings of exlamation marks!!!!!!, some too numerous to count, which I choose to read as enthusiasm.
  • Would you then freely admit, after 5 emails, when quizzed over the phone, that you probably should have 'read it first'?

::headdesk::

3 comments:

Ur-spo said...

email is a bad idea; telephone calls with real voices is better.

Tom said...

You should set up rules on your email system to send a suitably scathing reply to anything with more than one exclamation or question mark in a row!

Anonymous said...

HI ANDREW YOU ARE SO RIGHT I NEVER READ LABELS ETC AND ON ONE OCCASION A BOTTLE OF AMYL I WAS HANDED, AFTER HUFFING I NOTICED IT SAID DO NOT INHALE !