Ettiquette

[andrewducker]

I really, really can't be arsed with ettiquette. I manage, generally speaking, because I don't like to upset people, but by and large it means nothing to me.

I do find it interesting, from an intellectual point of view, how much people focus on it, and how much of most people's conversations can be made up of it.

I was, therefore, particularly amused by this discussion in the latest Joel on Software:

Over time I've come to notice the occasional customer who thought we were being rude to him in an email message. On closer examination, we weren't being rude, but the email we sent seemed rude, and it was usually because it was incredibly terse and to-the-point. We decided that instead of sending emails like:

Yep, this is fixed in the latest version.

... we should be sending emails like:

Hi! Thanks for writing to us. I think I know what you're talking about, and it's definitely a bug in our product. The good news is: it's fixed! You can download the latest version by logging onto our online store at https://shop.fogcreek.com with your order ID number and email address, and that should solve this problem once and for all. If you don't have your order ID number just let me know and I'll be happy to look it up for you, or call us here at the Fog Creek office at 866-FOG-CREEK.

Please let me know if there's any other way I can be of assistance!

All the best,

(signature of a real human being)

It's sort of like translating from English to Japanese. I have never been to Japan but my father, a linguist, once told me the story of the train station in Tokyo, where the announcements were made in Japanese and English. You would hear four or five minutes of nonstop Japanese and then the English translation would be "The train to Osaka is on platform 4." It seems that in Japanese there is simply no way to say something that simple without cosseting it heavily in a bunch of formal etiquette-stuff. And it turns out the same thing applies to email messages, even in English. The moral of the story is that given two email messages with the same semantic content, the terse one is more likely to come across sounding rude. But given the amount of email correspondence we have to deal with here, we don't have time to be Emerson on every customer support email.

One answer would be to hire someone to write nice emails. The _geeky_ answer is to write lots of templates that can automatically be sent out with the holes filled in, thus allowing maximum ettiquette for minimum effort.

Comments

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Well, this is the second time today I've had occasion to pass along the tact filters (http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html) link...

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

I've noticed the phenomenon of Japanese - English translation myself.

I deliberately write slightly more informally than expected at work in email, as I find it helps tremendously when working in new project teams, as I have to constantly.

[derumi.livejournal.com]

Anouncements in Spanish also take longer than announcements in English.

Mmm. Etiquette is the grease for the wheels of society.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Too much grease and you get fires....

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

It's not too difficult, just instinct. We all have emotions. When responding to clients just be as polite as possible (if you want to keep their business).

That said, outside of work, emails seem to cause a fair amount of misunderstandings. I've taken to using the phone when I want to talk to someone...

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Sigh! Fake niceness, fake concern, fake sincerity - I will never go that far.

It's depressingly true that people want that though (well they want the genuine article but seem to settle quite happily for the fake). Sean, when he phones up somwhere with a complaint is quite openly looking for someone to be nice and apologetic and pay him attention etc. etc. I'd rather just have whatever's wrong fixed and not go wrong again.

Entertainingly, Sean had 'the best cutomer service experience ever' last night. After being put through to NTL's call centre he got a totally unhelpful and evasive (though polite and friendly sounding - the 100% fake type) guy. Phoning up the head office instead and mentioning his dissatisfaction with this, the guy he was then speaking to said "They are all useless cunts up there. Absolute arseholes." and proceeded to answer Sean's query, agree he had a point and promise to sort it out.

There are ways and ways....

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

I like etiquette because it is mostly simple and rule based. People are hard enough to figure out, so I'm happy to take the help.

On the other hand etiquette also makes it easier for other people to figure you out. I was at a restaurant once and Jamie asked why they always cleared my plate before his. I pointed out that by lining my cutlery up in the middle I had indicated that I was finished. Simple rule, clear result. Yay

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Etiquette helps society function.

[paddie-gal.livejournal.com]

Templates are the way forward. I also have similar often mentioned queries, and the best thing to do is have loads of templates....works like a charm. Customers think they are getting totally personal service, and you're just doing what's good for you.

[moniqueleigh]

Yup. Templates for email are goooood. Especially when working in a call centre environment. I spent roughly a year as a customer service team leader (also in charge of answering email requests).

I never had much of a problem crafting "polite" responses, but when you're answering 100+ per day and at least half of them are simply repeating the same questions... Yeah. Templates start looking better & better. I think it took me about 2 days to create my own.

[rainstorm.livejournal.com]

Wow, I just searched for "ettiquette" on google, and your journal came up on the first page.

I'm so impressed :P