Nothing reveals corporate sloppiness more than addressing customers by a name they do not use. I’m referring to the rampant practice by interactive voice response (IVR) units and customer call center personnel using the first name datum in all customer interactions. I know many people — including some of the most successful people in the world — who use a nickname or their middle name socially and professionally:
It’s Larry Ellison, not Lawrence
. . . Mary Kay Ash, not Mary Ash
. . . Zig Ziglar, not Harry Ziglar.
Maybe in the interests of national security, these people use their legal name on airplane tickets and opening banks accounts, but that isn’t the same as giving permission to use that legal first name. Good customer service demands that companies make a note of a person’s preferred name in their data bases. It’s a minimal courtesy.
Also, as the customer, people should be allowed to opt-out of “first-name basis.” Again, it should be very easy to store this option in the data base.
My blessed mother had an interesting approach to this situation. When customer service reps or shop clerks would attempt to address her by her first name she would cheerfully say: “Oh, please feel free to call me Mrs. Minko.” She wasn’t scolding people, just indicating her preference.
>>> Update: On a related note, when it comes to speech-to-text voicemail transcription, an end-user name should be spelled correctly. For example, if a person’s name is spelled Jaymes and the voicemail is being transcribed to text, then the way Jaymes spells the name should be used. Yes, this is an extra step in the speech-to-text process, but it matters.