If they can’t write English, how good could their service be?

One of my colleagues wrote to an internet firm misnamed Articulate to ask three very simple questions.

This reply came back from some wench in Customer Disservice:

I’ve personally reviewed your case and have determined that it will require attention from a Tier 2 Customer Support Engineer who specializes in cases like yours. I’ve escalated your case for further analysis.

Thank you in advance for your patience and understanding. We look forward to resolving your case!

Regards,

Ms. Halfewytte

The questions my partner asked were so simple that it makes you wonder what the Tier 1 Customer Support Engineers do. Clean Toilets? And while I’m on about it, why the bloody exclamation mark?

But why does this sort of thing drive me into fits of juddering rage? I have been dealing for five months with two idiots who talk like that all the time, interspersing such language with requests for meetings about fuck-all. They are also haughtily ignorant about what we do. Every time I get an email from one of them I want to smash my computer into tiny shards.

Am I just getting more and more bad-tempered? I am actually rather a happy soul. Should I not be taking pity on someone who thinks it right to come out with such tripe? Would it not be more helpful to suggest people like that seek fulfilment with a job in local government?

Anyhow, I am torn about what write about in my next post. We have a striking policewoman from Naples called Nadia staying with us who makes me laugh and wonder why crime is so popular there.

Last time we met she was helping us to clear her sister Pina’s house in Woking.

We got rid of a lot of stuff, some of which she sold to a Chinese family. I still can’t understand how she did it. They spoke very little English, and hers whilst hugely and hilariously expressive is pretty incomprehensible, especially when she gets excited, which is most of the time.

So that’s all I can tell you about her really. Next time I’ll talk about what an old colleague thought of meeting Barack Obama. Very interesting.

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

3 Comments

  1. After having perused said post, it is the author’s opinion that you not smash your computer into tiny shards, but rather find the said culprit…

    And give ’em a good hiding, geezer.

  2. Hey there, Drayton:

    See how much better you feel when you surround yourself with happy people that make you laugh?

    The older I get, the more I want to avoid negativity–and I think it’s my subconscious nudging me in a healthier direction. You’re not becoming a grumbly old fart for no reason, my friend… negative, angry circumstances feed and proliferate, and vice versa!

    So for that reason I try very hard not to dwell on what the Obama crowd is up to. Why go out of my way to beat myself up? 🙂

    A. Parcher

  3. Peter

    You may not have noticed, Drayton, but local government is having to get rid of/ dispose/release into the wild it’s spare idiots because they had to many of them. So. sorry but we cannot return yours to captivity.

    You would think getting rid of all these idiots would improve local government but it has not. Seems these were just the peripheral idiots and the hard core idiots are still in there.

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