{"id":1392,"date":"2019-02-24T14:47:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-24T14:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/importance-of-calling-your-customer-the-correct-name\/"},"modified":"2019-02-24T14:47:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T14:47:00","slug":"importance-of-calling-your-customer-the-correct-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/?p=1392","title":{"rendered":"Importance of Calling Your Customer the Correct Name"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

In 2016, I received this email invite from someone or rather someone representing a brand. Honestly, I never bothered to read past the first sentence until last week when\u00a0I was scrolling through my inbox.\u00a0 The fact that the event planner called me the wrong name made me lose interest in the email content. To some misnaming, is a small mistake to others a name has value because, from the day we were born, we were conditioned to respond to a unique name. According to Brain Research magazine, a person\u2019s brain lights up when s\/he hears his\/her name. Probably, the reason I never went past the first line was that my brain \u2018shut down\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Going through the invite last week got me thinking:<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Has your mother ever called you your sibling’s name? Psychologists argue that misnaming in this case just shows how much your mother loves you<\/span>\ud83d\ude09<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Have you ever forwarded the wrong application letter to a potential employer?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Have you ever misnamed someone?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Have you as a service provider ever called your customer the wrong name?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>How did you feel? Which one of the four is the worst to happen?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>If you have ever called a customer (on call, chat, Twitter, Facebook, mail) the wrong name, how did you redeem yourself?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>Did your action injure the brand’s image?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>What would the public think of the brand calling a customer on Twitter Alice instead of Alison, Grace instead of Greg?
\n
\n<\/span><\/div>\n
What are the advantages of calling your customer the right name?<\/span><\/b>
\nIt creates a sense of value<\/span><\/u><\/div>\n
It makes the customer feel so important. Personalisation is key in customer service.<\/span><\/div>\n

\nYou win the customers attention<\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
Calling your customer the correct name means that you listened to them when they first introduced themselves or you already know them from previous interactions. Paying attention always does more harm than good.\u00a0This helps more when the customer is angry and is complaining about something then when it is your turn to speak; you call them by their name. The customer feels important and might even calm down and let you explain the matter at hand.<\/span><\/div>\n

\nCustomer Loyalty<\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
The moment you make a customer feel valued you automatically win customer loyalty. As long as the name-calling is not overdone, any customer will keep coming back to your business because using the correct name contributed to his\/her great customer experience.<\/span><\/div>\n

\nIncreased sales<\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
A loyal customer will not only keep doing business with you but they will also recommend their friends to you.<\/span><\/div>\n

\nWhat do you do in case you misname a client?<\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
Is it better to apologize or assume that it did not happen?\u00a0Apologizing and continuing with the conversation after the apology where I call the customer the wrong name will take away the awkwardness in the situation.<\/span><\/div>\n

\nFrom my experience offering customer service on calls and on social media, this mistake happens when you are trying to multitask or rather not giving the customer your full concentration.\u00a0How the conversation goes after misnaming mostly depends on the customer you have misnamed. If the customer was irate and you still cannot solve the problem that made the customer reach out from the word go; be sure that things will be bad\u2026very bad.<\/span><\/div>\n

\nOn social media, the person you misname may not even be offended but some other people who see that conversation will be more offended than the person who was misnamed.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In your next conversation; be more attentive and avoid distractions and you will see the number of times you misname will go down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2016, I received this email invite from someone or rather someone representing a brand. Honestly, I never bothered to read past the first sentence until last week when\u00a0I was scrolling through my inbox.\u00a0 The fact that the event planner called me the wrong name made me lose interest in the email content. To some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-facing-staff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerschampion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}