It’s been a whole week of thinking about how important the words we choose to use are. Here’s today’s story. The airline I travel with recently changed its boarding process. Now, instead of calling out group names, we’ve being assigned to ‘group numbers’. I can only imagine that the choice was made to improve efficiency. Whether it does, or doesn’t, I can’t say. What I can say is that the change didn’t make me feel like a valued human being. Why? Because being referred to as a number made me feel…well…like I was just a number to them. And what customer wants to feel that way? Ultimately, service isn’t about ‘the numbers’ it’s about human beings serving other human beings. The words we use create the feelings we have about our customers – and our customers have about us. So choose them thoughtfully and wisely.
