In the free world of equal thank you is a given between the two people.
In Georgia, where I am from and grew up if you mess up your basics, you are screwed, literally, you can even lose your chance of a marriage to a certain family if a potential mother-in-law does not like your thank you.
Jokes aside, in the multicultural world from “Merci” to “spasibo” thank you is a given.
So why do people mess up their thank yous, is it a cultural gap or simply bad manners? And when do bad manners start to become OK?
Let’s see.. If you have a business you have a customer or customers, if you have customers I assume you are nice to them. If they ask questions, you answer… promptly, if they need assistance… you’d be happy to assist.
How nice of you
But what if you are a customer to another business, does it give you the right to mess up your thank you?
In business, the art of saying thank you is one of the most powerful tools to master, done it properly it can take you a long way. But it’s usually at the other end that the manners start to become unpredictable.
Things change very fast in life situations, from every day encounters to businesses. If you mess up your thank you people remember. If you skip one thank you, you can be excused but, skip it twice and you are a person with bad manners.
So here’s the scenario, if you are a customer and requested an assistance either face to face or via email, regardless of the outcome you should say thank you to the person who took their time to attend to your needs, perhaps by answering a simple question or going into the length of spending a day or two doing their best to satisfy your needs. Assuming you deserve the service and have no need to say thank you makes you a really ill-mannered human being.
If you or a potential customer making an enquiry about the service, or about purchasing a product and email a business, the real person behind the business usually has to take his or her time to try satisfy your enquiry. I know a person who for the kind of service he provides can take him half a day to send a reply back to the enquiry. And it can take up to 2 hours of face to face meeting to deal with the inquiry.
Not taking a minute to say thank you makes you either a really disorganised person or you do not put a value on yourself, because if you did value your time than you would value others…(well if you value your time but not others then of course you have really bad manners).
Or suppose you are an old client and you are getting personal invitations to private events and special deals, it’s hard to reply every time, but it also makes you a nice person to say thank you but no thank you. And if you ever need to use their service again, you should take time to say thank you. I had an old client who would not reply to any of the personal messages, which was fine, I guess… but then she needed to ask me a question, I assumed she forgot to say thank you, or maybe it was a cultural gap? Otherwise why would not she take 10 seconds to hit reply to an email to say thank you.
In the world where we demand everything personal, from the service to handmade craft and personalised experiences, when does it become to be OK to not say thank you? Or does being a customer grants anyone exclusive right to mess up thank you?
There is nothing worth than being selectively good-mannered person. In the free world of equal thank you is a given between the two people.
Even if you really wish you’d never been introduced to a person, or asked for help, unless they did something really bad to you, and it’s a war, you should say thank you. After all, it’s the most wonderful opportunity to be a good-mannered person and close the cultural gap.
Life is so much more fun when people smile and say thank you.
Observations from the client experience who forgot to say thank you 🙂
Hale, Cheshire, August 20th, 2016, Saturday
0 Comments