Phone lines email... 🥁 minus 100 out of 10

It’s been a while, so I’ve made this teardown Extra Snotty™. You’re welcome!

Last year I booked a holiday through a travel agent.

They did a good job. It was a good holiday. I haven’t needed to contact them again since I got home. I filed their name away in a mental drawer for the future.

Then out of the blue, an email arrived…

If you enjoy this teardown, please consider flicking it on to someone else who’d get a lot out of it ✌ (and if someone fabulous forwarded it to you, subscribe for free to get the next one).

I always anonymise the sender to Xxxx out of courtesy. Have a hunch? Guess away!

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Subject: “Thank you for your patience”

What? I haven’t asked you for anything.

“Thank you for your patience”

Nope, still none the wiser.

“Our sincere apologies but since the world has reopened we have been inundated with a record demand for holidays and our usual 10 second answer rate has declined to an average of 7 minutes.”

SKIN. CRAWLING.

What I’m hearing here is we’re the greatest, and no, of course we haven’t brought in any extra support staff to deal with this incredibly predictable surge in demand. You should thank us for the digital oxygen we are breathing in your general direction, mortal.

It would be bad enough if I had actually been trying to reach them to resolve some sort of issue. But I haven’t. I was just getting on with my day, revelling in not having to think about some travel agency’s incredibly predictable surge in demand.

(And let’s not talk about the pointlessness of the word “sincere”.)

“We are doing all we can to restore our usual prompt level of service.”

You’re not though, are you? You’re writing emails about how busy and popular you are.

“Please note, simple questions can be answered via our messaging service on Xxxxx saving the need to wait on the phone.”

I see. You’re inviting me to spend hours doing battle with a chatbot or praying that the live chat plugin doesn’t self destruct for no reason at all. Oh wait, I don’t even have any “simple questions”.

Also, has anybody, in the history of Anything Ever, enjoyed listening to a point that started with “please note”? Sincere question.

---------- End ----------

Conclusion: 

Email Teardown Club score = minus 100 out of 10

And so we have it. The most irritating, most misjudged company email I’ve seen out in the wild.

A cynic might wonder if it was just a marketing tactic with 0% intent of helping customers who are stuck. My guess is that the travel agent didn’t write it in bad faith, they just got it wrong. Doesn’t change the fact that I wish someone could go all Eternal-Sunshine-Of-A-Spotless-Mind on me and erase the memory of it.

At least there’s always gin.

Any misjudged emails in your world of late? I’d be interested to see them. I think.

Cheerio,
Corissa 

P.S. In these teardowns, I mix my gut reaction as a customer with my background as a copywriter. The goal is to explore how messaging really lands out there in the real world. But I’m a sample size of one, so I’d love to hear your take too. Agree? Disagree? Hit reply and tell me! 

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