Down with first, middle, and last names.
Stop getting the foundation of good business wrong.
We love simplicity and clarity. Everything we design has our customers and our customers’ customers in mind.
One of the biggest things that has been bugging us over the past few months is how some businesses collect their customers’ names. More specifically, how their customers prefer to be addressed. It’s a simple, yet extremely complicated and complex concept that most businesses today still ignore. And that’s not acceptable because getting someone’s name “right” is the foundation of having a great conversation and the basics of good business.
You see, the concept of first names, middle names, and last names is a very Western concept. To many non-Westerners around the world, this arbitrary sequence is very confusing. If you have customers from around the world and still using a first, middle, and last name configuration, we’re sorry to tell you, but you’re doing it wrong.
Handling every naming structure from around the world is not plausible. In an article by Richard Ishida, structural differences such as given name and their patronymic relationships, ordering of different parts of a name, multiple family names, variant word forms of names, inherited names, and the list goes on and on, all contribute to the complexity of getting someone’s name just right. Some examples from Richard:
In the Malay name Isa bin Osman the word ‘bin’ means ‘son of’ (‘binti’ is used for women). If you refer to this person you might say Mr. Isa, or if you know him personally, Encik Isa (Encik is a Malay word rather like Mr.).
Or what about:
Spanish-speaking people will commonly have two family names. For example, María-Jose Carreño Quiñones may be the daughter of Antonio Carreño Rodríguez and María Quiñones Marqués. You would refer to her as Señorita Carreño, not Señorita Quiñones. Brazilians have similar customs, and may even have three or four family names, drawing on the names of other ancestors, such as José Eduardo Santos Tavares Melo Silva.
In Asia,
In the Chinese name 毛泽东 (Mao Ze Dong) the family name is Mao, ie. the first name when reading (left to right). The given name is Dong. The middle character, Ze, is a generational name, and is common to all his siblings. Thus, if you are on familiar terms with someone called 毛泽东, you would normally refer to them using 泽东 (Ze Dong), not just 东 (Dong).
When it comes to a helpdesk platform like Reamaze where the beginning of a great relationship can often be won from first impressions, getting the name right is paramount. We’ve steered away from assumptive field designs where we ask for first, middle, and last names in favor of free form fields that simply ask for a full name. The disadvantage of this strategy is that a name variable will always only spit out the full name. Using liquid to split a full name into parts is also not reliable enough when used in automated features.
The solution we came up with is actually brilliantly simple. A friendly name field that supplements a customer’s full name. The friendly name helps customer service agents and customer oriented teams get the customer’s name right whenever and wherever. It’s defined as a name that the customer most commonly goes by, a name that his/her friend would address them by. The friendly name can also be a variable for all conversational situations. For example, a full name like William Clinton can have a friendly name set to “Bill”. An Asian name like Zhao Kui Sheng can have a friendly name set to “Kuisheng” or “Zhao Xian Sheng” (Chinese for Mr. Zhao) or even “Zhao Zong” (a respective title if Mr. Zhao were a CEO).
The point is, without a friendly name field, names such as Zhao Kui Sheng can be easily categorized, miswritten, incorrectly addressed, and ultimately not useable in a conversational context. Name variables become far less useful if they’re not correct.
So, the next time you’re planning on asking a customer for the name make sure you actually get their name!
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You can also find our multi-brand, multi-channel customer service platform at https://www.reamaze.com. Follow @reamaze.
