I hate templates

By Alston on June 28, 2004 1:30 PM | | Comments (3)

I lent a book to a coworker last Friday, and I wanted to discuss it with her when she was done. I decided to send her an email asking her if she had started the book. She's the marketing intern, and basically a Marketing-Woman-in-training, but so far, fairly nice. Here's the email she sent back to me:

Hey JP,

I did get started on the book this weekend. I only had a chance to read the first couple of chapters but I really like it so far. It's interesting to read the author's perspective on his interracial upbringing and social experiences.

Thanks for lending me the book.

I'm sure it's just me, but does this email strike you as rather disingenuous (note the usage notes)? It drives me crazy. It sounds like marketing-speak, and that you aren't really a person. Or that maybe they aren't really people, and that you just received an auto-generated form email. It could have been generated like this:

Hey $first_name,

I $mod_subject_email $timeframe. I only had a chance to $mod_subject but I really like it so far. It's interesting to read the author's perspective on $book_summary.

Thanks for $subject.

I think I am beginning to hate template email. My coworkers routinely send out emails like:

$client_first_name,

Hope you are doing well. It was nice talking to you $timeframe. As per our discussion $bullshit...

Looking forward to hearing from you,

$salesperson

What the fuck is this garbage? My emails are far more personal. I might include a reference to something funny that was said during our conversation or something specific to the business that we were discussing. I'll bring up some of their issues that they wanted me to address in a future meeting I may have booked or something. But it isn't a fucking template.

And people wonder why customer service sucks so much.

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3 Comments

V. said:

Yeah, so after I read this, I was getting ready to send out a form letter, and felt a bit guilty about it. So, I took an extra 2 minutes to personalize it... I think you're right. Hopefully, it works!

June 28, 2004 4:33 PM
Gina Marie said:

Hey there. I work in customer service. Whenever I write email to a customers, I always write it from scratch, mix up the orders in which I mention things, personalise it and then use a casual different closing each time. I hate form letters. But I guess with big business, they probably have too many email to reply to, making form email more productive.

But yeah, customer service in this day and age sucks. Especially online, you can never get a real person.

::Gina Marie::

June 28, 2004 5:28 PM
Emily said:

I get nervous when sending out a personalized e-mail that would've probably been better off as a form e-mail. Why? Because people out there just aren't that friendly. They might read what you or I thought was funny about the conversation the COMPLETELY wrong way - it happens to me all the time. And god forbid I slip in a little smiley face or something....

It's really sad.

At least I have there are guestbooks out there in which I can be casual, smiley faced me. :-P

July 3, 2004 6:04 PM

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