Yet we annotate our columns with notes like ‘For feedback, comments and insults email [email protected]’. This should lead any sane, analytical person to the conclusion that not many columnists are smart.
In fact, I too think many columnists’ IQ hover around the single-digit range with most approaching the zero mark. But this should not worry anyone. We are always hoping we will get the more flattering feedback that should push our haughtiness-metre up. Truth is most of us need a shot of self-effacing serum to keep us in line.
In reality we deal with all sorts of customer feedback – some of it from readers armed to the teeth with militant vocabulary that could well end the hostilities in Russia and Ukraine. Some are armed to the teeth with bad vocabulary but are running on a huge tank of criticism fuel that makes them want to throw their feedback onto your lap no matter their shortfalls.
In Customer Service School they teach you how to deal with customer feedback - as well as how to fight it which is the default mode for many of the service organisations around these shores.
I mean how do you explain a situation where you eat a meat pie and you realise it is off – has gone bad or the kidney in the pie tastes like cardboard - and you take it back only to be told ‘no but you have eaten half of it’. Most of us columnists too are petrified of negative feedback mainly because we might well lose our jobs if it gets to the editor.
I get quite a handful of feedback through email and some have the testicular fortitude to dare me to print their feedback. Now this is a very sticky situation because if I printed them all, my column would consist entirely of letters that people dared me to print. Eventually the newspaper, realizing that my services were no longer necessary, would fire me, and I'd have to get a real job, which is a problem because most columnists don't know how to actually do anything except have opinions. Customer feedback is key for any business and it gives that business a chance to get better. I have a letter here from one reader who feels I should let my beard grow a bit more and trim it like the more fashionable guys do nowadays. To quote her directly: ‘I enjoy reading your column but your beard in your photo sure looks DATED and NOT at all flattering, to say the least. It seems stuck in the 80s. If you are still sporting that awful beard, I suggest you let your beard grow it a bit more and go to a good hair stylist to give you a new and stylish beard shave. I hope you don't mind my criticism, it's nothing personal -- just a suggestion.’ But my wife loves how I style my beard and now I am kind of caught in a situation where I have to make a decision between the two.
One day I met a very animated reader of Ink Spills who advised me to go to Maun and write an article about the village, its people and its issues. ‘Lots of humour in that town’ he said. Now you are supposed to be nice to customers and refuse to get offended so you have to nicely stomach the torture and grin throughout the engagement. At the end I was equipped with a possible source of humour for my column less the funding for that long trip to Maun. The piggy-bank has just started jingling and hopefully by year end I would have saved enough to make the trip to the north west.
(For comments, feedback and insults email [email protected]) Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited coursesHis other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email [email protected].
