Cover your ears - much trumpet-blowing - we won an award.
Firefly are Cisco "Customer Kings".
(I'm still wondering if it's because the entry deadline - 23rd December - meant that most companies were too hungover to enter. More fool them...)

And the resulting interviews on Oprah and Jonathan Ross (Cisco's PR machine is hot) got me thinking about this riveting topic - customer service.
Don't yawn. Yet.

You see, at school we're never taught how to complain - or how to respond to complaints. So when we start our "jobs", and have to deal with a "complaint", we slip into this weird language: "We apologise for any inconvenience you may have suffered"... "As a gesture of goodwill"... "Your statutory rights are unaffected".
Where do we learn this "autoreplyspeak"? I mean, no-one actually talks like that, do they?
I'm wondering if it's because we all sent broken Skittles back to Mars when we were little - and those 50p vouchers that seemed so generous were in fact an evil plot to seed a new language among 10 year old children with not enough pocket-money.

Because, worse still, the autoreplyspeak has spread to the people sending in the complaints. We have wonderful letters and emails here at Firefly - and most people, even when complaining, manage to do so in a friendly, understanding way. But occasionally you get a letter that sounds reads like it's been written by a robot.
And yet, let's think, which are the letters I go out of my way to respond to? Well, the nice ones, of course. I'll do anything I can to patch things up with a friendly, loyal customer who's had a disappointing experience. But if someone's going to just go on a robotic rant, I stop feeling compassion for them, and start thinking like a robot too. Lawsuit-phobia kicks in, and anything I say might be used as evidence that I was once a human-being.

We all need reminding every now and again, don't we, that every little interaction we have with "customers" or "call-centre agents" is still a shared moment with a real person - someone who has the same messy tangle of memories, dreams and worries that we have. And when people treat us as real people - that little gesture, that bit of banter that shows they value this moment with us - it makes life a little richer and happier, and we appreciate it.
That's all really.

I caught myself on this recently with my "customer" hat on. I went to an Intelligence Squared debate a few weeks back, and felt it was spoiled by the new addition of TV cameras for BBC World. And since I love these debates, I was crestfallen. So I wrote to the organisers.

I was about to write a litany of all the things that were wrong with the debate. But then I thought, how would I think if I received that? Demoralised. "Another moaner". Whatever.
No - these are intelligent people, who want to do the right thing, just like me. If I relate to them, thanking them for all the great things they've achieved, and appreciating the tricky decision process they've doubtless been through, they're probably more likely to think about what I say.
I got the nicest reply. Human, respectful, and to-the-point. I was happy. And in some small way, the sum of human karma had been enhanced rather than chipped-away.

It's just common sense and decency.
Autoreplyspeak is bad for humankind. We must fight the Martians.