When I was in fourth grade, my reading teacher informed me that my name was wrong. The teacher insisted that it was impossible according to English rules. "There simply cannot be a capital letter in the middle of a word," she asserted, and thus edited all of my work. After a while, I started writing it her way on her work but secretly continued with the form my parents taught me, AnnaLisa, outside her classroom.
I don't remember much else about this teacher. I can't recall a single reading assignment I completed under her tutelage. Even her name escapes me. But her presumptious and arrogant editing of my name sticks after all these years.
That iron-fisted teacher came to mind recently when an AP article by Sean ODriscoll titled Apostrophes in names stir lot o' trouble hit the media. Those of us whose names do not contain apostrophes, spaces, or hyphens may not be aware that some unsuspecting customers, when asked to enter their names into computerized forms, are forced to alter their names to do so. The problem stems from programming parameters that only allow Arabic letters.
Inflexible insistence may be effective in bullying a 9-year-old girl to change her name, but in the business world, it does not make for good customer relations. The van Camps, O'Learys, and al-Rashids of the world deserve that most basic right of accurate self-identity.
As savvy business people, the last thing we want to do is turn potential customers away before we've had the opportunity to introduce the benefits we can offer. Restrictions on how a name may be entered are barriers to effective customer relations.
Unfortunately, correcting the problem is no simple matter. Contrary to the "sloppy programming" reasoning given in ODriscoll's article, a programmer I know tells me constructing work-arounds to avoid this problem is a complex and time-consuming task that requires diligent testing and tweaking to perfect. But he also stressed that it is far from impossible for a skilled programmer.
Take a look at the name fields in the forms your company uses, including online contact forms, online order forms, and database forms. Try entering a few names that are unconventional. If this test results in an error message, consider having a talented programmer add coding that will allow exceptions. Don't expect this to be an inexpensive fix; expert custom programming doesn't come cheap. But if you follow through, you will demonstrate concern and sensitivity toward your customers, which in communicates your concern for the customers themselves. In a world full of poor customer service, this could be invaluable improvement.
© 2008 by AnnaLisa Michalski