Dear Client
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At the JC we struggle to understand the pathology of someone who addresses an out of office auto-reply to “Dear Sender”, but we suspect it is along the same lines as the commuter who cheerily says “Thanks, Driver!” as he alights, thereby showing unusual courtesy and then trampling all over it in the space of two words.
“Dear Client” is much the same. It is bad business: “dear” conveys a degree of (professionally appropriate) intimacy with your correspondent. Nothing untoward or smutty in this perpetually outraged times, of course, but it does imply you at least know their name. “Client” implies quite the opposite: that either you don’t know or you don’t care: it is how you describe a faceless bovine — usually a herd of them — tethered to a stall in the milking shed. You are special to me and, I suppose, I could go to the effort of setting up a mail-merge but, actually, life’s too short.
This is no paradox, folks. There’s a simple solution: don’t use “dear” or “client”.
There is nothing wrong with not including a client’s name in the right circumstances: it might be a to-all communication going to 5,000 people updating them about MiFID 2 roll out, and the simple logistics of setting up a mail-merge from your — ahh — immaculate client static data records might just not be worth the bother. Fair enough, if so, but then don’t call them “dear”. You’re running an ad in the paper for crying out loud, not inviting them to your son’s barvitzvah.
See also
- Out of office replies
- Farewell email