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Feb 27
2009
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Words seem to have less and less meaning these days. They seem to morph into different meanings faster than ever before. The words we use and the language we adopt, as a company and in our profession, take on different meanings over time. At any given snapshot in time they become part of our culture, the way we do things. Over the last few months as I was starting my new company, it struck me how many organizations have tried to call their customers something other than a customer. Seem I hear the word “client” used a lot. Also seems like a lot of organizations call their organization a “firm”. I got to thinking, how does that make my customers feel when I call him a client? How do they feel when I call my company a firm? So I asked them.
The responses I got were surprising. My customers don’t like to be called clients. It makes them feel like they are in a doctor’s office, or in a CPA firm’s office, or in a lawyer’s office, most of those relate to negative experiences. They indicated to me a negative reaction to the word “firm” as well. They said that firm means, rigid, unmovable. So I right clicked on firm and got these synonyms: hard, unyielding, stiff. I suppose one could see how accounting firms, psychiatric practices and law firms, want to come across that way. They tend to be a bit elitist in my opinion. A top-down approach to working with customers – like “we are better than you and know more than you” feeling when sitting at their firm.
