How to give dignity and respect to people around the world through the way we communicate with companies

Hi, I’m Alex, Founder of Fair Voyage, an ethical travel company. Human dignity and respect are some of our core values here at Fair Voyage. I’m sure you value humanity just as much as we do. Like you, I’m also a consumer of many products and services in my daily life. That’s why I’d like to share with you what I’ve learnt as Founder of Fair Voyage about the impact we consumers can have on other people’s life simply by the way we communicate with them.

To illustrate what we can do in our everyday life to give dignity and respect to people around the world, I’d like to share with you three different perspectives:

1. How we as consumers communicate with companies

To start with, let’s look at our own experience as consumers. Imagine you’re using some website to buy a product or use a service. Perhaps that website isn’t very user-friendly and you can’t quite figure out how it works, or you have a question. Because we’re all very busy and time is money, this can be quite frustrating. We want someone to solve our problem right away, 24/7. So we message that company through their live chat, or we send them an email. Sooner or later, we get a reply.

Assume that reply solves your problem. Please take a moment to think about your typical behavior once your problem is solved. If you’re anything like the majority of consumers, you simply close the chat window, or get that email that has answered your question and that you no longer need out of your inbox. Sounds familiar?

Now assume that reply doesn’t solve your problem. How frustrating, isn’t it? You’ve spent all that time explaining your issue, and now you don’t even get a helpful reply! So now you have to waste your time to explain your issue a second time, and you’ll have to wait even longer to have it resolved. Once again, please think about your usual reaction. Have you ever sent a very short reply along the lines of “That’s not what I asked for. Please read my question, [you idiot]: ..…”? OK, most likely you haven’t ever actually written idiot, but perhaps you’ve not felt the need to be polite either?

2. How we as humans feel when receiving messages

I’d now like to share with you my personal experience as founder of Fair Voyage. Because it’s very important for me to be close to our customers to understand their needs and give them our best advice, I’m now personally receiving a lot of messages sent by conscious travellers to us as a company. So I’ve moved from being a pure consumer into also being on the receiving end of these messages.

Usually, when we receive an inquiry and I personally respond to them, one of three things could happen:

1. To start with, we might not get a response at all. When that happens, I usually follow up after a few days because I’d like to make sure that my reply has been helpful.
2. When we I eventually receive a reply, it might be a very short message along the lines of: “Will get back to you” which seems to imply “leave me alone until I get back to you, if at all.” In rarer cases, people might say “Booked with a cheaper company” [which means they weren’t interested in our conscious trips in the first place, or we failed to communicate why conscious products that ensure fair and ethical working conditions are more expensive than lowest budget offers]. In one case, someone replied to my personal follow-up: “Don’t email me again.” As a company, and from the perspective as a business owner, of course I know this is absolutely normal behavior that is to be expected. As a human, however, it’s very difficult to not let my emotions be impacted by such short, seemingly rude, messages. We humans don’t want to feel useless, or – even worse – that we’re just perceived as a nuisance by others.
3. At Fair Voyage, we’re in the fortunate position that short, seemingly rude, replies are more the exception rather than the rule. More often than not, we get very personal emails. Conscious travellers typically address me with my name, thank me for my services, perhaps raise another question or mention the next step, and end their messages with a polite greeting. Each time I receive such a friendly message, it’s making me personally very happy because I know that I’ve been able to help someone else, and that our work is meaningful. It’s these interactions with other conscious consumers that motivate me to build Fair Voyage and do my work.

Unfortunately, not everyone is that lucky to receive mostly nice messages. Imagine you’re a call centre agent, perhaps in India or the Philippines. They’re getting flooded with short, impersonal emails all day long; and I can only assume that there’s also a high share of rude, impolite and angry messages reaching their inboxes. The psychological burden and emotional drain caused upon them by our messages must be tremendous. Can you even imagine getting hundreds such messages every single day?

3) How companies are influencing the way we communicate with them

Finally, I’d like to share with you what I’ve learnt through building Fair Voyage about the way I’m communicating with companies as their customer, depending on how they communicate with me. We’re using several online service providers to help us build Fair Voyage, and so I happen to be in regular contact with those companies, whenever I have a question or problem. That’s given me the opportunity to learn from the best when it comes to customer communications.

One such company that has really revolutionised the way businesses communicate with customers is called Intercom. Whenever I chat with them, I see the photo and name of the person I’m talking to. Each of their team members have their own personal style of writing and often use smileys or share photos in their messages. All of this helps me understand that I’m communicating with a real human, and this is also influencing the way I communicate with them. More often than not, I’d address them with their name, thank them for their help, and wish them a nice day before closing our chat.

On the other extreme, our hosting services provider has a rather anonymous chat service, most likely answered by someone in a call centre in India. I don’t even know the full name of the person I’m talking to, so it doesn’t feel very personal to me. This has the result that I tend to be a lot shorter with my messages and close the chat window as soon as I’ve received what I needed, without appreciating the individual’s services. Now that I know how it feels to be on the receiving end, I’ve been trying to improve the way I communicate with them, but I still slip every now and then.

I’m sharing with you these two examples to say: We consumers are not to blame for our behavior. Of course, when companies de-humanize our communications and don’t show us the person we’re talking to, they make us communicate with them the way we’d communicate with a company, an inhuman entity.

However, in almost all cases, the customer service representatives of these companies, meaning the men and women who are working tirelessly in call centres to be able to feed their families and send their children to school, they are not responsible for the way their employers are making us communicate with them. Would you agree that these men and women deserve as much dignity and respect as every other human being?

As conscious consumers, we can have a significant impact on the quality of those people’s lives all around the world, simply by the way we communicate with companies on a day to day basis. Next time you send a message online, remember that there’s a real human receiving your message. If you care that the person who’s solving your problem is being given the same dignity and respect that you would expect for yourself, spend 10 more seconds of your time when writing your message to be polite and appreciate their work: Address them by their name, thank them for their help to solve your problem, and wish them a nice day. It doesn’t hurt us to be polite, but it will make someone else very happy.

You can find more information about our values and approach to sustainability on our sustainability page. How do you know whether your tour operator is an ethical travel company? Click our blog link to find out. You may also enjoy our Medium article: ‘5 reasons why the travel industry (isn’t yet) sustainable‘.

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