Don’t call me customer!

Only one of these notices is fictional. Which is it?

ADVERTISING STANDARDS AUTHORITY

Dear Walter Smith,

Re: Banks, building societies and realism

(Your ref: Complaint 57/1995)

We regret to inform you that your recent complaint has not been upheld. The complaints committee finds that the advertisement you claim to be misleading does not contravene the authority’s guidelines and regulations.

However, we would like to thank you for your inquiry and we encourage you to write to us again. Please be assured that you are one of our best customers. We value your on-going support for our enterprise.

Yours sincerely

J. Jones

Customer Relations

Unemployment Benefit

Notice to customers

Will customers please note that the office has introduced the improved ‘Quality Queuing System’ (Quest) for your benefit. We at Unemployment Benefit pride ourselves on offering the best possible service. Thank you for your support.

Accident & Emergency Services

Will relatives, friends or accompanying parties of all unconscious customers please note that they should refer to reception immediately on arrival. Failure to do this may result in undue delay for which management cannot take responsibility.

Believe it or not, only the third notice is imaginary (as far as I know). The other two actually exist. I’ve abridged them, but the fact is that two state departments now officially ‘serve customers’. It can only be a matter of time before A&E follows suit.Does it matter though? What’s in a name, after all?

Frankly, it matters enormously. Language is not just a way to pass on information. Ordain a limited list of approved words, make other words redundant, and you have not only impoverished human discourse — you have forced people to use the meanings you want them to. If knowledge is power then ownership of language is omnipotence. You need only imagine a world where the word ‘freedom’ has been abolished to see the point.

By referring to citizens as ‘customers’ in every conceivable communication, a particular political view becomes increasingly normal. To talk as if we are nothing more than ‘buyers’ and ‘sellers’, or ‘purchasers’ and ‘providers’, is to imply that ‘every man is an island’, that there ‘is no such thing as society’, that ‘a community is only the sum of its individual parts’. To apply the language of the market to every human relationship is to reduce us all to strangers.

So let’s get it straight. Walter Smith is not a customer when he complains about a television commercial. Neither is Fred a customer when he queues for his hardship support. And Adrienne is most definitely not a customer when she is lying on a trolley in A&E. Indeed, she is not a customer when she is in intensive care, nor even when she is convalescing. She is not shopping for new shoes - she is a patient who needs help unconditionally.

Of course, it might be argued that Adrienne is a customer whether she likes it or not: the medicine she receives costs money, it has been paid for by a health authority or her GP, so deny it or not, the market exists nonetheless. But this way of thinking is itself a symptom of a weakened language. It misses the point entirely. If Adrienne does not want to be a customer, then she simply cannot be a customer.

It is time to turn the tables on the language Luddites. Whenever anyone in health care uses the word ‘customer’ bring them to book. And if you are a patient and someone calls you ‘customer’, object loudly. If they can’t use that word then sooner or later they will have to find a better one.

David Seedhouse