Please ditch your site’s silly title dropdown
I can’t remember which company’s customer service department I was speaking to — maybe a bank, a phone company, or maybe just the people coming to fix my doorbell. But I do remember the part of the conversation that raised my blood pressure.
Customer service: “Is that Miss or Mrs?”
Me: “Why do you need to know if I’m married?”
Customer service: “The computer only gives me those two options.”
Me: … 😱 😭 🤬
Here’s why you should just not have a damn title dropdown.
1. You’re not asking the men if they’re married
If you’re a man, you can just choose “Mr” and you will barely even notice that it happened. If you’re a woman, you don’t have that option. Well, you sort of do, if you believe that “Ms” means “I am a woman and it’s none of your business whether I’m married or not”. But unfortunately, it seems that most of the world thinks women can either be:
Miss — unmarried
Mrs — married
Ms — divorced
That’s right ladies. Our sisters from the 20th century tried to get us a title — Ms — that didn’t signify marital status, and the world has co-opted it to signify marital status.
2. Titles cause irritation if you are divorced
This from a friend:
I’ve been divorced for 12 years. The first set of bank cards I got them to drop the Mrs, but every subsequent card has had it. Irritates me every time I use my cards.
Men! You do not have to deal with this! You can just remain Mr throughout your divorce.
3. Titles cause heartache if you are widowed
This from a different friend:
The ridiculous things that happened to my Mum when she became a widow. It’s like a state that doesn’t exist. It caused pain on top of more pain for over 10 years. They just didn’t have a process.
Again, men do not have to deal with this. They remain Mr throughout their grief. They will never get the question “Is that Miss or Mrs”, and choke back their tears. In a world where “Ms” is interpreted as “divorced”, there is no title for a widow.
4. You can never have enough titles
When I first saw the dropdown for a financial services client, I couldn’t believe that it included “His Royal Highness”, “Admiral” and a bunch of others that seemed like a deliberate attempt at comedy.
I tried to get them to ditch or simplify the dropdown, to no avail. That was more than 10 years ago. I recently had drinks with a friend from that company, who had just sent this message to a bunch of his colleagues:
Let’s talk about the customer title fiasco.
Spins wheels endlessly for years at huge cost and no benefit to anyone.
It’s an arbitrary euro-centric, constitutionally illegal list of titles that we force people to use.
A list that includes Baroness, but not Chief.
Pastor, but not Imam.
Rabbi, but not Guru.
Until someone complains. Then, at huge cost, we add a new one anyway across squillions of systems.
Just a source of customer irritation, potential litigation and brand damage, and IT cost.
It’s silly.
We should be able to say “hello” to a person in the way in which they want to be greeted. Title should be a text field, not a code.
But we need to address people respectfully!
If you feel like you have to be able to say “Good morning, Dowager Countess Crawley” when someone phones your company, well then let them type in their title themselves. Don’t force them to choose a title that doesn’t apply to them. Here’s an idea for how to do it:
Mr and Ms are the easy options. If the user selects ‘other’, ask them how they would like to be addressed. Most people will choose Ms or Mr. Many people will type in Dr or Prof. A few clowns will type Dark Lord of the Universe, but so what?
