This question might sound rhetorical but please tell me how many of you buy things online?
Have you read the order confirmation email when you receive it? Doesn’t it sound so automated and without any emotion right?
There was/is a company which used to sell CDs online. When someone used to order CDs, they used to send the confirmation email like this:
Thanks for your order with CD Baby!
Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our world-renowned packing specialist lit a local artisan candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day.
We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh…
We miss you already. We’ll be right here at store.cdbaby.com patiently awaiting your return.
Noticed the difference? See in whatever way you connect with people, it might change their perception of you and vice versa. I had read this in Tools of Titans in the profile of Derek Sivers. I thought this email confirmation story might have been then in the past but apparently, it is still on.
How many times have today you said Thank You to someone with honesty? When was the last time, you were said thank you by someone else which was genuinely heartfelt? The thank you which genuinely moved you?
Thank you are just 2 small words which, if said genuinely, mean a whole lot to someone.
In my email signature, it always used to be ‘Warm regards’ or ‘Thanks’. But I saw one colleague of mine who had the longest 2 words ever: ‘Thank You’ for his signature. If you read it a couple of times, it would genuinely appear better than our usual stock replies.
I changed mine to ‘Thank You’ as well. When I am actually not thankful, I make it back to post-millennial ‘ty’.
Featured Photo on Visual Hunt
It does reflect how genuinely thankful you are. But these days when the norm is just accept help as if it were the other person’s job or “thanks” is a mere obligation; going out of the way to respond with a “thank you ” would sound like a faux pas. That is not what I think; but most times I do a “Thanks much in advance ” and later when the help comes in, a follow up of “Thanks again . I wonder what they might be thinking about me! 😐
Thanks in advance is the best 🙂
🙂 Its a trick to make them act. Since they’ve already been thanked; it becomes a moral obligation to help the seeker 😀