63336 blog

Today we’re announcing a major policy change, which comes as a result of extensive research and customer consultation. From now on, we require that customers use “please” when beginning or ending questions.

When we set up the 63336 service, we designed it so it didn’t matter about your spelling, whether you used txtspk or your question was full of slang, as it’s skilled human researchers that power 63336 and they can answer practically any question you’ve got.

Our researchers work to a guide that helps you get the best answers for your £1. This guide focuses on providing well written, accurate, fast answers that are often witty and provide extra wow factor. But it also helps researchers to decide what they can’t (for legal reasons), or won’t (for our editorial purposes) answer.

Although our policy has remained relatively unchanged over the last four years, we’re updating it today, because we believe that instilling the habit of politeness in the UK will have significant positive effects not only for our workers, but for all individuals and possibly the economy too.

What you need to do

Q: Where the hell are my bleeding keys?

63336: Hello. Your keys are under the sofa. They fell out of your pocket when you flumped down in front of the TV last night. Hope you haven’t been too inconvenienced.

From today, if you ask questions like this we will simply choose not to answer. You’ll need to make your requests much more polite. The easiest way to do this is for 63336 to mandate that all customers use the word ‘please’ in all questions.

However, to make it easier during what we expect to be a difficult transitional period, we’ve agreed that including one or more kisses (”x”) will be an acceptable alternative to the actual “please” for the next six months.

If customers fail to comply, they will receive our new standard response, “Sorry, you did not say please when you asked your question. Please can you re-submit your text with a please in order to get an answer. Thank you. x”

Why we are adopting this new approach

Our service is by nature anonymous, so we know to expect the unexpected. We’ve never been too shocked to be propositioned (these range from straightforward marriage proposals to “would you prefer me in French knickers or g-strings?”), and kisses at the end of questions delight us. However, in the last year – perhaps driven by the recession – we’ve seen a marked change in the way that new customers in particular use the service. They just aren’t as nice.

In 2005 and 2006 we received, on average, a kiss/please/thank you once every 30 questions. In the last year this has dropped sharply – it’s now less than one in 100 questions. Swearing has also risen dramatically, from 1 expletive in every 200 questions to 1 in every 40. It’s not big, and it’s not clever.

You might not think this matters, but a decrease in politeness, and an increase in customers who need their mouths washed out with soap, has had a substantial negative effect on our researchers. They face 12,000 of these questions every day. We want to protect our workforce, but we also want to instil some of our own high standards of politeness into our customers.

And with good reason, as it turns out.

A little politeness makes a big difference

As part of this process, we commissioned research from the Association of Promoting Intelligent Language. The research confirmed a decline in standards of politeness in today’s society, as well as, interestingly, a high correlation between increase in rudeness and decrease in economic growth. Whilst we’re not claiming (yet) that the recession has been entirely due to people being less nice to each other, the results make some stark reading:

Comparing the early 1990s with 2010, the research showed that:

- Parents who consider ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ essential communication tools has fallen from 85% to 55%
- Postmen and women reported a 75% decrease in greetings from the public on their morning rounds. Correspondingly, postal deliveries have been 81% slower in the same period
- In 2010, 89% of adults said an average of 3 “thank yous” and 1.8 smiles per transaction were necessary to get them to return to a shop and spend money

After receiving this commissioned research, we undertook a survey of 1,000 of our customers, asking them whether we should instil higher standards. 73% approved of a strong editorial stance, whilst only 7% objected. 6% refused to take part in the survey (and have since been barred) whilst 14% expressed no opinion or did not understand the question.

It’s as a result of this compelling evidence that we’ve decided to take strong action, both for the good of our researchers and the future of the UK.

How to be polite

If it’s been a while since you were polite, here’s a brief guide to what is acceptable, and what simply won’t do anymore.

Sorry, but starting today we will no longer accept:

Give me the bus times to Chipping Norton right now

I want a list of the films made in the 1990s, all of them

Oi loser, tell me what colour pants I’m wearing or I’ll never text you again

Instead, we would like, please:

Please can you tell me the better way of saying i can’t hear other than ‘what’.

Will you marry me 63336? XxX

Could I trouble you for the next 3 trains to Upminster, please?

Thank you for your attention. Have a nice day.

Editors note: (2/4/2010) This is of course an April Fool’s, see our new post here.

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