Let Me Call You By Your Name

I contacted customer support recently and received a reply from someone named "Janet." It was a perfectly helpful response, professional and friendly. But something small nagged at me, the way small things sometimes do when they do not quite add up.

Janet, I suspect, is not really Janet. It started me thinking about how often this happens.

That is not a criticism of the person behind the name. They are real, they are working, and in all likelihood they helped me with the issue I was having at that moment. The problem is not the person. The problem is the name. And more specifically, the problem is what the name is meant to do. I decided to research the origins of this practice.

For decades, companies with overseas customer service operations have assigned Western names to their staff. Mike. Janet. Susan. David. The reasoning is not complicated. It was assumed, perhaps correctly at one time, that Western customers would feel more at ease with a familiar name. That they might hesitate, or complain, or simply hang up if they were greeted by a name they did not recognize or could not immediately pronounce.

So the solution was to erase the name entirely and replace it with a placeholder.

I understand the business logic. I do not accept it.

Here is what actually happens when I realize I am talking to a Mike who is not a Mike. The small warmth I felt at the beginning of the interaction cools. A quiet trust I did not even know I had extended gets quietly withdrawn. Not because I have a problem with the person, and not because I have a problem with where they are calling from. But because I was handed something curated and false in place of something real. And once I notice that, I cannot un-notice it.

The intention was to make me comfortable. The result was the opposite.

We are living in a genuinely global world now. Not the idea of a global world, not the aspiration of one, but the actual daily reality of it. I order products made across three continents before breakfast. I watch content created in countries I have never visited. I talk to people online or on the phone whose voices carry accents from everywhere. My own relationships have crossed oceans. None of this requires explanation or softening. It simply is how life works now.

Against that backdrop, the assumption that I need to hear a fake Western name to feel safe talking to a support agent feels not just outdated but slightly insulting. To me, and honestly, to the agent as well. If they are lying about their name, maybe they are lying about other parts of our transaction. I honestly feel misled.

Here is a compromise that may work for everyone. A nickname. A real one.

Someone named Subramaniam might go by Subbu. Priyanka might be Priya. Chidinma might be Chi. These are not complicated. They are approachable, they are personal, and most importantly, they belong to the person using them. They are a bridge, not a mask. They say, here is a piece of who I actually am, offered in a way that works for both of us and is the first step in building trust.

That feels entirely different from Janet.

There is a version of global customer service that is built on genuine connection rather than performed familiarity. Where the person helping me is allowed to show up as themselves, even in abbreviated form. Where the accommodation goes both ways.

Where I, as the customer, am trusted to handle the reality that the world is large and full of people with names I might need a moment to learn how to pronounce.

I would rise to that occasion. I think most people would.

The name on the screen or phone is such a small thing. But small things carry meaning. And when the small thing is designed to obscure rather than reveal, it quietly undermines the interaction it was meant to protect.

So to every Janet and Mike and Susan who is actually someone else entirely: I am sorry. I would like to know your real name. Or at least a nickname you actually go by in life.

That is the only introduction I need to begin a relationship that doesn't feel like a scam.