Using formal address is totally out – or is it?

[nishat@264]

In my grandparents' generation, it was unthinkable to address your parents using the informal "du" form. The era was marked by dictatorship, war and misery; hollow exaggerations of the roles of mother and father attempted to force cohesion in society. In my parents' generation, too, it was not really appropriate to address parents using the informal "du" form in a proper household. And even later in my school years, I would never have dreamed of addressing my schoolmates' parents using the informal "du" form without explicit permission.

A lot has changed since then. I don't feel respected, I just feel very old, when younger people address me using the formal "you" and they react with surprise when I respond in the same way. Anglicisms dominate the IT business world in particular and the hierarchical distance is flattened in many companies by a "you" culture . We at Avidly, who have maintained customer relationships for several years, also prefer to use the informal "you" in both internal and external processes.

But it's not quite that simple. In Germany, we cannot panama whatsapp data simply assume that it is okay to communicate informally with anyone without their consent. A large proportion of employees in Germany - and I include myself in this - grew up with the understanding that the informal form of address should be earned, so to speak. In personal contact, it is the first thing I offer, but I want to be able to offer it in order to show the person I am dealing with the appropriate respect. When making initial contact, I feel uncomfortable writing an email to a person I do not know at all, saying, "Hi Günther, we don't know each other, but let's commit to a really cool business case together."



The solution to all problems – Avidly x HubSpot
And that's not all! If there were only the problem of formal vs. informal address, the whole thing would be relatively easy to solve from an automation point of view - and not particularly innovative either. However, it becomes more interesting when we also take gender into account, which is essential for the correct formulation of "Dear Mr./Ms. <last name>" or "Dear <first name>" - and is also strongly reflected grammatically in the language. In an increasingly diverse society, not everyone wants to be assigned to a specific gender. For three years now, job advertisements have been required to distinguish between m/f/d. Shouldn't there be similar options and standards in a CRM / marketing automation system? However, you quickly come across various pitfalls here, as there are various concepts and approaches to various forms of address in the German language, but no uniform solution and, in particular, no uniformly accepted terms of address.