> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://blog.helpdocs.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why We Don't Assume Pronouns in Customer Support - URL: https://blog.helpdocs.io/why-we-dont-assume-pronouns-in-customer-support/ - Published: 2020-06-18T16:56:56.000Z - Updated: 2020-06-18T17:20:23.000Z - Description: Gendering customers is something many customer support teams do without thinking. Is it time we change our behavior? - Author: River Sloane - Tags: Support Smarter As a company we rarely write about things we do internally. To us they seem like totally normal things to do. I guess we kinda assume nobody's interested in regular things. That is until someone outside the company turns around and says "Really? You do that?" or "You should write about that". I jot down ideas and quickly forget about them. They never see the light of day. But last night at 1am I sprung from my pillow after half dozing off. I grabbed for my phone and wasn't letting this idea get away from the blog: *do other companies gender their customers*? The horror. Surely not. Wait. Maybe the do? To us pronouns and the gender spectrum are important things. With two non-binary co-founders we're all careful about how to refer to people and we all know you can't gender someone based on a name or how they present. The more I think about it in everyday life the more I think we're an outlier. I'd love to view this apartment. Sure **Mr* Isted*. The delivery driver was great. Was **he**? The receptionist was nice. Was **she**? 🙄 Gendering is so ingrained in our society people do it without even thinking about it. And I hate it. *We* hate it. Companies even market products based on gender. Even Google Analytics has a (somewhat terrifying) breakdown of demographics with gender. Luckily [there's hope for us all](https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/shattering-gendered-marketing/?ref=blog.helpdocs.io). According to a survey by GLAAD [12% of Millennials identify as transgender or gender non-conforming](https://www.glaad.org/blog/new-glaad-study-reveals-twenty-percent-millennials-identify-lgbtq?ref=blog.helpdocs.io). That's a pretty hefty chunk of people you might be offending without realizing it. ![A graph showing % of people who identify as LGBTQ by age group. 18-34 20%, 35-51 12%, 52-71 7%, 72+ 5%](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/1b/751bf80c-380f-4ff2-9c2a-e7861122c025/content/images/2020/06/image.png) And you shouldn't need a gender neutral name to not be assigned a gender. We ask for pronouns in our hiring process where many companies don't. We avoid pronouns in internal messages about customers. We display our pronouns on our [about page](https://www.helpdocs.io/about?ref=blog.helpdocs.io). ![A chat message reading: "@jake can we get John's credit card updated?"](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/1b/751bf80c-380f-4ff2-9c2a-e7861122c025/content/images/2020/06/example_message.svg) This isn't a flex but something I wish every company would do. I've no doubt been referred to "he" inside internal customer support interactions and the thought makes me angry and upset. I'd **hate** to offend our customers in a similar way. Not sure about pronouns and why they're important? This video will help 👆 ## Changing Internal Communication Culture When we started HelpDocs both of us identified as cisgender and I'm sad to say we *did* gender customers unnecessarily. We were ignorant. We hadn't had much education on gender identity and pronouns. It's fair to say many people still haven't so I totally understand the confusion people have when we mention our pronouns they/them. It challenges our written and spoken communication. Our society defaults like "Dear Ladies & Gentlemen" or "Thanks to the Men & Women..." suddenly all seem outdated. > Word nerd friends: I've been doing some writing centered on a gender non-binary person who prefers they/them and they're part of a group, interacting with other groups. The mix of singular & plural they/them is flummoxing my writing capabilities - any advice? > > — Rand Fishkin (@randfish) [November 21, 2019](https://twitter.com/randfish/status/1197612214527647744?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=blog.helpdocs.io) This example from Rand is the right way to educate yourself The truth is there's a lot of people out there who may not directly mention their pronouns—especially in support emails. So why gender them when you don't need to? When a new team member comes onboard we make sure to educate them on talking about customers internally and externally. Just write their name again and avoid pronouns altogether (preferred) or default to *they*. > 👎 > Gemma needs a little help setting up **her** account. > 👍 > Gemma needs a little help setting up **an** account. > Gemma needs a little help setting up **their** account. When a team member gets it wrong we point it out directly. Did this person *need* to be gendered? Do you *know* the pronouns of this person? This can be helpful in keeping gender out of customer support by default. ## Keeping Pronoun Assumption Out of Customer Support The worst first sign of a company who hasn't thought about gender identity is the signup process and salutation or gender dropdowns. I'm not the only one with [59% of Gen-Zers agreeing](https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/01/17/generation-z-looks-a-lot-like-millennials-on-key-social-and-political-issues/?ref=blog.helpdocs.io) that forms or online profiles that ask about a person’s gender should include options other than “man” or “woman". ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/75/1b/751bf80c-380f-4ff2-9c2a-e7861122c025/content/images/2020/06/image-1.png) Every time I see a salutation or gender dropdown in English I know exactly what's coming. Are you a Mr or Mrs? This makes it *extremely* difficult as a non-binary person to sign up to something knowing that gender will be assumed for me. All communication will be sent using that salutation. Unfortunately I'm yet to see [Mx as an option](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mx%5F%28title%29?ref=blog.helpdocs.io). I honestly don't understand the use of this information. Does it matter? Will the email onboarding be different depending on my choice? I sure hope not. Of course this assuming all communication is in English. I'm starting my journey of learning Portuguese and totally understand the difficulty in avoiding gender in certain languages. Unfortunately I don't have any expertise in this but I hope [this resource from nonbinary.wiki](https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Pronouns?ref=blog.helpdocs.io) helps. ## Making Inclusive Support a Priority Inside Your Company Changing behavior is difficult and pushing to become a more inclusive company for your team and customers isn't easy. But I think it's worth doing if you want to make every customer feel comfortable to get in touch with support or sign up to your service. To me it's the support version of developers building accessible features. Did anyone think about making their websites or applications accessible 10 or even 5 years ago? I don't remember them doing so. Now it's becoming a staple of building new features (as it should) and although it takes more time and consideration it sure is worth doing. As a support person it's time to consider whether customers have explicitly shared their pronouns with you or respect ones in their email signature. I'd love to see more companies making an effort to avoid gendering customers without thought.