Cus­tomer Ser­vice, Barack Obama Style (Par­ody)

If you’re ready for a chuckle, you’re welcome.
If you’re im­mune to hu­mor and irony, read no further.

Last night I was work­ing on the Ger­man trans­la­tion for a cus­tomer ser­vice text.

I got side­tracked - be­cause for about a week now I’ve also been study­ing the rhetor­i­cal tech­niques of Barack Obama.

And some­times, when two un­re­lated things come to­gether, some­thing new is created.

So a few hours ago the ‘Cus­tomer In­struc­tions, Barack Obama Style’ came into existence. 

The Orig­i­nal Cus­tomer Instructions.

This is sent to the cus­tomer af­ter a pur­chase. It’s an in­struc­tion on how to ob­tain the or­dered product.

If you’re in in­ter­net mar­ket­ing, I’m sure you’ve had cus­tomers your­self that did­n’t read the in­struc­tions and then panicked…

„A ver­i­fi­ca­tion email has been sent to the email ad­dress you pro­vided. Since Servers do not make ex­cep­tions please wait a bit and be sure to check your Spam folder too. 

When you see the ver­i­fi­ca­tion mes­sage, click on the link you will find in­side. Once done you will re­ceive a new mes­sage with the in­for­ma­tion to ac­cess your pur­chase. Please fol­low the in­struc­tions and every­thing will go fine. 

If you think Servers made an ex­cep­tion for you, please first wait to see if you get the email mes­sage - servers are slow some times; and then recheck your spam folder. 

Only if you’re cer­tain that some­thing must be wrong with your sub­scrip­tion then sub­mit a ticket to our helpdesk and be sure to in­clude your full name and a copy of the orig­i­nal receipt. 

Thank you for help­ing us to serve you bet­ter, faster and more ef­fi­ciently.”

Next the rewrit­ten version.

Let’s save our cus­tomers from the trou­ble of not get­ting the con­fir­ma­tion email.

It’s best to read it slowly while imag­in­ing Barack Oba­ma’s pow­er­ful voice, brim­ming with cer­tainty and re­as­sur­ance.

Cus­tomer In­struc­tions, Barack Obama Style - De­liv­ered Af­ter Purchase.

My Friend,

I stand on the shoul­ders of our for­bears when I say to you:

You will be served.

I am hum­bled by the task be­fore us, grate­ful for the trust you have bestowed.

That we are in the midst of a pur­chase is now well understood.

We, the In­ter­net Mar­keters, have re­mained faith­ful to our ideals, and true to our found­ing doc­u­ments, the terms of service.

1. One places an or­der, one re­ceives a con­fir­ma­tion mail.
2. One opens his mail, one finds a link.
3. One clicks his link, he gets his goods.

So it has been.

So it must be.

• Your Faith may be shaken; our Server stands tall.
• Your pa­tience may be lost; our Server loses no one.
• Your mail­box may be empty; our Server delivers.

Or­ders may be placed by young and old, rich and poor, De­mo­c­rat and Re­pub­li­can, black, white, Latino, Asian, Na­tive Amer­i­can, gay, straight, dis­abled and not disabled …

… our Server makes no exception.

You will be served!

Our con­fir­ma­tion emails have been sent dur­ing ris­ing tides of pros­per­ity and the still wa­ters of peace. Yet, every so of­ten the pur­chase is taken amidst gath­er­ing clouds and rag­ing storms.

In that case you should heed the call from an­cient scripture:

„My spam folder run­neth over.”

The time has come to reaf­firm our en­dur­ing spirit; to demon­strate pa­tience in the wait for our email, to re-eval­u­ate our spam folders.

Then for those, who waited with­out gain …

For those, who searched with­out reward …

Know this…

You will be served!

• Do not hes­i­tate to call in the duty of your community.
• Do not hes­i­tate to sub­mit a sup­port ticket.

Our work­ers are no less pro­duc­tive than when this cri­sis be­gan. Our minds are no less in­ven­tive, our goods and ser­vices no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year.

• We will har­ness the deep­est depths of our databases.
• We will con­quer the vast­ness of hyperspace.
• We will re­store your email to its right­ful place.

All this we can do. All this we will do.

You will be served!

(APPLAUSE)

Dis­claimer And Resources.

1. I have the ut­most re­spect for Pres­i­dent Obama and for his abil­ity to de­liver speeches that move mil­lions. My seem­ingly dis­re­spect­ful text above is in no way in­tended to di­min­ish this. It is in­stead in­tended to give you a chuckle, no more no less.
2. I’m fully aware of the severe­ness of the prob­lems that the orig­i­nal in­au­gural speech ad­dressed. That I’m us­ing sim­i­lar words in a ridicu­lously unim­por­tant con­text is not deny­ing the hard­ship that peo­ple all over the world feel right now. Switch­ing con­text is just a tech­nique of hu­mor­ous writ­ing, used by many writers.
3. I do not in­tend to hurt any­body by re-word­ing a few words from the bible.

In the open­ing sen­tences I said, there’s noth­ing to learn here.

Well, ’twas a lie.

Ac­tu­ally there is some­thing to learn.

What if you just learned, that any bor­ing topic can be de­liv­ered on your web site us­ing the very same rhethor­i­cal tech­niques that mas­ter in­flu­encers use? That pe­ple who move mil­lions use?

If that sounds in­ter­est­ing to you, stay tuned. I promise I’ll pro­vide fur­ther in­sights on in­flu­en­tial writ­ing VERY soon.

For those that can’t wait, here’s a great start­ing point. These are the orig­i­nal Barack Obama speech tran­scripts I used to write the par­ody above.

Barack Oba­ma’s vic­tory speech on elec­tion night.

https://www.barackobama.com/2008/11/04/remarks_of_presidentelect_bara.php

Barack Oba­ma’s in­au­gural address.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html

Barack Obama Photo by Pete Souza /The White House