Elinor Nauen

I had to call The Economist to update my credit card's "expiry" date & got Susan in England. She was careful to explain each step & what the tech team was doing about a bunch of accounts having the same issue of being unable to access account information online. She took my info, did the pro forma thanks, made a suggestion or two for newsletters I might want to try & then got a little informal, which was when her accent changed. I said, I think you are from near where my mother grew up, Liverpool. Oh my, Susan said, and told me that while she grew up near Newcastle, she lived for 15 years in the Wirral (right across the Mersey from Liverpool, where I stayed with my cousin Hazel). My sons say the same thing, she went on, that when I relax my accent gets more Scouse. I don't think of myself as being particularly good with accents, and can pretty much only pick out Liverpool/Manchester, so I was impressed that I heard that exactly as her family did. By the end of our 15-minute call I had learned that her birthday is tomorrow, her son recently married, & she's planning to retire to a small home in the Wirral in about a year. Good for TE for letting customer service be personal. That call made both of our days.