Theres a growing trend here for employees of services such as gas, electricity, water, telephone, etc to address their customers very casually by their first names. Some people find this acceptable but many do not. Mainly older people have found this particularly unacceptable and objectionable.
The rationale is to appear "cool" and "trendy", rather than old school.
My understanding is that it is more professional to stick to a title + surname basis. Having said that, I wouldn't be particularly offended by someone going to a first name basis so long as they provided a good service.
As a professional, I tend to stick to the old school title + surname way of addressing people till I am invited to use their first name.
I recently read an article all about this, which has prompted me to write this blog.
What is everyone else's view?
