Language to use (and avoid!) in customer service

Here are the latest insights from client support guide and bestselling creator Micah Solomon

Today’s consumers insist on the potential to interact with businesses by using a range of channels — telephone, SMS, stay chat, movie chat, and good aged e mail. But though clever corporations have figured out to satisfy these channel calls for, they from time to time fail to spend adequate consideration to the spine of all interaction: language.

In shopper services shipping and delivery, language is significantly from a trivial issue. It is not “just” words.  Your decision of words and phrases can drive—or absolutely sabotage—your potential to make a thriving link with your clients.

Odds are, your company’s language decisions could use some enhancement and some guardrails. So an significant phase for any business enterprise is to build a language phrasebook (or “lexicon”) that spells out the words and phrases probable to connect with customers and put them at ease, and discourages those that are likely to established a buyer on edge.

Adhere to this checklist: Stay away from – Reach – Align

In creating your phrasebook, I advise you use this quite uncomplicated checklist — keep away from, obtain, align — as an casual and easy to apply “language screening resource.”

Any questionable phrase — i.e., any phrase or issue that sounds a minor off to you when you have read it employed — is a candidate to put by means of this screener:

• Does it prevent these negatives? Watch out for any phrases or phrases that would make a consumer bristle, really feel undermined, dilemma your trustworthiness, or come to feel that they really do not discuss your insider language.
• Does it accomplish these ambitions? Your phrasing ought to categorical empathy, build convenience, permit a consumer know you have their again/that you’re listening/that you are not judging, and so forth.
• Does it align with your manufacturer design? Your terms and phrases ought to align with the correct (and, preferably, delightful and exclusive) services design of your specific brand.

Below are some phrases that need to are unsuccessful your screening:

1. “I’m not going to argue with you”:

Stay clear of telling a purchaser “I’m not going to argue with you,” when a dialogue begins to warmth up on their stop.  This phrase fails to prevent a critical negative simply because it literally delivers up the idea of argument!

2. “Like I explained,” “again,” or “per my former email”:

Keep away from working with the phrase “Like I said,” or “Yet again,” or “per my past email” when a client has forgotten or unsuccessful to realize directions or information and facts you’ve supplied them presently.  This phrase fails to attain the snug verbal environment we want to be giving to our buyers. Instead of “concentration-shaming” your purchaser with a person of these phrases, just take a breath and then repeat yourself! (And perhaps use distinctive, easier-to-comply with language the next time about.) 

3. “To be straightforward with you,” “to be flawlessly candid,” or “full disclosure”

You likely do not indicate something by it when you preface your words with a disclaimer like, “To be straightforward with you,” or “to be beautifully candid” or “comprehensive disclosure.” Continue to, I’d suggest that these phrases fail to align with an optimum assistance design and style since: what are they intended to envision you ended up undertaking prior to you turned all “honest” or “candid”: lying via your tooth?

P.S. For another handy resource, experience absolutely free to assist you to Nextiva’s free buyer assistance electronic mail templates.