Do
you speak "customer"?
In the Sunday comics this past weekend, the cartoon “Opus” had character Steve claiming he could speak woman. It was hilarious (it turns out he speaks only pidgin woman) but it also got me thinking about speaking customer. Like Steve, we often think we speak the customer’s language, but we really only know a few nouns. And if we don’t speak their language, will they listen to us? Not likely!
So this month we present two tips for learning to speak customer.
Tip
1: Use Web writing tools
When you write Web content for search
engines, you first research the keywords and phrases people are likely to
use when looking for a Web site like yours. But those same tools are
useful for writing other copy too.
Try using Overture’s handy little keyword selector tool to learn customer speak when working on a project. It’s like a thesaurus on steroids because it not only clues you into what terms are more commonly used, but gives you alternatives too.
Here’s how it works: You type in a word or phrase and Overture tells you how many people searched on those words in the past month, plus similar terms.
For example, while brainstorming taglines last month, I was using the term that I call the client’s product: online directory. For some alternative words that might work better in a tagline, I typed that phrase into Overture’s tool…and discovered that just because I think of it as an online directly doesn’t mean everyone else does! People were six times more likely to search for “online phonebook”! Oops!
Tip
2: Be customer centric
Every business uses lingo and sometimes that
lingo becomes its own form of pidgin, meaning everyone internally speaks
it, but only internally. Outsiders (i.e. customers) don’t know the lingo,
and possibly have their own.
Before you use a word that’s common within your company and even industry, ask yourself, “Does our customer use this word?” Don’t assume. Find out. Here’s another example: While working on copy for a client last week, I was told a sales rep wanted to know why we didn’t use a different (and very cumbersome) name for a service offering. I asked, “We can, but does your customer call it that?” The answer was no, so my answer was we won’t use it in the copy! Using words customers aren’t familiar with is simply putting up roadblocks to communicating with them. And if you’ve worked that hard to get their attention, why would you do that?
P.S. You can see the Opus comic strip from March 5th at http://www.comics.com/wash/opus/index.html. Enjoy!
Until next month,
Sharon
