‘A picture is worth a thousand words’.

This is true. But when it comes to having conversations with customers, words do count! In fact what you say and how you say it can make or break the whole customer experience. Therefore, it has become crucial for all businesses to train highly skilled customer service assistants. If you don’t, you’re bound to use the wrong tone of voice or using the wrong words at the wrong time. Sounds like a perfect storm, uh? So if you want to deliver excellent digital customer experiences, you’ve got to understand the power of conversations.

3 Deadly Mistakes in Digital Conversations

I will never get tired repeating that the language we use with our customers reflects the quality of our customer service culture. Our values, our reliability and how we act when the customer is in trouble must all be immediately evident.

There are three deadly mistakes though, that you need to avoid at any cost when having digital conversations with customers:

1. Using complex words or jargon. We must not make it hard for the customer to understand us when we speak. I call such language ‘brandalese‘ because it’s just usually spoken within organizations, but nearly impossible to understand outside of their premises. TIP: list all slang/technical words/jargon. Then replace them with words that either a 7-year-old and a 77-year-old can easily understand.

2. Abusing the word ‘but’. To the customer, this sounds like you’re trying to find excuses instead of taking responsibility for the issue. Some examples? ‘Yes, but…’ or ‘sorry, but….‘ as both of them are conversation killers.  Especially across digital channels such as social media, live chat and instant messaging apps, where transparency is paramount.

3. Making (wrong) assumptions. Coming to conclusions without carefully checking all previous information acquired and/or conversations had with the customer. This is not acceptable in a world where everything is running fast and customers have instant access to digital/social channels to vent their frustrations. See below what happens if you stumble upon point 3. ↓

Put yourself in customer’s shoes: how would you feel about this response?

Related: new competencies that digital customer service managers need

Over To You

As a digital customer service consultant and trainer, I often get in touch with many companies from various industries. Most of them, though, still tend to underrate the digital re-skilling of their agents and, consequently, the training they need to perform consistently across channels.

So I’m closing with an open question for you:

Is your customer service equipped to manage the power of conversations across digital channels?

I’d love to read your comments below.

If you’d like some consulting or other help with your customer service, please contact us

Featured image: Copyright: ‘https://www.123rf.com/profile_alexandersikov‘ / 123RF Stock Photo

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Paolo Fabrizio

Digital Customer Service Consultant, Trainer, Author, Speaker. Paolo has been helping companies to harness digital customer service as a business driver. Founder of CustomerServiceCulture, author of books and speaker at conferences in Italy and abroad. Lecturer at the Bicocca University of Milan

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