An
unrecognized killer of a positive customer experience? Speaking jargon
to your customers rather than straightforward, plain English.
Of course, every industry, every profession, has its jargon: its specialized, often abbreviated way of talking. This is largely a good thing, at least for employees talking to each other behind the scenes: sharing a unique, common language is very, very powerful for cementing a culture. When flight attendants (FAs) talk about PAX instead of passengers, waiters talk about four-tops instead of “a table for four guests,” they’re not just saving letters and syllables, they’re saying “we’re on this team together.”
Speaking like this in front of, or to, customers, however, can weaken your relationship with those customers and sabotage the customer experience you’re striving to create. For three reasons:
1. Clarity: is that “cancer” or ”a malignancy”? If I were a patient, or a loved one trying to manage that patient’s care, the simpler word with half the syllables conveys a clearer story to me. Often, this obfuscation is delivered with the best intentions, but it causes problems nonetheless: When a grand luxury hotel confuses a would-be guest by saying ”we’re fully committed tonight” when what they mean, in English, is “we’re all booked up,” they’re not trying to confuse that guest or would-be guest. They’re speaking a language that was developed to sound less harsh, to cast a gentle light of luxury. But it just creates highfalutin confusion.
2. In crowd/out crowd: Jargon is fun when you’re in the in crowd. In fact, it’s a key marker that you are in that in crowd, as in the rather beautiful maritime lingo of sailors, where you can immediately tell a landlubber as one who doesn’t know a jib from a jibe, a squall from a squid, or a luff from a leech (as E.B. White so beautifully put it in Stuart Little). But where there’s an in crowd, there’s also an out crowd, and when that out crowd consists of your customers, it’s bad business to rub that in by speaking a language that means nothing to them.
3. Unintentionally lifting back the curtain when you should be “onstage.” Creating a great customer experience is a lot like being onstage, or/and setting a stage for your customers to enjoy being in the scene. But it’s easy to let the curtain slip down, let the stage fall apart, if you stop speaking a warm, shared language with your customers. ”Did I just change channels?” your customer may think, when employees suddenly lapse into the language of their co-workers and industry rather than the language they have in common with customers.
Of course, every industry, every profession, has its jargon: its specialized, often abbreviated way of talking. This is largely a good thing, at least for employees talking to each other behind the scenes: sharing a unique, common language is very, very powerful for cementing a culture. When flight attendants (FAs) talk about PAX instead of passengers, waiters talk about four-tops instead of “a table for four guests,” they’re not just saving letters and syllables, they’re saying “we’re on this team together.”
Speaking like this in front of, or to, customers, however, can weaken your relationship with those customers and sabotage the customer experience you’re striving to create. For three reasons:
1. Clarity: is that “cancer” or ”a malignancy”? If I were a patient, or a loved one trying to manage that patient’s care, the simpler word with half the syllables conveys a clearer story to me. Often, this obfuscation is delivered with the best intentions, but it causes problems nonetheless: When a grand luxury hotel confuses a would-be guest by saying ”we’re fully committed tonight” when what they mean, in English, is “we’re all booked up,” they’re not trying to confuse that guest or would-be guest. They’re speaking a language that was developed to sound less harsh, to cast a gentle light of luxury. But it just creates highfalutin confusion.
2. In crowd/out crowd: Jargon is fun when you’re in the in crowd. In fact, it’s a key marker that you are in that in crowd, as in the rather beautiful maritime lingo of sailors, where you can immediately tell a landlubber as one who doesn’t know a jib from a jibe, a squall from a squid, or a luff from a leech (as E.B. White so beautifully put it in Stuart Little). But where there’s an in crowd, there’s also an out crowd, and when that out crowd consists of your customers, it’s bad business to rub that in by speaking a language that means nothing to them.
3. Unintentionally lifting back the curtain when you should be “onstage.” Creating a great customer experience is a lot like being onstage, or/and setting a stage for your customers to enjoy being in the scene. But it’s easy to let the curtain slip down, let the stage fall apart, if you stop speaking a warm, shared language with your customers. ”Did I just change channels?” your customer may think, when employees suddenly lapse into the language of their co-workers and industry rather than the language they have in common with customers.
Service Disconnect © Micah Solomon micah@micahsolomon.com
Your Customer Is The Star: An eBook From Forbes
How to make millennials, Boomers and everyone in between fall in love your business. By Micah Solomon.
Micah Solomon is
a customer service consultant, keynote speaker and bestselling author.
You can purchase his new Forbes Signature Series eBook, Your Customer Is The Star: How To Make Millennials, Boomers And Everyone Else Love Your Business at Amazon and Apple today.