Company Communication Guide — Voice & Tone for Everyone
What?
This is a guide about how your company communicates as a brand and as people. I wrote it for Virtkick and thought that everyone can use it for their company, so that’s why I’m sharing. It’s useful for teaching non-customer facing people (e.g. devops, programmers) how to talk to your customers.
Why?
Everyone at the company at some point might have to talk with customers. Remember that for every one person that tweets to/about your company, several if not hundreds are reading that tweet. And every customer that’s angry can buy your product/service — they’re spending their time hating you! There needs to be some kind of emotion here.
It pays off to be able to communicate.
For whom?
Mostly for marketing and sales people but also for everyone who’s thinking how to reply to that angry customer, tweet about your company when at a conference or write a blog post.
How?
You’ll communicate:
officially (overtly) — as website/social media/during talks and
unofficially (covertly) — in emails/support tickets/face2face.
When?
You communicate with customers daily, but when you do, do it fast — replying to emails/tickets within a few minutes is awesome, within 30 minutes is great, within 2 hours is “just” good. Be awesome.
Table of contents
- An example of your company voice & tone persona
- Voice
- Tone
- Official communication examples
- Unofficial communication examples
- An example of your company voice & tone persona
Think of your company (brand) as a person — what features should that character have? Let’s get an example of a coffee app for big city hipsters.
Specialty Roaster is:
Humorous but not silly
Confident but not cocky
Informal but not chummy
Positive but not pushy
Professional but not corporate
Think of Specialty Roaster like your cool friend that you can rely on, who always supports you, sometimes cracks a joke but will tell you if that latte you got was made with cow milk instead of soy.
After all, it’s a coffee app. If you wanted to drink cow milk, you’d go to a coffee shop for normals, duh!
Specialty Roaster reacts swiftly to every problem, treats every customer with respect, will get out of their way to make sure the customer is happy BUT stays assertive and makes sure that customer knows they get Specialty Roaster as-is; Specialty Roaster considers all changes to the product, but doesn’t yield to requests and convinces customers they’re better of using Specialty Roaster than the competition.
As usual, you consider all requests, but cannot promise everything will get delivered. It’s always better to surprise a customer than to promise and not deliver.
2. Voice
Voice is the character of the person — some people are more serious than the others, some are more cheerful. You cannot really change your voice, in Specialty Roaster it’s a sum of all people’s characters.
Specialty Roaster should be a little more serious than Google, for the users of Specialty Roaster aren’t using it for fun. They need coffee for life. Alternative coffee is a status symbol. Avoid emojis in official communication.
3. Tone
Tone is the way in which you speak — you talk differently to your wife, your coworker, your customer or investor. You can change your tone.
Specialty Roaster is rather informal — but not stupid. Hipsters are hip and cool, but also professional — after all, apparently we millenials take pride in our craftsmanship (and enjoy our work).
At the same time, Specialty Roaster talks with coffee roasters and coffee shop owners. They’re not dead serious, but might be more business-minded. Be professional, but don’t be dead inside — have some fun here and there.
4. Public communication examples
Twitter:
“New In-App Coffee Recipes Weekly — get Specialty Roaster free now! <link> #coffee #alternative”
“At #coffeeconf16? Play some retro games & have a Chemex @specialtyroaster stand. Oh, and we’ve got soy milk.”
“You Made That Latte Wrong — Introducing #latternative! #coffee”
“Our own @mirekwozniak interviewed by @coffeecoffee — the most caffeinated website ever! #news #interview”
“@angryuser sorry to hear that! How did that coffee get onto your back?
“Hi @entitledlatte, we’ve pushed 9 new features out this week, any ideas what we do next?”
“Hi @moroniccoffee, just sent you a DM/could you sent me your email? Would love to learn more about that problem.”
Facebook/G+:
Similar to Twitter but without hashtags. But seriously, be honest, quick and be human.
Blog posts:
Use Mailchimp’s awesome guide for writing, also for technical people. Use goodemailcopy. General advice:
- keep it short,
- break text into paragraphs,
- use headers and sub headers,
- include images, gifs, videos and screencasts,
- avoid emojis,
- reply immediately to every comment,
- every sentence has to have a purpose, if it hasn’t, delete it,
- ask for team feedback.
Presentations:
Can be less formal/serious because you’re there and lend gravity to the whole scene. Just don’t use memes. Please.
5. Private communication examples
General advice:
- be yourself (I talk with customers about computer games and pets),
- reply ASAP (time = money),
- don’t yield to requests (consider every feature, don’t promise unless you’re 100% sure),
- every customer can be converted as long as they talk to you, (we got customers out of massive shitstorms, ask me),
- have fun, if a customer is abusive or shitty, you can stop talking to them,
Replying to end-customer support ticket:
Hi there,
Sorry for that! Could you describe what happened? I’ll try to replicate the error on my side and contact the dev team about it.
Best,
Mirek, Specialty Roaster Support Team
Replying to coffee shop owner support ticket:
Hi there,
Thanks for letting us know. We’re working on the problem and will get back to you as soon as we have a solution.
Best,
Mirek, Specialty Roaster Support Team
A few Specialty Roaster coffee shop sales emails:
First email
title: Coffee Customer Loyalty App for {coffeeshopname}
from: Mirek from Specialty Roaster
Hi there!
Specialty Roaster boosts sales for coffee shops like {coffeeshopname}. We let alternative coffee people know about offers at your place and if they can come with their Macbook. Plus a GPS locator.
How about a 30min demo call early next week about how Specialty Roaster can do wonders for {coffeeshopname}?
You can download Specialty Roaster: <google play store>.
Best,
Mirek
Second email after a week of no reply
title: Alternative Coffee App for {coffeeshopname}
Hi there,
Just circling back — care to give Specialty Roaster a go? We let hipsters know if the can get a good Chemex at your place ;)
You can try Specialty Roaster here: <google play store>.
Best,
Mirek
Third email after two weeks of no reply
title: Mirek from Specialty Roaster — hi there!
Hello,
just letting you know — we’ve recently deployed in-app recipes and GPS coffee shop locator last week in Specialty Roaster, the Coffee Loyalty Customer app. You can take a look here: <google play store>.
Best,
Mirek
That’s all, folks
The above’s just an example. Feel free to copy this template and modify it according to your company, though I’d appreciate linking back to this blog :) It’s really worth teaching your team how to communicate — you’d never know when and where you might have to pitch your product.
