Calm down, carry on…
Creating experience-driven customer service copy
We’ve all been there, waiting expectantly at the door for that parcel to arrive. It’s been three weeks already, but today’s the day, right?
Then, in an instant, a naive hope turns to resignation. The appearance of yet another empty-handed postman is the final straw. It’s time to call customer service.
That means you need to go online and find someone to speak to — but that’s easier said than done. An array of smoke and mirrors means that the contact details for most sites are hidden away. Often you’re presented with a list of FAQs to trawl through first, or the link you need is so minuscule you have to zoom in to find it. Sound familiar?
Though, imagine for a second that it’s not a missing parcel, but an overbooked villa, and you’re lost on the streets of an unfamiliar town. Or, bereft of mobile data, you’ve got no way to find your hotel. They’re just some of the plights our customers can face.
To serve those kinds of demands, our customer service page has to be a paradigm of the user experience. And as copywriters, we’re responsible for ensuring the copy can guide users to the right place — even in high-pressure or time-limited scenarios.
It’s quite possible this responsibility had got us rattled. What if users didn’t have ALL the information available to them? What if they missed something? It was a worrying prospect, and one that we addressed by sticking calls to action and extra information all over the page:
Short-term, this was great, but it gradually diminished real estate for areas where users could actually find help. The ‘throw everything and see what sticks’ approach placed a huge cognitive load on our users. Get some help! Sign in! Check my booking! One moment later and — wait a moment… why am I on this page again?
Feedback (both from users and the press) told us that the phone number was simply too hard to find. We already knew from our own research that users normally want to speak with someone, through one medium or another. Instead, we took a page from the Brothers’ Grimm, leading them unwittingly down the wrong path in the forest…
It was clear that we’d reached a fork in the road. But, instead of making minor changes (and ending up in the same scenario months later), we treated the page to a long-overdue overhaul, and quantifiably improved the user experience. Here’s how:
1. Don’t talk, listen
We started by building a cohesive, end-to-end experience, that asked users what they needed instead of telling them what to do. The end result is one borne of extensive user testing, data analysis, and some serious user experience TLC.
To avoid information redundancies, the team came up with a great idea to show — well, basically nothing — until the user selects one of three options. Yes, it sounds counter-intuitive. But Hick’s law (for example) shows us limited choices can actually elicit a faster reaction time. By the same stroke, it also allows us to show users only relevant information at the moment they need it.
Admittedly, there was still a significant behavioural change to deal with, but that’s why copy had a pivotal role in bringing it all together.
The key to this new experience was handing authority back to the user, and as a first step, priming them to find the answer by phrasing the title as a question — essentially asking: ‘so, what’s the problem?’
Almost immediately, we could see that handing back some of this authority was the right decision. A survey we ran shortly after confirmed that an extra 10% of users found our new-look Customer Service page even more helpful.
2. Back to basics
Next, I wanted to refine (read: delete) a majority of the information we were showing to reduce the cognitive load. There’s a delicate balance — if we provided no details at all then we’d destine everyone to a customer service dark space with no escape, but offer too much information and we’d obscure the end goal. We had to keep copy to a minimum — simple* but informative at the same time.
To manage expectations correctly, there are three clearly labelled options — and all of the titles work as the call to action, so the main body of text serves as extra context for those that really need it. Need to get in touch? You got it.
*The concept of simplicity can seem somewhat redundant, but all of this UX-goodness has to be translated into 43 different languages to help panicking customers all across the globe. If we couldn’t succinctly get the meaning across to our language specialists for translation, there’s no way our users would understand!
3. Calm down, carry on
The final prong on this helpful trident was to give users the assurance that they were on the right path. After all, reassured users are more likely to make the right decision in high-pressure scenarios.
Tonally this was a great chance to refer back to our customer service copy guidelines, and ensure we didn’t stray too far from the voice that we’d already established. For example, I knew it was important to retain ‘help’ somewhere in the title — we’d seen previously that removing this signpost only caused undue panic.
There’s also a lack of imperatives in the header or sub-header — instead, these are saved for the areas where users can actually perform an action, reducing urgency for users after they immediately land on the page.
I’ll also give a bonus mention to our ‘smart’ FAQs. We know users are more confident when we aren’t throwing jargon at them constantly, so text mining from customer queries was used to create them; meaning they incorporate the most commonly used terms for features on our site. Our research showed that almost three-quarters of users found this new FAQ to be useful.
So what role should copy have in all this?
Well to us, online help should feel pretty similar to how it does in person. So everything is focused on creating an experience that really listens to customers. We want to reassure them, and provide relevant answers based on their input.
Though, as I found out, copy is crucial in enacting that behaviour. Having all the answers is one thing, but the best experience we can offer to our guests relies on them taking control of that experience and telling us what they need to know. Without their participation, there’s no way we can get the ball rolling.
So, the formula was equal parts assurance and instruction — gently nudging guests for more detail without them even realising. How can we help?
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