How and why to give voice to a product?
You have a B2B product, and you need to resonate the brand’s voice in a way that reaches businesses: here’s how we did it.
You’ve just launched the flagship product of your company, paying attention to every technical detail, functionality, and design. However, during the onboarding process, you encounter messages like “We’re almost there! Just a few more steps!” and the first email you receive says, “You’re signed up. Keep going”.
What happened? Easy, your product lacks a voice and probably doesn’t know how to communicate its own value.
It’s common to work on a digital product and only consider its voice later, but this leads to confusion and inconsistencies. However, bringing order to this is possible, and that’s exactly what we did with one of our company’s business products, TBusiness.
TBusiness is a portal and app dedicated to companies and their employees for managing mobility (B2B product). The tone of voice used for TBusiness was very similar to consumer products (B2C), but we are talking about vastly different user bases. We realized that something wasn’t working.
Here’s how we did it step by step.
Step 1
The tone of voice of a product isn’t not the brand’s tone of voice.
The brand’s voice is strategic and serves to engage the audience, while the product’s voice is tactical and serves to guide the user.
We started with a premise.
Telepass has a broad customers and various products tailored to individuals, freelancers, small and medium-sized enterprises and large corporations. The brand voice must speak to everyone, while the product voice must address the intended recipients of the product and align with the brand values: reliability, simplicity, professionalism, accessibility, and transparency.
Each product has its audience, each product has its own tone of voice.
Step 2
It’s time to roll up our sleeves and do benchmarking.
Observing the competition is always a good idea to understand market and customer needs.
It’s not easy to browse through business websites and apps because it’s not just about downloading the app; it requires creating an account with business data. We’ve used tools like Pageflow and sought video tutorials explaining these platforms. To gather benchmarks, it might be a good idea to use a board on FigJam to collect material, jot down insights and reflections, and categorize. If possible, it’s always better to do this work as a team.
We found approximately 20 apps and websites, from which we selected 11 and identified common points.
At this stage, we selected 2 products with characteristics similar to TBusiness and focused on identifying the value and unique strengths that our product offers compared to them.
Step 3
If your product were a person, what would it be like?
Attributing human characteristics to the product helps us be more empathetic towards users.
We asked ourselves:
- What kind of person would TBusiness be?
- How would it behave?
- What adjectives would we use to describe it?
- What would it not be?
We imagined a person who is trustworthy, professional, reassuring, communicates their value transparently, clearly, and succinctly. We created the character of TBusiness and identified three characteristics upon which to structure the tone of voice:
- Transparent
- Professional
- Reassuring
Step 4
Make your character speak and find your voice.
At this point, finding the product’s voice is easier than expected. Just let the character speak while adhering to its characteristics and the brand’s values.
To identify our tone, we considered the matrix devised by the Nielsen Norman Group, which describes the 4 dimensions of voice. It’s need to decide whether the voice is formal or informal, serious or fun, irreverent or respectful, pragmatic or enthusiastic. This process helps to tailor and identify the specificities of the product’s tone of voice.
In our case, the key words we have identified are:
- Sober
- Measured
- Informal
- Logical
Step 5
The updating process often takes more time: be patient.
Starting from scratch is simpler; correcting requires research, analysis, and comparison.
After validating the product’s voice, we’ve engaged in these three ongoing processes:
- Sharing with all stakeholders: marketing, design, customer service, etc. Using the same language is crucial for mutual understanding within the company and for external communication. The tone of voice is our language, which must remain consistent across all channels.
- Analysis of all intervention points: it’s not realistic to update a product that’s been around for some years in just a few days. We need to map out where to intervene and create a schedule.
- Ensuring product continuity: errors and inconsistencies often pop up during the updating process, requiring immediate intervention and adjustments to the plan. It’s better to be patient and flexible to ensure continuity for a product that the audience continues to use.
In conclusion
The product voice enhances user navigation, respects neuropsychological aspects, and people’s emotions. This helps us guide our users and clearly present the strengths of our product. Let’s remember that even an exceptional product holds no value if we don’t know how to tell its story and make it accessible to everyone.
Useful sources
This article was written by Chiara Settembrino, UX writer, and edited by Marta Milasi, UX Content Lead at Telepass. Interested in joining our team? Check out our open roles!
