Improve Customer Loyalty, Brand Affinity and Business Efficiency

Written communication is about getting information across. And let's face it, there are almost limitless ways to say the same thing. I'm afraid there's a service fee. You must pay a service fee. The small matter of a service fee presently applies in this case. The words you choose tell your customer what your brand's personality is really like. You can do so much when you get it right.

• Influence customer behaviour
• Cut out unnecessary calls and contact
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Achieve tone consistency across your entire brand (not just in ads)
• Increase customer trust and engagement with your brand

Those points are all about saving you time and making money. Sadly, there's an even longer list for what happens when you get written comms wrong. We won't put them down here because that'd be a bit depressing, but we will tell you they're all about losing money and wasting time. Told you it was depressing. So now we know how important written comms are, here are some tips for you to mull over. 1. Be Yourself Brands spend a lot of time developing a tone of voice and an identity that their customers begin to recognise. They do this through brand design, TV commercials, billboards and lots of other expensive forms of communication. Sadly, all it takes is a poorly worded email or letter to ruin all that hard work. Write with your voice across all your communications and you'll go a long way to empowering your brand. This means using words that your customers would expect you to say. It's about imagining your brand sitting down and writing with its own hand. If your brand is humorous and quirky in its advertising, you'll have customers that appreciate you for that. So it makes sense to let those traits come across in your written comms too. The more you do that, the more your customers will come to know and love your best features. Let the brand loyalty blossom. 2. Be Simple Unless you're the Queen or a 19th century aristocrat, it's not vulgar to use shorter, simpler words and phrases instead of big or unnecessary ones. Prior to = before With regard to = about Amendment = change People often automatically fall into a formal tone when they write. All this does is waste your readers' time and make your writing boring. Cut out the fat and you'll find you'll get your information across a lot faster and with much less confusion. Oh, and people might actually read it. That's always a good thing. 3. Be Human Humanise your written comms and you'll stand out immediately. People are constantly beaten over the head with stiff, corporate communication, so when a conversational and personal tone is used it can be a sight for sore eyes. This doesn't mean patronising your customers, it's about writing to them in a way that feels one to one. There are a few really easy ways to do this...

Contradictions	Personal pronouns	Active Language
Do not = don't	I	Instead of: That information will be reviewed
It will = it'll	We/ You	Try: We'll look into that for you

Writing like this helps you build trust with your customers and make their experience of your brand much more pleasant. It's about writing the same way you'd talk to someone. But remember, that's a fine line to tread when you could be writing to thousands of people from all walks of life. 4. Be Readable Sometimes your brand will have loads of information to get across. With great length comes great responsibility. Don't be boring. The more accessible you make your writing, the more your customers will take in. And that means your brand will be right there in their minds. A very valuable place to be. Thankfully there are a few simple things you can do to stop your writing being too dry. Change up your rhythm Putting a string of long sentences in a row is a highly effective sedative. Sprinkle some short, punchy ones throughout to hold interest. It's how we talk, so why not write like that too? Break it up Just looking at an entire, uninterrupted page of text can be a daunting experience, and that's before you've even tried to read it. Break it up into chunks. Then put headlines over these chunks to get your reader's attention and save their time. 5. Be Brief Get to the point. Remember at school when you had to write 2500 word essays? You'd cram in adjectives, anecdotes, redundant language, anything to get that word count up. That's the exact opposite of how you should approach your written comms. Let's look at this sentence in a letter: 'To conclude, we would once again like to tell you how much we value you as a customer.' Do you need to say To conclude? It's going to be pretty obvious to the reader where the end of the letter is (usually when there's no more writing). we would once again like to tell you Really? If you have to tell someone something, you don't need tell them you're going to tell them, just tell them. You know what we mean. how much we value you as a customer. But you haven't actually said how much you value them. You've just used a cliché. Speaking of clichés*, that one about never using two words when one will do is bang on. The harder you try to keep your writing brief the better it'll become. How about this instead: 'Thanks again for staying with us.' *Avoid clichés in your writing... they're a bit boring. Republished with permission from written and audio communications experts, soh (Europe) Ltd (www.soh.co.uk)