Finding your voice

Communications / 25 August 2011

It’s not just what you say, but how you say it that makes an impact on your customers and clients. Karen Higginbottom discovers how to develop your organisation’s tone of voice

Organisations can take great pains to decide what information goes out to customers and clients but often ignore how they convey the message – their ‘tone of voice’.

An organisation’s tone of voice matters a great deal, says Marie Tailliard, professor of marketing at ESCP Europe business school. “The tone of voice reflects the personality of the brand and it’s a great opportunity for brands to be able to put their personality out there to audiences and give customers a sense of who they are talking to.”

One area where organisations fail to impress their customers is when they bombard them with messages littered with spelling mistakes. Online entrepreneur Charles Duncombe believes that poor spelling is costing UK internet businesses millions of pounds in lost revenue. An analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half.

Show you care

Dodgy spelling can make you look unprofessional but accurate writing alone won’t make people be interested in what you’re saying, argues Neil Taylor, creative director at The Writer, a business language consultancy. “That’s much more to do with the way you write. Lots of businesses write to customers ‘professionally’ but don’t give the sense that they really care or understand what matters to customers. Spelling and grammar are hygiene factors but personality makes the difference.”

We’re used to seeing serious topics being tackled in a formal way but you can write about a serious subject in a human way. Often clients come to us wanting training in grammar and spelling but this will not make such an impact as making your writing distinctive.

Neil Taylor, creative director, The Writer

Tailliard advises organisations to establish a tone of voice through developing a persona. “Organisations need to think about the attributes of their brand through a persona. If a person represents the brand, what would that person be like? Come up with a picture of this person, how they would communicate and what their hobbies and interests are.”

Companies can adjust their tone of voice depending on the sector in which they operate, says Tailliard. “If you write for a professional services firm such as a law firm then you are going to use a more serious and professional tone of voice.”

What works best with customers is capturing the spirit of the organisation within your communications to them, advises Taylor. “If you have a distinctive culture then you should write with that tone of voice. However, if you’re a much bigger organisation, that spirit might not be clearly defined and people might need help.”

Your tone of voice doesn’t have to change for different audiences, argues Taylor. “It’s wrong if your tone changes completely. There is a stronger case to change your tone if you’re recruiting someone and you may be able to make jokes but if you’re disciplining someone it’s not the time to crack jokes.”

Be distinctive

Taylor also believes that organisations don’t necessarily have to have a serious tone when they are writing on serious subjects. “We’re used to seeing serious topics being tackled in a formal way but you can write about a serious subject in a human way. Often clients come to us wanting training in grammar and spelling but this will not make such an impact as making your writing distinctive.”

But what happens when you’re communicating a message through a channel such as Twitter or Facebook? You should adjust your tone of voice when using Twitter, advises Tailliard. “There is a style that works well for Twitter, which is limited to 140 characters. Your tone of voice will be quite different to what you would use on Facebook or your blog. Twitter is very fast and intimate whereas Facebook is more personal and chatty.”

Tailliard believes that using social media channels will force organisations to reflect more on their tone of voice when communicating with customers. “It forces you to reflect on who you are and what you’re telling your customers. That is putting pressure on organisations to think about what tone of voice to use.”

Top tips: how to establish your tone of voice

Establish how you would like to come across to your audience. If you want to show integrity then write in an honest way that gives you integrity

Whatever style of writing that you come up with needs to be simple. The style needs to be something that staff can keep in their heads and don’t need to constantly refer to guidelines

The more your personality or what is different about your organisation comes through in the writing, the more interesting it will be to your audience

Measure the effectiveness of your tone of voice. For example, if you’ve changed the tone of voice on your complaint forms, do you get less or more complaints now?

Source: Neil Taylor, The Writer