You are the best person to talk to your customers (and the worst!)

I love my clients. All of them. They are all superbly knowledgeable and well meaning. Often, we speak of understanding audience’s behaviour, and communicating to them in a way that improves on their motivation. Great.

However, there are two things that are true for every person/client who communicates to an audience outside of their organization about their products or service,

1. They are the best people lead the communication – because they are so knowledgeable!
2. They are the worst people to lead the communication – because they are so knowledgeable!

Inside an organisation staff generally have a sophisticated, three-dimensional, granular, intricate metal model of what they do and how it works. Outside of an organisation  – us, the general public – generally have a flat, one dimension, broad-brush, unsophisticated model of what the product/service does and how it works.

This can lead to some lop-sided communication.

XKCD explain it well:

This asymmetry in perception of understanding can lead to some wild examples such as describing what something doesn’t do first, before then describing what it does. This makes perfect sense if you already have a sophisticated understanding of topic; Makes no sense if you do not.

The challenge – in my experience – is a lot more prevalent in the service sector, so if you every find yourself (or find someone else) describing a service beginning with what it doesn’t do… you need to stop (or, stop them).

The simple remedy is the put the description of what it doesn’t do at the end – after the explanation of what it does do –, and then delete it. Once you start explaining what it doesn’t do you are in the realm of describing everything in the universe that is not he service. That’s along list.

If you get to a ‘And Quartz, of course’ place, pause for a moment. We don’t know as much as you. Not even close.  

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Image by storyset on Freepik