Establishing Your Online Tone of Voice

07 April 2020

It’s an important aspect of brand recognition but it’s surprising how often it gets neglected. We all respond to the tone of voice as it comes across in other people’s written and spoken content, yet most of us are not consciously aware of how we use it ourselves. How can we do better? How can you use this aspect of communication to make sure that your customers perceive your business in the way you want them to?

What’s right for you?

The first thing you will need to decide is what kind of voice fits your business best. To do this, you’ll need to think about the nature of the products or services you offer. If you’re selling legal services, for instance, you’ll want to sound educated and authoritative, so your language should be quite formal. However, you should ensure it isn’t too complex for the average person to follow. If you’re a plumber, you might prefer to sound friendly and approachable, using less formal language to make people feel at ease with letting you into their homes.

Who are you speaking to?

When establishing your tone of voice, you’ll also need to consider your target customer demographics. The rapid pace of language change today means that older and younger people use a lot of different words and sentence constructions and can genuinely struggle to understand each other. In most circumstances, you’ll be more respected if you use similar language to the people you’re trying to reach. A professional service like iguestblog can adapt with ease to these variations and observing how it’s done will help you to get it right when writing for yourself.

Forging the right connections

One of the great things about developing a distinctive tone of voice online is that it will help you to speak as a person, not just an anonymous agent of a blank-faced institution. You can even have a team voice, whereby you let your customers know that more than one of you is involved in activities like blogging or posting on social media, but you are recognized as sharing key character traits (even if, in reality, you’re very different). This helps to get across the idea that there’s a shared vision behind the business and it will help to build customer loyalty.

Consistency

Once you’ve established a voice for your business, it’s important to make sure that it remains consistent. If you’re making company videos, work on establishing a tone similar to the one in your written work and present any speakers in a way that complements that. The same should apply when you talk to the media and, if possible, when you answer the phone. Making people feel that they already know you, or at least know where they stand with you, builds trust and makes for much smoother customer relations.

Getting your tone of voice right requires diligence and careful observation, but once you’ve established it, you’ll find that you can slip in and out of it as required, as if it were a uniform. Like a uniform, it will give your business a distinctive character that your customers will respect.

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5 Reasons You Should Respond To Every Customer Complaint

Any business encounters a customer complaint at some juncture. Despite the best of intentions, there will be situations when a client leaves feeling dissatisfied. Such a customer may initially try to seek resolution from the business itself, but increasingly, they are more prone to air their grievances on social media platforms. When such negative feedback is published online, it becomes a permanent fixture. This puts business owners and managers in a position where they must make a choice: either overlook the complaint or use it as a platform to exhibit their c for everyone to witness. Here Are Five Prime Reasons You Should Respond To Every Customer Complaint Here are some reasons why responding to customer complaints is crucial for your business's success. 1. Forge Strong Connections Customers tend to be doubtful, particularly regarding reviews. Research indicates that only 39% of consumers believe retailers seriously consider their feedback and an additional 22% feel this simply never happens. Making public responses to your reviews is the initial action towards alleviating these suspicions. Don’t solely concentrate on responding to negative feedback. Yes, one and two-star reviews should be addressed first, but recognizing customers who have given you positive reviews, even with a plain “thank you,” can greatly enhance brand loyalty and demonstrate to the world that you value every piece of customer feedback. Ensure your responses strike the right note. This is your opportunity to initiate dialogue with your customers and exhibit the personable side of your brand, so think deeply about the image you want to project. 2. Motivate Employees When your entire support team commits to elevating customer satisfaction by gaining insights from customer interactions, it naturally leads to fewer disgruntled customers and boosts motivation. Employees feel more motivated and their morale improves when they're not constantly dealing with negative feedback or hostility in every interaction. If you're overwhelmed, you could outsource professional answering services from Absent Answer to handle any high volumes of customer interactions. 3. Complaints Help to Pinpoint Defective Products Regrettably, despite rigorous quality control measures, defective products occasionally reach consumers. Organizations need to be informed about these flawed items by customers to rectify similar issues that might exist in other products. This scenario is especially relevant when a discourteous employee interacts with customers over the phone. Many individuals would prefer not to expend the effort to report such instances of rudeness. However, without this feedback, a manager may remain oblivious, potentially resulting in a single employee driving numerous customers away. 4. Complaints Pave the Way for Service Improvement Opportunities Studies indicate that a customer whose concerns have been addressed satisfactorily tends to be more loyal than a customer who has never had any issues. Complaints provide a chance to demonstrate to the customer that their satisfaction is a priority for the business by implementing service recovery measures. Numerous businesses implement a service recovery strategy to handle those occasional yet significant instances when customers feel their expectations have not been met. A well-executed service recovery program can potentially convert a dissatisfied customer into a loyal patron, who may be more satisfied than if they had never experienced problems. 5. Improved Digital Presence Complaints on review sites and social media are becoming more common. While it might be disconcerting to publicly display a customer's dissatisfaction, remember that potential customers expect to see some negative feedback. The key is demonstrating that your business is proactive and committed to satisfying its customers. Responding to complaints by regretting any less-than-positive experiences shows potential customers they can trust your service. In your response, highlight your eagerness to rectify the situation. Once you've addressed the issue publicly, follow up privately as well. This prevents the possibility of an extended discussion overshadowing your initial response. Generally, you'll be able to resolve the problem and, apart from maintaining a positive public image, you'll also enhance your reputation with the affected customer. Tips on How To Effectively Handle Customer Complaint Responding to customer complaints as soon as possible is crucial as it sends a message to them that the business or organization values their concerns and feedback. Moreover, ensuring customer satisfaction also helps in building and maintaining one’s brand reputation. However, handling and responding to customer complaints is not an easy thing to do. Here are some tips on how to effectively handle customer complaints. Go Through The Complaint The first step to effectively handling a customer complaint is actively listening to the customer and trying to understand the issues that they are facing with your product or service. If you are reading online reviews feedback or complaints sent via email, then don't just skim through. Make sure to read the review thoroughly from top to bottom. While reading through the reviews, you should also try taking notes such as product or service number, day and date of the incident, and any other information that you think is relevant. Carefully reading or listening to the complaint will help you to understand the issues and determine a suitable course of action. Stay Professional and Apologise to the Customer It can be difficult to accept criticism, be it online or face-to-face, especially if it is about your business that you have worked hard to build from the ground up. However, it is crucial that you stay calm while listening to or reading customer complaints, even if you think that they are wrong, lying, or being unreasonable. Getting emotional or worked up over customer complaints and then reacting angrily in front of customers will only escalate the situation and harm your brand’s reputation. So be professional and apologize to the customer even if they are the ones who are in the wrong. You should also be courteous and thank them for reaching out to you and voicing their frustrations and assure them that you are looking into the issue. Most of the time, apologizing immediately to the customer can go a long way toward defusing the situation. Formulate A Course Of Action To Resolve the Customer Complaint Once you have carefully heard or read the customer complaint and understood the issue, try to formulate a suitable course of action. Some problems can be easily resolved, while others may take some time. If the issue can be fixed easily, then you should get back to the customer as soon as possible with the solution. The customer will appreciate the promptness on your part, and it will go a long way in ensuring customer satisfaction. However, there can be issues that cannot be resolved quickly. In that case, you should determine how much time it will take for you to fix the problem. At the same time, be honest with your customers and tell them that you will need some time to fix the issue and provide them with a timeline. Here are some additional tips on what to do after the complaint is resolved: Follow up with the customer after the issues are fixed and make sure they are happy with the outcome. You can ask for their feedback on how you handled the complaint and what you can do better next time. Try to exceed their expectations by offering them something extra, such as a discount, a freebie, or a referral. This will help you turn a negative experience into a positive one and increase customer loyalty and retention. Endnote If you've been neglecting your reviews, feeling too anxious to reply, or simply haven't had the opportunity, there's no more suitable time to start than now. Responding to all your reviews, whether they are positive or negative, can contribute immensely to strengthening trust in your brand and depicting your company as one that genuinely listens and deeply values its customers. Read Also: 5 Most Common Digital PR Mistakes And How To Avoid Them The 7 Steps to Create a Storybrand to Ensure Marketing that Works How Customer Success Can Help Grow Your Business

Office Management: Hoteling vs. Permanent Seating Assignments

Hoteling office space is an office setup that requires employees to reserve a sitting spot ahead of time depending on the type of work they need to do. It operates like an actual hotel where you have to book a table even if the whole hotel is unoccupied. Hoteling is the best solution for a company that wants better control of office space. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many people to work from home. As companies start reopening, it is essential to use an office system that makes the employees feel like they are still working remotely. It allows workers to reserve the spot they work comfortably, unlike the permanent sitting arrangement where they do not choose working space. Read on to find out why hoteling office space is the way to go for employee satisfaction. Promotes Working From Home Experience Many employees have found working from home enjoyable and convenient in many ways. Adopting hoteling office space is a better idea to encourage the workers to work from the office where they can socialize face to face with colleagues while observing social distancing. Additionally, adopting this type of office management will help those employees who prefer working from the office to consider working remotely. Hoteling Promote Networking Removing the structure of permanent seating arrangement will encourage employees to move freely and collaborate with other workers naturally. Coworking promotes the creativity and productivity required for the success of your company. Also, all employees are not the same; some work well in silence and isolated working space while others do well in a group. Hoteling office space will enable each person to work from a convenient working place. This concept will work better if you have several workspaces where an employee will reserve a workspace depending on the task. Improve Office Management and Lower Expenses Assigning a desk to a worker who can comfortably work from home is unnecessary. Hoteling office space enables the management to do away with unnecessary space. A company needs to consider workflow and the number of employees who work from the office daily. Reducing the office space will result in low power consumption, rent, and other costs. Lowering the operation cost of a company will increase profit hence business expansion. Hoteling enables companies to hire more employees without increasing the office space. More workers will increase productivity without necessarily increasing office space costs. Promotes Morale and Equal Office Access Hoteling office space can offer a chance for the workers to give ideas when planning on a possible layout. If employees feel that their opinions count in a company, their morale and loyalty will increase. Motivating your employees can result in an increase in productivity. Hoteling will also ensure each worker can access office resources when they need them. It means an employee can not pile office equipment in one working space. If the workers have a project they need to discuss, they can reserve a room or close working stations. It is vital to know that each employee's time is valuable to manage hoteling office space properly. Improve Productivity With Hoteling The benefits of hoteling office space are numerous. It ensures that employees have enough space and resources to perform their tasks efficiently. The system does not encourage time wastage which means increased productivity. Read Also: Transform Your Garage into a Home Office Seasonal Unemployment – Definition, & Examples [Complete Details] How Does Creativity Help In Entrepreneurship? Why You Should Design New Offices Carefully? – Content Rally Your Guide to Outward Mindset Development at Work

7 Ways to Plan a Smooth Business Succession

Business Succession planning is one of the important levels of strategic planning that gives you an opportunity to formulate a plan on how your business is expected to perform after your tenure in leadership. Business Succession can make things more effective and wise in all aspects. Effective succession planning is highly advantageous as it gives you an opportunity to set in place mechanisms that ensure operational efficiency and transfer of leadership where necessary. When undertaking succession planning, emphasis should be put on ensuring that every aspect of business leadership is handled as comprehensively as possible. Whereas business owners understand the importance of performing succession planning, few put in place the necessary measures. Here are 7 key tips to consider when planning for smooth business succession. Initiate the planning process early: To be thorough and comprehensive in your succession planning, you need to ensure that you start planning as early as possible. Whereas experts do not have a recommendation on the definite duration of time by when you should start succession planning before implementation, it is generally agreed upon that early planning gives you sufficient time to come up with a comprehensive plan. Starting as early as 10 years before effecting the plan gives you sufficient time to ensure that everyone who is involved is sufficiently prepared to take over. This also eliminates the rush that may set in in the event of a delayed succession planning process. Such delays may lead to unprecedented and unwanted hurried succession which puts the business’s future in jeopardy. Nurture the prospected leaders: When undertaking succession planning, especially in a family business, emphasis should be made on nurturing continuity in leadership. This ensures that once you leave as the top manager, your junior takes your place and steers the company forward. When performing succession planning, you should have that in mind and therefore focus on nurturing and developing the prospective leaders. Leader development and nurturing should focus on, among other things, bringing the best out of the qualities you desire to see in them. This may be done in a gradual process such as delegating responsibilities and evaluating the prospected leader's ability to perform with the integrity and precision demanded for in a top business manager. Have an open-minded approach: To be thorough and effective in succession planning, you need to avoid bias as much as possible. In a family business or a business where leadership succession is hierarchical, maintaining an open mind can be quite hard, especially since the second in command is the most likely person to inherit your leadership. To avoid such bias, you should have an open mind in regards to potential candidates who can take over from you after you leave office. When looking for an appropriate leader to take after you, you may want to give a thought of every potential candidate available within the business. This gives you an opportunity to extend your options as wide as possible. It also ensures that you don't miss potential employees whose skills, competencies, and experiences may come in handy in taking over from you. Exposed potential candidates to training: Training is quite crucial as it ensures that prospecting leaders within your business get an opportunity to advance their skills. In this regard, leaders that you think are capable of leading your organization in one way or another should be appropriately identified and marked for progressive training and development. Such training should be focused on anticipated areas within your business that are of importance for the employees to take over once you leave. Succession training is also crucial and should be exposed to all workers who show an outstanding level of managerial skills. The well-trained workers get to be prepared for advanced leadership positions that may be created after you leave office. In some cases, promoting your immediate deputy in the hierarchy leads to vacant positions down the business administration structure. The well-trained candidates, once promoted, would be able to fill those positions effectively. Dry-run your plan: When planning for a smooth succession in your business, it is highly advisable to ensure that you, on several occasions, do a dry run of your succession plan. Dry running a succession plan gives you an opportunity to evaluate how potent your plan is in terms of meeting certain expectations. The dry running process does not have to be official and should be preferably done without informing the employees involved. This can be done by momentarily leaving your office for official vacation or even other official duties for a considerable amount of time such as between a few weeks to a month. The duration of absence gives you an opportunity to test how suited your prospected leaders are in terms of filling the void created by your absence. Do your final plan in writing: After concluding and making adjustments on your succession plan for your business, you should endeavor to put the final plan in writing. To be effective and thorough, you should consider engaging qualified, experienced, and reputable succession planning legal professionals such as Boss Lawyers in Australia. The lawyers, in such a case, help you to prepare the necessary documents including succession policies, how the current generation of employees will hand over to future generations, as well as how to resolve any arising disputes thereof. The exit strategy created from a legal perspective ensures that everyone within the business is bound while also creating a viable atmosphere for business continuity and harmony among the workers. Make your wishes known: Lastly, after every element of business succession planning has been conducted, it is crucial to bring everyone on board the plan to ensure that they are well aware of the strategic direction that the business is taking. You should, preferably, convene a meeting with everyone in the business as well as your business’s key customers. In the business meeting, you should outline what your wish is and reveal any other pertinent information that was not captured within the succession legal framework. You may also use the platform to ensure that any questions or concerns that your workers may have are appropriately handled in a plenary session. Read Also: Six Pointers To Starting A Successful Business How Does Modern Technology Propel The Success Of Your Business? Information Technology And Business Success: The Things That Connect Them Joel Devidal, CEO Of SMEJapan.Com Weighs In On Building An Online Business: 7 Steps To Success

Establishing Your Online Tone of Voice

What’s right for you?

Who are you speaking to?

Forging the right connections

Consistency

Grant Management Best Practices

IT Quick Fixes for Your Business During the Crisis by Paul Belogour

Content Rally

Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

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5 Reasons You Should Respond To Every Customer Complaint

Office Management: Hoteling vs. Permanent Seating Assignments

7 Ways to Plan a Smooth Business Succession

Establishing Your Online Tone of Voice

What’s right for you?

Who are you speaking to?

Forging the right connections

Consistency

Share this Article

Grant Management Best Practices

IT Quick Fixes for Your Business During the Crisis by Paul Belogour

Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

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Popular

Follow Us

Recent

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