To help customers get up to speed with a product or service, companies offer many types of documentation: user manuals, video tutorials, in-product help, even good old FAQs. Why? Because customers...
Writing Matters Blog
What’s a Quick Start Guide and Why Do Your Customers Want One?
You want to help your customers, you really do. So you write a gorgeous 75-page User Manual, which answers every conceivable question your customer might have about using your product or service....
GrowthDot Interview: Effective Service Conversations – with Leslie O’Flahavan
Effective service conversations - the basics of writing to customers with Leslie O’Flahavan I loved being interviewed by GrowthDot's Natalia Zhontsa, who asked me 11 provocative questions and...
The Fine Print: What to Write When You Must Explain a Policy to a Customer
Your customer should’ve read your company’s policy before purchasing your product. They kinda lied when they clicked the “I accept” box without reading a word of the fine print. Now, they’re...
Remote Workers Need Better-Than-Average Writing Skills
Whether you and your team are working remotely a couple of days per week or you’re remote all day, every day, you’ve probably found that being remote has made you better at some tasks than you were...
What to Write When You Must Tell a Customer “No”
While it’s never easy or much fun to tell a customer “no,” you can write it the wrong way—causing write-backs, harming satisfaction, destroying rapport—or the better way. The better way doesn’t mean...
How to Write Email Templates That Build Rapport
If you can serve a bakery-bought birthday cake at the party you’re hosting for your mother, you can use email templates for customer service without destroying your relationship with your customers....
This 1973-Vintage Feminist Isn’t Giving Up
This is me in 1973 when the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision. I was 13 years old. I'd been menstruating for less than a year. To me, Roe was just another reason to believe grownups...
Trying, Failing, and Trying Again to Balance Parenthood and Your Career
If everything had gone as I’ve always planned, I’d be writing this article on a quiet workday in my pleasant home office. I’d have gone on a long walk in the woods before starting work sharply at 7...
Set the Tone in Email: How You Say It Is as Important as What You Say
Setting the right tone in email writing is more than just choosing the right wine to go with the meal. Tone in email – how you say what you say – is so important that an inappropriate tone can cause...
“I’m tired of stupid comments”: How NOT To Respond to Social Media Followers Who Wear You Out
If you’ve ever had to endure customers’ negative comments about your company or products on social media, you may be giving Larry Hogan, Governor of Maryland, a round of applause for his response to...
How to Write a Five-Star Response to a One-Star Rating or Poor Review
A gracious response may help to win over an unhappy customer and demonstrate that you’re listening and you care. Sometimes social media feels like the mean kids’ table in the lunchroom at middle...