On Fridays at 12 pm Eastern, Deborah Bosley, owner of The Plain Language Group, and I are hosting the Plain Language Weekly Club on Clubhouse. Please join us! Our casual, candid conversations include people from all corners of the plain language world: consultants,...
Technical Writing
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 a reader to ignore, delete, or overreact to your message. A versatile...
“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 Heather, a follower of his official Facebook page. She wrote, “We’re...
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 school. Everybody’s talking dirt about someone else. And once the gossip...
Customer Service Chat by Vizio: Some Answers, But No Help
Customer service chat is popular with companies and customers alike. It's easy, it's quick, and it works well on mobile devices. But easy and popular doesn't always equal good. Read this chat with customer service agent "Jack" at Vizio. It is a set of customer service...
Verizon customer service chat: How to kill your relationship with your customer
Someone needs to tell Verizon: "Customer service chat is supposed to help the customer." Read through the transcript of this truly painful chat, and you'll hardly believe your eyes. The customer, Marianne, endures: One hour and 17 minutes of chat Dialogue with no...
Resources: Writing in Plain Language at NTSB
Webinar 1 Where to find plain language award winners and heroes: http://www.plainenglishawards.org.nz/about/plain-english-awards-about/ https://centerforplainlanguage.org https://plainlanguage.gov https://www.lwionline.org Some federal agencies give their own plain...
For Entrepreneurs: How to Grow Your Virtual Network, Sincerely
We’ve all experienced the highs and lows of having a personal virtual network. We enjoy the highs—reconnecting on Facebook with your best friend from high school—and we suffer the lows—scrolling through a cousin’s Instagram pics of every plate of food she’s ever...
5 Great Reasons You Shouldn’t Be Scared to Write to Customers In Social Media
For years, customer care organizations have been as scared of social media as water-phobic summer campers staring at the high dive. “What if customers gang up on us? What if we get trolled? What if one of our agents gives the wrong answer and all 25,000 followers see...
Put Us Out of Our Misery: The End of Customer Service Email?
Predicting the death of email may seem risky for a consultant who helps frontline customer service agents improve their writing skills, but I’m here and I’m doing it. Throughout the 2000s and the 2010s, email was the workhorse customer service channel—an easy, modern...
