With Only Seven Words, You Can Help Someone Who’s Struggling

July 1, 2020

You do not need to know how to recognize a mental health condition to help someone with one. You don’t need to know that someone is low or depressed to create a connection that enables them to cope, and maybe even begin recover. All you need to do is create the opportunity to listen.

Death to the Term “Soft Skills”: Writing is a Hard Skill All Support Professionals Need

October 29, 2019

I hate the term “soft skills” and want everyone to stop using it. It’s vague, it’s dismissive, and it pits “soft” skills against “hard” ones when we know support professionals need both kinds of skills to do their increasingly complicated jobs well. If we can stop referring to writing skills with the empty word “soft,” we can recognize how important they are to providing great support.

Don’t Jekyll-and-Hyde Your Customers: Why Customer Service Should Also Use Your Company’s Brand Voice

December 17, 2016

It’s not good for your company to use one tone of voice when it’s trying to make a sale and another when it’s trying to solve a customer’s a problem. Customer Service should write in the same brand voice Marketing uses, or one that’s pretty close. Here are three things you can do to enable your Customer Service team to use a brand voice that builds rapport with your company and gives customers a seamless experience.

How to Write Automated Texts That Sound Human, Not Robotic

May 5, 2016

If your customers have opted-in to receive texts from your company, they probably understand that some texts from your company were sent by an automated system. However, your automated texts to customers shouldn’t sound mechanical. Here are 10 tips to help you write automated texts that sound human and build rapport with your customers.