a new daily practice: ask what they mean

Are we speaking our customers’ language?

During recent travels, my co-founder Kate had an eye-opening conversation with a customer success pro. They got along well (Kate has that effect on everyone). Despite that, it became clear that the two were speaking different languages when talking about customer success problems.

The language barrier

Turns out that what Kate and I call a “customer success challenge” (or some more specific growth problem) might be described very differently by the people doing the work every day.

It’s Tower of Babel stuff. That’s a big problem for us. Accoil is a customer success tool. Potential customers could easily dismiss us as “not a good fit,” when we might just be saying the wrong words.

The solution so far

Any time there’s a hint of confusion in a conversation, ask “What does [term] mean to you?” or “What do you call it when [situation] happens?” This has already helped me get clarity and find common ground.

• On sales calls: Use these questions to make sure everyone is on the same page.

• In emails and website copy: Reflect the market’s language back at it to resonate with them

Words matter.

Peter

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PS: I’m testing ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI tools for this kind of market research, trying to tease out the language our customers really use. So far the tools get close, but not close enough. The humans are still the real deal.