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A Quick Customer-Facing Communication Checklist

September 15, 2014

At the core of all customer experience is communication.

Customer Communication Checklist | Hand with pen and check boxesCommunication helps direct a customer to the right department, helps make a customer feel valued, and helps give context to a product or service. Communication is among the most important of variables and, in many cases, the easiest to improve.

Sometimes, the simplest things get lost in the sea of complexity that is modern business. In customer experience optimization, many initiatives are complicated, requiring challenges like increased budgets, executive sponsorship, and infrastructure overhauls to even get off the ground.

On occasion however, the easiest wins can be among the most powerful wins, and taking a good look at your standard customer-facing communication is an easy way to quickly improve your customers’ experiences.

Below is a quick checklist you can use to review and improve your customer-facing communication:

  • Is the meaning clear?
  • Is it open to likely misinterpretation?
  • Does it strike the right tone?
  • Does it represent our current brand promise?
  • Does it accurately reflect our current business model?
  • Does it anticipate customer questions?
  • Does it anticipate and preempt potential service issues?

Of course, communication has many facets to it. The above list is certainly not inclusive and simply represents a few of the bigger pressure points where customer-facing communication tends to fail.

Run your signage, phone scripts, emails, and other standard communication elements through the questions above. While not every check will be relevant to each piece of communication, the practice of putting your communication through the process can be illuminating. It often doesn’t take long, and you can usually find some easy wins to improve your customer-facing communication.

Photo credit: http://depositphotos.com/portfolio-1004370.html

3 thoughts on “A Quick Customer-Facing Communication Checklist”

  1. Good list Adam. The website, the blog, the social accounts, signs and flyers and brochures… so many touch points between the brand and customer.

    One thing businesses forget – almost everything ends up facing the customer, even ‘do not share’ internal memos sometimes get leaked. One thing I teach clients is to consider all audiences, all publics. That’s why message strategy is so important, crossing off the checklist considering all audiences. I.E. the B2B vendor vs the end user. How often do I see a release hit a wire service, touting the latest product, explaining the upsides to vendors that they get to charge more money. Well that’s fine for them, but the final customer won’t be too keen knowing they’re overpaying for that markup. FWIW.

    1. The B2B press release is a great point Davina. What an excellent example! I’m going to have to use that. 🙂

      On a less egregious note, you bring up a big challenge in the modern media landscape, where many things transcend individual channels: how do you communicate with one group while being aware that the message might reach other, affected groups?

      1. How? Get your story straight and stop trying to be all things to all people. It’s hard, you won’t please everyone and you will get ‘caught’ trying. One thing I’ve noticed, it’s rarely the happy employees that leak these things, nor are they leaking the feel good memos. I’m biased, will circle that back to good HR + PR, better companies start w/ better messages… so it doesn’t hurt if others see them. FWIW.

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