WEBVTT 00:00:00.330 --> 00:00:03.966 Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I'm your host for the 00:00:03.988 --> 00:00:07.806 Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of 00:00:07.828 --> 00:00:11.406 amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of 00:00:11.428 --> 00:00:15.086 inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place 00:00:15.188 --> 00:00:18.382 for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please 00:00:18.436 --> 00:00:19.486 do drop me a line to 00:00:19.508 --> 00:00:22.590 jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk, 00:00:22.660 --> 00:00:26.390 that's S-E-E Change Happen dot Co dot UK. You 00:00:26.460 --> 00:00:29.762 can catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and 00:00:29.826 --> 00:00:33.526 the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab 00:00:33.548 --> 00:00:37.174 a decaf and let's get going. Today is 00:00:37.292 --> 00:00:40.826 episode 102 with the title Humanising 00:00:40.848 --> 00:00:44.566 Business and I have the absolute honour and privilege 00:00:44.598 --> 00:00:48.374 to welcome Ben Afia. Ben describes himself as someone 00:00:48.422 --> 00:00:52.058 who makes business more human, and when I asked Ben to describe his 00:00:52.064 --> 00:00:55.486 superpower, he said he has a particular sensitivity to 00:00:55.588 --> 00:00:58.942 the nuances of language. Hello, Ben, welcome 00:00:58.996 --> 00:01:02.698 to the show. Thank you for having me, Jo, 00:01:02.714 --> 00:01:05.746 it's an absolute pleasure. Yeah, we've been having a great chat in the green room 00:01:05.768 --> 00:01:07.300 and I'm so looking forward to this 00:01:09.190 --> 00:01:13.026 humanising business. What does that mean? Yeah, it's quite 00:01:13.048 --> 00:01:16.882 a bold statement, isn't it? I suppose, but it's been my mission 00:01:17.026 --> 00:01:19.960 for possibly the last 2025 years. 00:01:21.130 --> 00:01:24.646 I've really started focusing on language, in particular, when I was at 00:01:24.668 --> 00:01:28.182 Boots, the chemists, about 25 years ago, and I got to work 00:01:28.236 --> 00:01:31.830 on the first brand tone of voice. We were working on brand strategy, 00:01:31.910 --> 00:01:35.754 the tone of voice and language of the business. And in any 00:01:35.792 --> 00:01:39.286 large organisation, you've got a level of complexity 00:01:39.398 --> 00:01:43.150 and dehumanising, if you like, because you've got a lot of people, 00:01:43.220 --> 00:01:47.054 so you have process and you've got bureaucracy and politics, and that all 00:01:47.092 --> 00:01:50.126 gets in the way of relationships inside the 00:01:50.148 --> 00:01:53.886 organisation and that gets in turn in the way of 00:01:53.908 --> 00:01:57.454 relationships outside. So with customers. So at 00:01:57.492 --> 00:02:01.266 Boots, I was trying to help the organisation to relate to customers in 00:02:01.288 --> 00:02:03.218 the way that they want to be related to, the way they would want to 00:02:03.224 --> 00:02:07.026 be spoken to. And then when I set up my consultancy about 19 00:02:07.058 --> 00:02:10.614 and a half, nearly 20 years ago, I found myself 00:02:10.812 --> 00:02:14.534 coming across organise other organisations who had similar problems. So I worked with companies 00:02:14.572 --> 00:02:17.846 like BP, Vodafone, Aviva, Google, 00:02:18.028 --> 00:02:21.722 and I found a similar pattern that these larger businesses, just because 00:02:21.776 --> 00:02:25.290 they're large, they have certain issues that get in the way of being 00:02:25.360 --> 00:02:28.746 human. And what's the impact of that? Well, 00:02:28.928 --> 00:02:32.614 certainly when I was an employee, I felt slightly dehumanised, 00:02:32.662 --> 00:02:36.062 actually. Boots was a wonderful place to work. But I worked in some less 00:02:36.116 --> 00:02:39.934 wonderful places before that. Many people have this sense of working 00:02:39.972 --> 00:02:43.322 for the man and that being a dehumanising 00:02:43.386 --> 00:02:46.898 experience. So if we feel treated less than human 00:02:46.984 --> 00:02:50.706 internally, how does that reflect in the way that we treat our 00:02:50.728 --> 00:02:54.514 customers? And it's that connection that I'm really intrigued about. 00:02:54.632 --> 00:02:57.638 And what I've learned, I suppose, through all the work, that all the consulting that 00:02:57.644 --> 00:03:01.494 I've done with various clients, is that in order 00:03:01.532 --> 00:03:05.270 to change the relationship you have with your customers, you need to change the relationship 00:03:05.340 --> 00:03:08.918 with your people internally first. So that's the nub of it, 00:03:09.004 --> 00:03:12.746 I'd say. I like that. I like that nuance. And we 00:03:12.768 --> 00:03:16.314 see that echoed in, you say the companies you've worked for, the 00:03:16.352 --> 00:03:19.980 airline industry changed the way they operated many years ago as well, 00:03:20.910 --> 00:03:24.686 we can probably imagine. I see on LinkedIn every day, people get really 00:03:24.708 --> 00:03:28.270 frustrated with computer says no, or whoever you talk to. 00:03:28.340 --> 00:03:32.174 I appreciate you're not necessarily talking about customer service here, you're talking about how you 00:03:32.212 --> 00:03:35.854 communicate. But sometimes you get a letter and it feels like you're 00:03:35.902 --> 00:03:39.394 being, I don't know, criticised or attacked or 00:03:39.432 --> 00:03:43.154 sued in a correspondence that should be friendly and warm. But 00:03:43.192 --> 00:03:47.026 that warmth never comes through, does it? Absolutely. And to 00:03:47.048 --> 00:03:50.886 that extent, yes. I am talking about customer service, because what is 00:03:50.908 --> 00:03:54.598 a business? A business has products and services 00:03:54.684 --> 00:03:58.266 that it sells to an audience. That might be a business audience or 00:03:58.368 --> 00:04:02.214 a consumer audience, or both in many cases. So ultimately, 00:04:02.262 --> 00:04:05.914 we're creating something that serves a need for people, and 00:04:05.952 --> 00:04:09.354 people will buy that or not. And 00:04:09.552 --> 00:04:13.262 so that's where the sense of customer service comes in. 00:04:13.396 --> 00:04:16.682 Because when you get through the selling and the marketing 00:04:16.826 --> 00:04:20.430 communication, it's the customer service that really matters. Do you 00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:24.258 deliver what you promise in your marketing, through your service? 00:04:24.424 --> 00:04:28.242 And all of those tiny moments, all 00:04:28.296 --> 00:04:31.794 throughout a customer's journey, are absolutely crucial in 00:04:31.832 --> 00:04:35.458 shaping a customer's perception of what you're like as an 00:04:35.464 --> 00:04:39.234 organisation and what you believe in, what you stand for. So every one 00:04:39.272 --> 00:04:43.046 of those letters, every one of that, and I look at the kind of the 00:04:43.068 --> 00:04:46.758 micro copy on websites, the form that you fill in when you make a 00:04:46.764 --> 00:04:50.326 purchase, or the terms and conditions when they come through at the bottom of the 00:04:50.348 --> 00:04:53.722 email, when you've bought something, all the contractual stuff is all 00:04:53.776 --> 00:04:57.514 evidence to a customer of what you stand for, what you believe 00:04:57.552 --> 00:05:01.230 in. And as a business, it's a promise. It's all part of your promise. 00:05:01.650 --> 00:05:05.214 What's really interesting is that most organisations spend a lot of time and 00:05:05.252 --> 00:05:08.814 money investing in the marketing and the 00:05:08.852 --> 00:05:12.686 sales pitch and aren't necessarily following that through in 00:05:12.708 --> 00:05:16.402 the rest of the journey, which is when you really learn 00:05:16.456 --> 00:05:20.098 whether you can trust their organisation and whether you're prepared to stay with them. And 00:05:20.184 --> 00:05:23.506 the end result of that for me is, and all the 00:05:23.528 --> 00:05:27.238 evidence shows that companies that deliver on 00:05:27.244 --> 00:05:31.090 their promise and turn customers into advocates, 00:05:31.250 --> 00:05:35.046 people who come back and buy more and bring their friends with 00:05:35.068 --> 00:05:38.754 them refer are more profitable. And I was just listening to a 00:05:38.812 --> 00:05:42.314 webinar the other day with Fred Reichld, who created the mps net 00:05:42.352 --> 00:05:46.122 promoter score system at Bain and Company 25, 00:05:46.176 --> 00:05:49.754 30 years ago or something, and his latest book, 00:05:49.872 --> 00:05:53.622 winning on purpose, I think it is. And he has great case studies. 00:05:53.686 --> 00:05:56.622 He talks about T Mobile in the US in particular, who were at the bottom 00:05:56.676 --> 00:06:00.238 for customer service, who then really spent time focusing on 00:06:00.324 --> 00:06:03.822 turning customers into advocates and referrals and 00:06:03.876 --> 00:06:07.374 became the top for customer service and then for profitability 00:06:07.502 --> 00:06:10.926 amongst all the mobile networks in the US. So there is really compelling 00:06:11.038 --> 00:06:14.350 evidence that treating people like human beings, 00:06:14.430 --> 00:06:18.134 humanising for your people and for your customers, works. It's quite 00:06:18.172 --> 00:06:21.154 easy for you and I, we're solopreneurs, we run our own micro 00:06:21.202 --> 00:06:24.966 businesses. Our tone of voice is inherent in 00:06:24.988 --> 00:06:28.598 everything we do because it's basically only ourselves speaking. 00:06:28.764 --> 00:06:32.310 I like what you're saying there. It's thinking about all those subtle 00:06:32.390 --> 00:06:36.026 touch points and nuances. I worked with a 00:06:36.048 --> 00:06:39.866 mutual friend of ours, Sarah Fox, on my terms and conditions recently, and when 00:06:39.888 --> 00:06:43.678 I wrote them originally, I wrote them with my bouncing ball on the 00:06:43.684 --> 00:06:47.406 words in my head so that they actually sound like me. And I was 00:06:47.428 --> 00:06:50.762 very keen. I didn't want them to sound distant, 00:06:50.826 --> 00:06:54.522 detached, legal. I wanted them to sound warm and friendly 00:06:54.586 --> 00:06:58.434 like, this is what I'm thinking. I hope you're thinking the same thing. This is 00:06:58.472 --> 00:07:02.066 something that I'm worried about. This is something you'll be worried about. I want us 00:07:02.088 --> 00:07:05.154 to work together and come up with a collaborative solution. If it doesn't work out, 00:07:05.192 --> 00:07:08.598 let's have a chat about it was kind of my approach. And what do I 00:07:08.604 --> 00:07:11.986 mean by this? I mean this and it's written in that very friendly, chatty 00:07:12.018 --> 00:07:15.640 language, which is my internal head voice. And 00:07:16.090 --> 00:07:19.826 that's what I asked Sarah to keep going. I don't 00:07:19.858 --> 00:07:23.500 call them terms, I call them my expectations of our relationship. 00:07:23.870 --> 00:07:27.226 And she followed that through. And I think you're so right. 00:07:27.408 --> 00:07:31.114 Everything I do has to have my bouncing ball in my 00:07:31.152 --> 00:07:34.638 head of how I speak on the words as I speak it, and it has 00:07:34.644 --> 00:07:38.398 to have my cadence, my rhythm, my bounce, all those. But when you work for 00:07:38.404 --> 00:07:41.966 a corporate, the challenge is they're so big, so large, 00:07:42.148 --> 00:07:45.426 who has that internal voice that you're trying to match and how do you 00:07:45.448 --> 00:07:48.786 communicate? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there 00:07:48.808 --> 00:07:52.430 are some, although few businesses, maybe like virgin, 00:07:52.510 --> 00:07:56.206 and they can imagine a person at Virgin, they can imagine Richard Branson 00:07:56.238 --> 00:08:00.066 speaking, and there's the voice. But for most large businesses, you don't 00:08:00.088 --> 00:08:03.846 necessarily have a publicly known figurehead that you can lean on in that 00:08:03.868 --> 00:08:07.686 way. So you do need to find a way of describing that voice in 00:08:07.708 --> 00:08:11.306 a way that the people using it can apply. And I 00:08:11.328 --> 00:08:14.826 suppose that's what I've done a lot of in the last 20 years or 00:08:14.848 --> 00:08:18.666 so, is helping an organisation to develop its strategy and its 00:08:18.688 --> 00:08:22.230 brand strategy, in particular values and behaviours, 00:08:22.390 --> 00:08:26.046 and translate that into ways of speaking 00:08:26.228 --> 00:08:29.914 and writing that people who don't have english 00:08:29.962 --> 00:08:33.726 degrees can relate to and actually employ. Now, you might call that 00:08:33.828 --> 00:08:37.538 tone of voice guidelines, perhaps, which is something I've done a lot of over the 00:08:37.544 --> 00:08:40.994 years. But those people who are connecting with your 00:08:41.112 --> 00:08:44.654 customers, first of all, your marketing teams, and if you're 00:08:44.702 --> 00:08:48.518 Vodafone, you have hundreds, if not thousands of marketers, you then have tens of 00:08:48.524 --> 00:08:52.086 thousands of people in customer service, potentially, and you have 00:08:52.108 --> 00:08:55.926 salespeople dealing with customers in stores, on the 00:08:55.948 --> 00:08:59.426 phone or in b to b going out to see corporates. 00:08:59.538 --> 00:09:03.354 So you've got thousands of people representing the brand day in, day 00:09:03.392 --> 00:09:07.066 out. So how do you help the ethos or the story of the brand come 00:09:07.088 --> 00:09:10.618 through consistently? And that's, I guess, what I've been really interested 00:09:10.704 --> 00:09:14.494 in, because we don't want to turn people into puppets, we're not trying to turn 00:09:14.532 --> 00:09:17.818 people into drones and get people scripting 00:09:17.914 --> 00:09:21.166 and repeating the same phrases. I actually 00:09:21.268 --> 00:09:24.906 strongly believe in help, in empowering people and in equipping 00:09:24.938 --> 00:09:28.642 people to bring their own voice into it. And what I've found 00:09:28.696 --> 00:09:32.434 is that when people feel more confident in the way 00:09:32.472 --> 00:09:36.006 that you want to say things as an organisation and the messages that you want 00:09:36.028 --> 00:09:39.446 them to bounce off, they actually become much more 00:09:39.468 --> 00:09:42.898 confident communicators and they will reflect the brand 00:09:43.074 --> 00:09:46.822 with confidence, naturally. So partly is about definition and 00:09:46.876 --> 00:09:50.438 defining things, in defining the tone of voice, but then it's 00:09:50.454 --> 00:09:54.154 also about developing the skills, the capability for 00:09:54.192 --> 00:09:58.026 people. And quite often in business, we use language day in, day out. We 00:09:58.048 --> 00:10:01.514 write all the time, don't we? We write emails, we 00:10:01.552 --> 00:10:05.262 write web pages, we write pieces of marketing in customer 00:10:05.316 --> 00:10:08.894 service. We're on web chat, or we're writing letters to customers. 00:10:09.092 --> 00:10:12.366 And how often have we had training? Quite often. I'll go into an organisation and 00:10:12.388 --> 00:10:16.218 there's been very little training in writing. It's almost the assumption that you've 00:10:16.234 --> 00:10:18.434 learned to write at school, so you ought to be able to do it. But 00:10:18.472 --> 00:10:22.114 actually, no, there's a way of writing in business that is 00:10:22.152 --> 00:10:25.794 actually different. And it's interesting. My daughter is about to do her a 00:10:25.832 --> 00:10:29.526 levels. She's doing english literature, and I almost can't coach her because 00:10:29.628 --> 00:10:33.094 they've been taught to write at school in a way that actually 00:10:33.132 --> 00:10:36.534 is. They've been taught to use adjectives in a way that I never would in 00:10:36.572 --> 00:10:40.326 business, because we aim for simplicity and clarity and humanity in 00:10:40.348 --> 00:10:44.186 business. And it's almost like at school they're being taught something else, and then in 00:10:44.208 --> 00:10:47.702 academia, it's even worse. Yeah, don't talk to me about academia. 00:10:47.766 --> 00:10:51.366 I was doing an MVQ and I couldn't 00:10:51.398 --> 00:10:55.066 handle the assignments because every time I had it moderated, it was 00:10:55.088 --> 00:10:57.038 saying, no, you have to write like this. Have to write like that. And I 00:10:57.044 --> 00:11:00.894 said, no, I can't write this without filler words. I can't write this 00:11:00.932 --> 00:11:04.400 without my voice in it. You want me to strip it down to 00:11:04.710 --> 00:11:08.180 short, factual sentences? That's not me. No. 00:11:09.270 --> 00:11:12.706 What this makes me think of is the perceptions that we have of the way 00:11:12.728 --> 00:11:16.494 that we should write. So we grow up in whatever environment 00:11:16.542 --> 00:11:19.874 we do, learning a way that we're taught to 00:11:19.912 --> 00:11:23.638 write. We should write the way that we should sound. And so we sort 00:11:23.644 --> 00:11:26.866 of enter the workplace with lots of assumptions 00:11:27.058 --> 00:11:30.746 that have been drummed into us as if they're rules of grammar and they're not 00:11:30.768 --> 00:11:34.266 actually rules of grammar. So a good example is starting 00:11:34.368 --> 00:11:38.106 a sentence with and but because or so now, if 00:11:38.128 --> 00:11:41.818 you read most newspapers, you'll find that they do that a lot. I think the 00:11:41.824 --> 00:11:45.658 Guardian doesn't, but most newspapers just do that with abandon and you don't 00:11:45.674 --> 00:11:49.326 even notice. But in business writing, it's almost as if we've been taught that 00:11:49.348 --> 00:11:53.162 that's not correct. And people have this idea embedded in their brains 00:11:53.226 --> 00:11:56.702 as if it's a rule of grammar, but it's not. It's actually a style 00:11:56.766 --> 00:12:00.194 rule. And style emerged. I don't want to get too 00:12:00.232 --> 00:12:03.726 distracted on too much of a tangent here, but style emerged in the victorian 00:12:03.758 --> 00:12:07.598 period when people were coming into the cities 00:12:07.774 --> 00:12:11.330 in the victorian period looking for work, they were coming off the fields 00:12:11.490 --> 00:12:14.914 and looking for jobs in the factories, when in the industrial 00:12:14.962 --> 00:12:18.746 revolution and things were booming in the factories, people were coming in and 00:12:18.848 --> 00:12:22.266 starting businesses, earning money, and you had this 00:12:22.288 --> 00:12:25.770 emerging middle class coming in from the villages, 00:12:26.750 --> 00:12:30.390 but there were people who didn't feel very confident in communicating, 00:12:30.470 --> 00:12:34.174 in conveying themselves in polite society. So 00:12:34.212 --> 00:12:37.902 you had a whole raft of out of work actors who 00:12:37.956 --> 00:12:41.486 were turning their hand to creating these style guides to help the 00:12:41.508 --> 00:12:45.278 aspiring middle class to sound poshure. And this is where a lot 00:12:45.284 --> 00:12:48.834 of these rules of grammar that we perceive and have become embedded in the last 00:12:48.872 --> 00:12:52.178 kind of couple of hundred years, but they're actually matters of style, and what they 00:12:52.184 --> 00:12:56.022 were writing were these style guides. So we have this hangover in business 00:12:56.076 --> 00:12:59.750 that we should have a certain formality, but actually, our business 00:12:59.820 --> 00:13:03.526 language, certainly in Britain, to the 00:13:03.548 --> 00:13:07.174 US, to some extent, Australia as well, has become less 00:13:07.212 --> 00:13:11.034 formal. So the Internet in the last 2025 years ago or so, has 00:13:11.072 --> 00:13:14.794 actually brought in different styles of communication, different 00:13:14.912 --> 00:13:18.614 forms of language. If you think that we came into the Internet age writing 00:13:18.662 --> 00:13:21.994 formal letters, and we now have text and 00:13:22.032 --> 00:13:25.214 WhatsApp and telegram and all sorts of apps, where we message in a much more 00:13:25.252 --> 00:13:28.894 immediate form, and what that's done is it's brought a style of 00:13:28.932 --> 00:13:32.622 speech into our writing. And so now, if we write 00:13:32.676 --> 00:13:36.466 in the traditional letter way, as organisations tend to, 00:13:36.488 --> 00:13:40.226 or we feel that we should, in business, actually, customers and the 00:13:40.248 --> 00:13:44.062 public at large find, feel that actually, that's rather over formal, 00:13:44.206 --> 00:13:47.630 and that puts a barrier up. And I did some work with legal in 00:13:47.640 --> 00:13:50.982 general, 1819, years ago, not long after I'd started 00:13:51.036 --> 00:13:54.326 freelancing, and they had done a piece of discourse analysis that 00:13:54.348 --> 00:13:57.766 highlighted that actually, this language, this formal insurance 00:13:57.868 --> 00:14:01.594 language, was putting a barrier up between them and customers. And that was the 00:14:01.632 --> 00:14:04.874 spark, that was the catalyst for them to make some 00:14:04.912 --> 00:14:08.758 changes. As you were speaking, I was listening to the way you were constructing 00:14:08.774 --> 00:14:12.586 your sentences and the words, and you were using the word and 00:14:12.768 --> 00:14:16.446 sequentially, in a way that you would never use that if you were 00:14:16.468 --> 00:14:20.062 writing a letter or writing a document, because you just wouldn't have. 00:14:20.116 --> 00:14:23.914 And this and that and this and that, you'd almost force 00:14:23.962 --> 00:14:27.474 yourself to shorten that sentence and start again 00:14:27.672 --> 00:14:30.958 without the third. And because you just look at it and go, that doesn't seem 00:14:30.974 --> 00:14:34.450 right, but when you were speaking it, you were linking 00:14:34.810 --> 00:14:38.546 paragraphs and sentences with, and listening 00:14:38.578 --> 00:14:42.034 to it, it sounded relaxed and normal and typical conversation. 00:14:42.082 --> 00:14:45.314 So is it a challenge trying to turn the written 00:14:45.362 --> 00:14:48.946 word into the internal voice of the person, reading 00:14:48.978 --> 00:14:52.380 it in a way that they can understand it and pick up 00:14:52.990 --> 00:14:56.794 the same feeling in which it was given onto the page? 00:14:56.992 --> 00:15:00.780 I think it is, yeah, that's a really good point, Jo. So, 00:15:01.230 --> 00:15:05.006 quite often, what I'm trying to help people to do in organisations is to 00:15:05.028 --> 00:15:08.686 be more themselves and more conversationally themselves. So 00:15:08.788 --> 00:15:12.606 when I'm working with marketers, it's actually a bit more 00:15:12.628 --> 00:15:16.386 straightforward because there's a distance off generally between them and the 00:15:16.408 --> 00:15:20.114 customer, so they have time to think and to think about what's going into their 00:15:20.152 --> 00:15:23.666 advertising or into their social media or onto a 00:15:23.688 --> 00:15:27.506 website. So they've got time to consider and they can work as a 00:15:27.528 --> 00:15:30.934 team to bring more of their spoken voice into 00:15:30.972 --> 00:15:34.822 play. It's slightly different in customer service because in customer service 00:15:34.876 --> 00:15:38.674 often people have been taught certain ways that they've picked up in various training 00:15:38.732 --> 00:15:42.506 over the years, but often that training hasn't been very comprehensive, so they 00:15:42.528 --> 00:15:46.186 don't have that much confidence in being themselves. I can 00:15:46.208 --> 00:15:49.866 remember running a workshop in Aeon, so I 00:15:49.888 --> 00:15:53.674 helped Aeon transition from Powergen to Aeon must, 00:15:53.712 --> 00:15:57.358 what was it, 15 years ago? Or something like that. I worked with Aeon for 00:15:57.364 --> 00:16:01.130 about eight years, I think, and we went through that transition. 00:16:01.290 --> 00:16:05.022 My team and I trained about 4000 people there and I can remember 00:16:05.076 --> 00:16:08.786 a workshop with some very senior customer service people. And they 00:16:08.808 --> 00:16:11.874 were translating a letter, they were looking at a letter and they were really 00:16:11.912 --> 00:16:15.506 struggling to get the clarity into the tone of voice that I was trying to 00:16:15.528 --> 00:16:19.174 encourage. The clarity and the informality, not 00:16:19.212 --> 00:16:23.014 necessarily chattiness, because I don't think customers want that and certainly 00:16:23.052 --> 00:16:26.854 not from an energy provider. So it's not a chattiness, but a more 00:16:26.892 --> 00:16:30.726 conversational human tone helps somebody. It expresses, for 00:16:30.748 --> 00:16:34.394 me, expresses empathy. It shows somebody that you've heard them, a 00:16:34.432 --> 00:16:38.154 simplicity and a clarity and empathy that shows that you've heard. 00:16:38.192 --> 00:16:41.946 And I can remember there was a couple working together and I suggested, and 00:16:41.968 --> 00:16:45.678 they were really struggling to get through their kind of 00:16:45.764 --> 00:16:49.198 legalistic language, the formality. So I said, 00:16:49.364 --> 00:16:52.126 why don't you say it as you would say it on the phone to the 00:16:52.148 --> 00:16:55.978 customer? So person a say it to person b as you would on the 00:16:56.004 --> 00:16:59.698 phone. Person B write down exactly the words that they say. 00:16:59.784 --> 00:17:02.898 And they wrote the words down. I said, there's your letter. They said, what? We 00:17:02.904 --> 00:17:06.402 can't say this. It's too simple, it's too 00:17:06.536 --> 00:17:10.006 natural in a way. And I said, you absolutely. Can you tidy it up? You 00:17:10.028 --> 00:17:13.186 edit it, you can turn that into a letter. But what you've done is you've 00:17:13.218 --> 00:17:17.062 then brought 25 plus years of experience looking after 00:17:17.116 --> 00:17:20.934 customers to bear into that letter. And you've shown some empathy and 00:17:20.972 --> 00:17:24.634 you've connected on a more human level. So for me, it is about having 00:17:24.672 --> 00:17:28.266 empathy for the audience, what they're likely to take on 00:17:28.288 --> 00:17:31.834 board in terms of a message and how they want to hear it and how 00:17:31.872 --> 00:17:35.306 they're going to feel recognised as a human being, as. An individual is the challenge 00:17:35.338 --> 00:17:39.086 with that, though. Whilst we talked about having an avatar of 00:17:39.108 --> 00:17:42.906 the tone of voice. So Richard Branson Virgin is clearly a person you're 00:17:42.938 --> 00:17:46.734 talking through, but do you have to try and find an avatar 00:17:46.862 --> 00:17:50.626 of the receiver? So the person is going to open that letter and that must 00:17:50.648 --> 00:17:53.886 be a massive challenge because of the multicultural 00:17:54.078 --> 00:17:57.834 nuances of the person. Open the letter, their heritage, 00:17:57.902 --> 00:18:01.574 their lived experience, which part of the country, which part of the world, which 00:18:01.612 --> 00:18:05.446 language they speak. They're going to interpret things with 00:18:05.468 --> 00:18:09.234 their own bias or lived experience. And that must also be a challenge. 00:18:09.362 --> 00:18:12.918 It is. And so there's two sides to that conversation, isn't there? 00:18:13.004 --> 00:18:16.278 There's the company. So what's the character of the company? And yeah, what's the character 00:18:16.294 --> 00:18:19.258 of the person you're talking to? So let's take both in turn. So start with 00:18:19.264 --> 00:18:23.006 the company. In the jargon, in the corporate speak or the marketing speak, I 00:18:23.028 --> 00:18:26.350 would call this brand personality. And there are all sorts of ways of 00:18:26.420 --> 00:18:30.046 describing brand personality, but that's part of the kind 00:18:30.068 --> 00:18:33.794 of the process of developing a brand strategy and it needs 00:18:33.832 --> 00:18:37.060 to come from the values and it comes from the behaviours that 00:18:37.990 --> 00:18:41.426 you want to encourage through the organisation. The 00:18:41.448 --> 00:18:45.286 personality is how that all comes across. So when you 00:18:45.308 --> 00:18:49.046 connect with a customer or connect with somebody internally, how does that 00:18:49.068 --> 00:18:52.918 convey itself? What personality traits would you describe yourself 00:18:53.004 --> 00:18:56.550 by? So that's the first step 00:18:56.700 --> 00:19:00.266 and you can have some fun with that. The key is to try to bring 00:19:00.288 --> 00:19:03.866 it to life in a way that enables people within the 00:19:03.888 --> 00:19:07.546 organisation to project themselves onto it, to see themselves in that 00:19:07.568 --> 00:19:11.174 personality. It needs to not be completely prescriptive. You can't 00:19:11.222 --> 00:19:14.526 tell people how to be as a human being. You can 00:19:14.548 --> 00:19:18.366 encourage, but you can't force people. So you have to do it in 00:19:18.388 --> 00:19:22.026 a way that people will relate to and enjoy playing 00:19:22.058 --> 00:19:25.550 with, enjoy working with and expressing. So that's the kind of the business 00:19:25.620 --> 00:19:29.246 side of the conversation. But when it comes to the people that we're 00:19:29.278 --> 00:19:32.914 talking to, I have an exercise that I've used for many years which I found 00:19:32.952 --> 00:19:36.774 is really powerful for this. You've probably come across the idea of 00:19:36.812 --> 00:19:40.518 audience personas and I think that they can be misused in a 00:19:40.524 --> 00:19:43.558 way, and can we really ever 00:19:43.724 --> 00:19:47.526 describe one segment of an audience in a way that 00:19:47.628 --> 00:19:51.260 makes sense? There's all sorts of arguments about this and in fact, 00:19:51.790 --> 00:19:55.626 in my book that I'm hoping to be publishing within two or three 00:19:55.648 --> 00:19:59.386 months. The human business. How to love your customers so 00:19:59.408 --> 00:20:03.166 they love you back. I have a chapter on brand personality, and 00:20:03.188 --> 00:20:06.846 I talk about this process of an exercise where I help people to 00:20:06.868 --> 00:20:10.638 step into the personality of their audience. So 00:20:10.804 --> 00:20:14.526 trying not to be too prescriptive about audience personas, I run 00:20:14.548 --> 00:20:18.386 this exercise where we use. It uses NLP neurolinguistic programming, and 00:20:18.408 --> 00:20:22.094 there's this idea of perceptual position, so stepping into somebody else's shoes. 00:20:22.222 --> 00:20:25.934 So I get people into groups and I give them a communication. 00:20:25.982 --> 00:20:29.654 So we get some communications from within the organisation that 00:20:29.692 --> 00:20:32.886 could be better. Obviously, I'm generally looking for 00:20:32.988 --> 00:20:36.614 communications that are quite poor, but actually you don't need to look too 00:20:36.652 --> 00:20:40.370 far within an organisation to find things that people want to improve. 00:20:40.450 --> 00:20:43.420 And I get people to spend 20 minutes, 25 minutes 00:20:43.950 --> 00:20:47.606 scoping out, getting an idea of a character of one of the audience, 00:20:47.718 --> 00:20:50.906 somebody who might be receiving a letter or reading a web page or receiving an 00:20:50.928 --> 00:20:54.362 email or something like that, or reading a social post. So give them a name, 00:20:54.496 --> 00:20:58.238 give them an age, imagine what they do, what's their family set up, where do 00:20:58.244 --> 00:21:02.094 they live, what job do they do? And then imagine a day in their life 00:21:02.212 --> 00:21:05.962 right from the moment they get up. Because I want people to have the idea 00:21:06.036 --> 00:21:09.714 that when you're talking to your customers, when you're communicating with an audience of any 00:21:09.752 --> 00:21:13.438 kind, the context in which they're receiving a communication 00:21:13.534 --> 00:21:17.042 is the whole of their life. It's almost like within business. We've got this idea 00:21:17.096 --> 00:21:20.886 that when you're writing to somebody, they're in their business mindset or they're in their 00:21:20.908 --> 00:21:24.534 customer mindset, and it's obviously not true. We 00:21:24.572 --> 00:21:28.310 get up, we walk the dog, we get the kids to school. 00:21:28.460 --> 00:21:32.074 We are panicked and stressed. The packed lunch didn't go 00:21:32.112 --> 00:21:35.866 quite as well. There was a traffic jam. Getting the kids to 00:21:35.888 --> 00:21:39.706 school, you got to your office, or you got back to your 00:21:39.728 --> 00:21:43.326 desk at home and you're already fraught, and then you read that 00:21:43.348 --> 00:21:47.054 letter or you get that email through. So when we imagine the whole of this 00:21:47.092 --> 00:21:50.830 life context for a member of our audience, we 00:21:50.900 --> 00:21:54.654 immediately have more empathy for that person. Then 00:21:54.692 --> 00:21:58.382 I get them from that place of empathy to go, okay, in character, in audience, 00:21:58.446 --> 00:22:02.258 character. Now read the communication. How does it feel to you? 00:22:02.344 --> 00:22:05.938 What does it make you feel? And people go, I'm confused. 00:22:06.034 --> 00:22:09.650 Actually. It makes me angry. It's legalistic, it's 00:22:09.730 --> 00:22:13.494 formal. I don't understand, I'm not 00:22:13.532 --> 00:22:16.802 clear. And immediately people know what they want to do differently 00:22:16.866 --> 00:22:20.614 immediately in that place of empathy, they know what they want to do 00:22:20.652 --> 00:22:24.458 differently. And that's how I help them to step into an audience frame of 00:22:24.464 --> 00:22:28.106 mind and appreciate what's going on for them. I love that. That's so true. I 00:22:28.128 --> 00:22:31.946 often use a similar example of that where, because we're reading 00:22:31.978 --> 00:22:35.806 a lot of communications now on our phones, we've got 00:22:35.828 --> 00:22:39.502 even less control about where that person will 00:22:39.636 --> 00:22:43.166 pick up that correspondence, whether it's a text message, email, whatever it may 00:22:43.188 --> 00:22:45.874 be. They could be sat on the toilet, as you say. They could be in 00:22:45.912 --> 00:22:49.714 a traffic jam, they could be just dropped the kids off at school having 00:22:49.752 --> 00:22:53.522 a stressy moment and suddenly ping, they go, I'll just quickly read 00:22:53.576 --> 00:22:57.234 that. And I've picked up communications and 00:22:57.272 --> 00:23:00.038 there's nothing particularly wrong with the tone of voice or what was being sent to 00:23:00.044 --> 00:23:03.606 me, but my frame of mind was in completely the wrong place. I was not 00:23:03.628 --> 00:23:07.366 in the right place to receive that, no matter how good it was. What I 00:23:07.388 --> 00:23:10.934 should have done was turned my phone off. What happened was I read it and 00:23:10.972 --> 00:23:14.634 it then destroyed my mindset for the rest of the day. So 00:23:14.832 --> 00:23:18.166 I'm looking at the other side sometimes is I'm getting stuff that I really shouldn't 00:23:18.198 --> 00:23:21.866 read. But we have to appreciate when we're sending stuff, as you 00:23:21.888 --> 00:23:25.390 pointed out, we've got little control over the situation the person's in. 00:23:25.540 --> 00:23:29.006 Absolutely. I've actually got quite an extreme example of that just at the moment. So 00:23:29.028 --> 00:23:32.414 I'm working with a lovely norwegian consultancy called 00:23:32.452 --> 00:23:36.174 DNV. They're 14,000 people. They're global. There are 119 00:23:36.222 --> 00:23:40.014 nationalities. So I'm thinking about translation and non native 00:23:40.062 --> 00:23:43.634 english speakers. I'm working on the 00:23:43.672 --> 00:23:47.430 people HR, intranet and LNd programmes and 00:23:47.500 --> 00:23:51.154 that sort of stuff. And they have engineers 00:23:51.202 --> 00:23:55.030 and surveyors who are literally out on ships. So they do 00:23:55.100 --> 00:23:58.826 risk and assurance globally. And so many of 00:23:58.848 --> 00:24:02.474 their people are going to be remote, they will be managing large 00:24:02.512 --> 00:24:05.930 teams. They might be reading a communication 00:24:07.310 --> 00:24:10.854 on a phone or a tablet. They probably have patchy 00:24:10.902 --> 00:24:14.598 Internet access. And I'm trying to encourage them to 00:24:14.624 --> 00:24:18.062 think, okay, everything's got to be mobile, responsive, everything has got to be super 00:24:18.116 --> 00:24:21.610 concise. We've got to be thinking about what's in it for our audience, 00:24:21.690 --> 00:24:25.246 not what do we want to communicate as a company. And this is 00:24:25.268 --> 00:24:29.010