No matter what industry or position you work in, it’s always good business to cultivate strong customer connections. Handled well, those relationships lead to myriad positives including decreased churn, increased spend, and improved brand perception. But what goes into the process of developing them? In truth, there are numerous factors to be taken into account.
The question we’re going to address in this piece, though, concerns the ranking of those factors. Is language chief among them? Is what you say (including how you say it) the most important thing when you’re trying to impress and retain your customers? Let’s consider the role language plays, and attempt to answer the titular question.
Global operation requires a global approach
In the last decade, businesses around the world have chosen (or been forced) to move online, and the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic served to intensify this trend. And due to huge improvements in international ecommerce networks, it’s now very common for businesses (even those on the smaller size) to offer their wares throughout the world instead of just locally.
This introduces some challenges, though, and one of the trickiest is figuring out how to sell to different audiences. It isn’t enough to have a great product: you also need to know how to present it in a way that will drive conversions, and that means getting your language right. In fact, it means getting your languages right, because multilingual service is a huge benefit.
Taking the time to invest in website localization (Weglot has a useful guide about this) will chiefly return value through ensuring that you’re catering to the people you’re trying to reach. You simply can’t connect with someone effectively if you don’t speak their language. Showing that you’re invested in meeting people’s needs will hugely help your value proposition.
Your tone heavily shapes your likability
Brands run the business world, and they always have. You don’t need to be the best in any particular area if you happen to be the company that prospective buyers think about first. And while a big part of that is about consistency and scale (brands get so big by being around for a long time and engaging in heavy promotion), another part is about likability.
The more likable you seem, the more support you’ll get from current and prospective customers alike. So what makes a brand likable? Charitable deeds, of course. Product quality, absolutely. But across the board, it’s tone that sets brands apart. Some companies know how to sound friendly and engaging, and a small tweak to phrasing can make all the difference.
Look at how some brands have become huge on social media through posts that really have little to do with their products. Chains like Wendy’s don’t dominate because they have the most delicious burgers: they dominate because they know how to capture a tone that appeals to young people particularly strongly. Take the same content, change the phrasing, and it wouldn’t work anywhere near as well.
Selling is all about addressing needs
Think about the classic sales test of handing someone a pen and asking them to sell it to you. The ostensible value of the pen is static and minimal: the material cost is low, and there are many alternatives around. It’s in the framing of the value proposition that the magic happens and the value is found, and it all starts with the potential buyer’s needs.
That’s ultimately part of the selling fundamentals: finding people’s needs and explaining (however creatively) how your product or service can meet them. If someone is looking for a luxury meal, swapping out some ho-hum modifiers (such as “hearty” or “filling”) for alternatives with more kick to them (such as “sumptuous” or “mouth-watering”) can radically change the appeal without in any way altering the taste or composition of the food.
Beyond that, though, mirroring the language of your customers is one of the keys to speaking on the same page. If they come to believe that you understand them and see things as they do, they’ll be far more likely to stand by you.
Returning to the titular question, then, is language the most important factor in building customer communications? It’s certainly up there near the top, and there’s good reason to list it as number one because the simple act of tweaking how you phrase something can radically change how it comes across. So if you’re looking for ways in which you can improve your customer relationships, consider investing in copywriting and translation.
Rodney Laws
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