/ A tone of voice that matches your target audience
Alexander Wijninga
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5 min
The tone of voice of your communication determines how you come across as a company to your target audience. To make sure your target audience really feels addressed, it is important that the tone in your communications, customer service and chatbot fits your audience well. When you write a text for specialists in a hospital's dermatology department, after all, you use a different tone of voice than when you write a text for vocational students at a secondary school. What does a tone of voice involve exactly? And how can the right tone of voice work in your favour? You can read it in this article.
A tone of voice comes back in every communication from your brand. Think of the way you write newsletters, social media posts, press articles, emails and on your website. Within a tone of voice a distinction is often made between two main categories: formal and informal. Within those categories there are many different ways a company can position itself: funny, direct, youthful, capable, engaged, and so on.
A tone of voice largely determines your brand identity. When you are consistent in it, the customer will most likely come to recognise your way of writing. This creates trust and brand recognition. It is important here that you communicate clearly what you stand for as a brand. Research by HBR shows that 64% of respondents see shared norms and values as the most important factor in coming to trust a brand.
When it comes to tone of voice, there is no one-size-fits-all method. And that is probably just as well. If a law firm used the same tone of voice as a toy seller, that would probably produce some remarkable moments in court. A good tone of voice is unique and fits your target audience perfectly. Work through these four steps to find your tone of voice:
You cannot determine a tone of voice without knowing exactly who you are talking to. Creating a persona of your target audience is therefore the first step. It is harder, after all, to write a text ‘for housewives’ than to write a text for Marina, a 42-year-old housewife from Dordrecht who is to be found on the Veluwe every Sunday with her three labradoodles. Do you have several target audiences? Then make a persona for each one. For each persona, name the following aspects:
What are his/her interests?
What does she/he care a lot about?
What kind of work does this person do?
What does his/her family situation look like?
What does this person want from your brand?
Take a look at various communications from your company, and try to determine what makes your brand unique. Do you see particular words coming up often? Write them down. Is there a particular theme that comes back regularly? Write it down. That way, bit by bit, you get a picture of your company's identity. On the basis of this small piece of research you establish the following three elements:
The personality of your company. For example: funny, helpful, knowledgeable, adventurous.
The purpose of your written communications. For example: to inspire, to activate, to inform.
Aspects of the language you use. For example: short and to the point, extensive, playful.
Make sure you summarise the information above in a single overview: in the table below you will find a very general example from a travel agency. This way everyone knows what the company's tone of voice is, and they can fall back on it and will have a good picture of it.
Once you have carried this tone of voice through, it is important to keep asking for feedback. What do customers like about your communications, and what would they rather see less of? The customer is and remains king, and by asking for their opinion you can optimise effectively. You do this, for example, by adding a question at the end of a chatbot conversation or by sending surveys to a sample of customers on your mailing list.
To make the explanation above clear and concrete, we have written down two examples below. Coolblue and Logistiekconcurrent both have a clear, good tone of voice, in two different ways. Here you see a tone of voice on social media, and how you can carry this through in a chatbot. Take a look at these companies' social media channels and websites too, to get a good look at how they approach their external communication.
Coolblue has been voted the company with the best webcare/customer service in the Netherlands for years in a row. The company speaks a clear language: informal, funny and, where necessary, with a touch of sarcasm. The company is also to be found everywhere on the internet, reachable and active. If Coolblue is being talked about, Coolblue is also there with a witty response. They also look closely at the situation: if there is a serious complaint, customer service is on top of it and the problem is solved straight away. If someone makes a remark about the brand, a witty remark comes back.
At Logistiekconcurrent customer satisfaction ranks very high. Because they want to be there for their customers at all times, they chose to bring a chatbot into being. In training their chatbot Loggi, Logistiekconcurrent paid extra attention to the language the bot speaks. It has to be personal and friendly. That way you can not only ask small questions easily and quickly, but also have a chat with Loggi, for example.
Would you also like to deal with your customers 24/7? Then build your own chatbot. With a chatbot you quickly catch 85% of customer contact. You determine the tone of voice in advance, and the questions that are still picked up by the customer service team can therefore be handled with extra attention. Building a chatbot is easy and fast with Watermelon. Would you like to place a live chat function on your website already and see what the Watermelon platform looks like? Try it yourself and create a free account.
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