TCC #54 — Voice of customer
Are we shouting into the void?
“I don’t know what that means, but I don’t like any of those three words.”
That’s what an Ohio resident said to Jake Sullivan, the former U.S. National Security Advisor under President Biden, in response to his claims that a Democratic foreign policy would focus on restoring the liberal international order.
Sullivan talks about this encounter in a recent interview with Ezra Klein.
Figuring out what people care about is the main job of political campaigns. It’s also what marketers wrestle with every day.
But figuring it out is only one part of the equation. The second part is learning how to communicate what you know they care about in ways they understand.
It’s not a question of ‘dumbing it down’ (I hate that phrase) or running it through software to match a fifth-grade reading level. It’s just about figuring out the words and ideas your audience actually uses to describe their lives, their dreams, their struggles.
It’s so inanely obvious, and yet it’s so rarely done.
This reluctance to say what people want to hear in terms they understand just cost the Democrats the election. And it’s costing those who communicate in the climate space too — whether it’s climate tech companies trying to resonate with sustainability teams or comms teams figuring out how to talk about their climate action without underwhelming, overwhelming, or greenwashing.
I highly recommend this interview with Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democratic senator from Arizona who represents a minor miracle: a blue senator in a red state. The host asks him: How did you do it?
He believes it had everything to do with talking to the very people Democrats are usually afraid to talk to: Trump supporters. “We weren’t afraid to reach out to them. We went to some of the hardest places in the state. Conservative Republican counties. We sat down with Trump supporters. We weren’t afraid to talk to them, and we did it repeatedly.”
Post-election, Gallego is still focused on these on-the-ground conversations — and they’re illuminating.
“I go back to Arizona, they’re actually not talking about U.S.A.I.D,” he says. “And they’re not talking about the courts. They’re still talking about egg prices. They’re still talking about the cost of everything.”
While those of you reading this newsletter are watching Washington in horror, most of the rest of the world is busy with its own challenges.
“One of the things we have to be very mindful of is that we may engage in a fight, but the rest of the American public may not be with us because they don’t understand this fight,” Gallego says. “And we need to make sure that we’re matching our politics to what actually is happening in the world, because sometimes, when we have a disconnect, we miss — and we miss really, really badly.”
Gallego is pretty clear-eyed about what went wrong in November. “The stuff that’s happening now is because we entirely missed where the American public was during the 2024 election,” he says.
Can we turn the page on it?
Those of us in communication roles often imagine that writing the perfect copy or crafting the perfect campaign is some mystical, overly complicated thing. Companies and campaigns spend millions trying to figure out the best thing to say — but Meg and I have seen too many of these processes ignore the very people they’re trying to resonate with.
Communication is a dialogue, not a monologue. It begins with letting them speak first.
If you’re struggling to resonate with your target audience right now, you need just three words:
✨ voice of customer ✨
There aren’t many silver bullets in this world, but voice of customer is one of them.
Do it properly, and you’re bound to notice a shift.
A few places to start for those of you targeting B2B audiences:
Ask to meet via phone call or video call with both customers and prospects
Ask about their challenges and problems — pay very careful attention to the words they use
Ask about solutions — what would they search in Google? What would they ask a colleague or mentor?
Ask them how they’d describe your product or service to a colleague (you’ll get some surprisingly good stuff here)
Ask them to describe their days, their jobs, what it’s like being in their shoes
Ask them what their ultimate days/jobs/situation looks like
Ask them what it changed for them; let them describe the contrast between before and after
The key is not just in the broad content of their responses, but in the specific words and phrases they use. In a digital world, finding the right words can make or break your marketing efforts. (Seriously — keywords are expensive.) So pay close attention to the words.
Hopefully you find that helpful, but let’s zoom back out a bit to the bigger picture.
What’s really at stake here? Does it really matter if we can’t get on the same page?
For marketers, well — you might lose a sale or never get one started without the right language. But socially, I think we have bigger things to worry about.
The biggest worry when marketers or politicians fail to speak the same language as the people they wish to serve is not that we end up in a state of misinformation (ha! imagine that!) or that your audience starts speaking out against you. Honestly, I think the biggest worry is that people give up on communicating — or trying to understand — entirely.
Quick little anecdotal example from my own life. I’m currently in Buenos Aires and sticking out from the local population like a sore thumb. My Spanish has about as much nuance and fluency as a wooden box nailed together by a four-year-old. I know how to order a coffee, how to say, “I can’t tap my card; I have to insert it” (multiple times a day), and how to tell people, redundantly, that my Spanish isn’t very good.
What happens to micro-interactions when you don’t speak the same language? Basically, you don’t try for much. I keep my mouth shut unless I have to say something. I don’t try to remark on the weather or ask them about something interesting I’ve noticed. I don’t know how to, and if I tried, it would be painful and confusing for everyone. So my Spanish interactions end up extremely limited and highly transactional. Instead, I live largely inside my own head (same as usual, really) and rely on my orthodontically engineered smile to get me by.
This is what happens to dialogue when the parties don’t speak the same language. It’s stilted, confusing, and then, eventually — nobody even tries. Instead, they will be drawn in by campaigns that appeal to the anger and frustration they feel about not being heard or noticed. A disengaged population creates a dangerous situation for us all.
Let’s hope the non-MAGA world learns from its mistakes and begins to say the things people want to hear.