How to effectively explain things to your customers
Posted by Josh Taylor / December 19, 2013 background informationHBR
Explaining things to your customers is tricky. You don’t want to appear condescending, but you still have to get the information across. To help you walk this line, HBR offers a few battle-tested tips for explaining things to customers. Here are a few examples:
Make Your Audience Feel Smart, Instead of Making Yourself Look Smart
We want others to think we’re smart because in most cases that’s rewarded. But when it comes to making an idea easy to understand, simple trumps clever. Fancy vocabulary and extensive background information might impress customers — but, more likely, will just confuse them. Stop trying to look smart and start making your audience feel smart by building their knowledge and confidence. Dazzle them with clarity; it’s another kind of brilliance.Explain the Forest, Not Just the Trees
Focus only on features and you’ll miss an opportunity to invite your audience to see the big picture. Prioritizing the details of this year’s coolest product features isn’t an explanation. Customers won’t care about the bells and whistles if they don’t understand why your product exists and why it matters to them. By zooming out and focusing on context at the beginning of an explanation, you can build a world around your product that enables it to make more sense.
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Esp. love the concept of approaching the audience with an attitude that appreciates them as being smart already. No one likes being talked down to and when we –however unconsciously, –give the impression that we are superior because of our knowledge, it makes it difficult for them to hear anything you say except, “I am the smart one so you are obviously the dumb one. Try to keep up.” Thanks for giving us a real handle on showing respect. That alone will take you anywhere you want to go esp. when deal with humans!
[…] Explaining things to your customers is tricky. You don’t want to appear condescending, but you still have to get the information across. To help you walk this line, HBR offers a few battle-tested tips for explaining things to customers. […]