I must confess, I have a penchant for metaphors. When I get really excited I’ve been known to mix a metaphor or two to create something altogether new.  Sometimes they’re a bit thick to understand.  A few from my personal hall of fame:

“That’s water over the bridge.”
“I don’t want to make that change until I can see it through his shoes.”
“Solid as a mud duck.”

This week, in a meeting with clients in health care, we all stopped and laughed when this metaphor popped up:

“We know we have to make people jump through hoops once in awhile, but let’s not make them flaming hoops; let’s line them in fur.”

Photo by Kris Arnold

In the moment, we all got it. Health care isn’t very easy. Most organizations who provide care or insurance know it’s complicated, and that they can influence but not change much of what complicates it.Yet while a metaphor is a great way to express yourself in a meeting, it’s not the clearest way to get your point across to customers.

Recently, I met my match in the metaphor category. If my match were an actual person, I’d be overjoyed to have a comrade to share the hard time I get from peers. But this wasn’t the case. I met my match in a business. This business, which shall remain nameless to protect the not-so-innocent, was using copy so rife with metaphors and riddled with acronyms that I finished reading and thought, “what did they just say?”

In your customer experience, the language you use is both a tangible ingredient (the facts and information you share or ask for) and an intangible ingredient (the emotional tone and pace you use). If your customer’s can’t figure out what you’re saying, how can they find you, try you out, choose you, or use your product or service to solve their need?  We talked a little bit about this when covering Step 2 of the six steps common to any customer experience, and it’s important enough to reiterate.

Speak your customer’s language.  That means speaking to a physician about a medical device differently than speaking to a teenager about nail polish. Easy enough. The BIG payoff comes from putting yourself in the mind set of your prospect or customer. Knowing what should happen and how customers should feel every step of the way will give you a powerful and easy way to guide the conversation. You can use your target experience as a content guide online or off, in person or through any media.

I’m not saying you can’t have fun with your copy. Not at all. Just make sure you’re speaking the language of your customers, and if you have to make them jump through hoops (linguistically or otherwise) line those hoops with soft faux fur.