“Deficiency-Free State Survey”
proclaimed the giant letters.
The nursing care facility was so
proud of those words that they bought a half-page newspaper ad to share them.
But did any of their current or prospective residents understand what that
meant, or why it was a big deal?
I’d be willing to wager a
substantial sum that they didn’t. Now, I knew exactly what they meant and why
the facility was so excited, but that’s only because I’ve done work with the
senior care industry over the years.
State inspectors regularly visit
nursing homes and similar facilities for intensive inspections and try to
identify as many deficiencies in care, cleanliness, recordkeeping, and other
areas as they can. When they don’t find any deficiencies, it’s a cause for
celebration and recognition of the extraordinary quality of care the facilities
provide. That’s definitely worth promoting, so I can’t blame the facility for
running the ad.
Only one problem: the phrase
“deficiency-free state survey” is meaningless to the people the facility was
hoping to impress: current and future residents and their loved ones. I’m
confident that more than 98 percent of them have no idea what a “state survey”
is or how “deficiencies” is defined. The facility’s leaders chose words that
have a great deal of meaning to nursing home administrators and zero meaning to
the residents they serve.
That’s a mistake I see all too
often. Companies design beautiful websites, print nice brochures, or create
dazzling ads using language their intended audiences just don’t understand.
Instead, they use the vernacular of their industry. They include the jargon
they employ when speaking to their colleagues and peers, not realizing that
everyday people don’t talk that way. Most professions and companies develop
their own languages and shorthand that are familiar and obvious to insiders,
but confusing to the outside world.
My favorite examples come from
healthcare. I’m reminded of the hospital that opened an “ambulatory clinic” as
a lower-cost alternative to its emergency room, because “ambulatory” is the
medical term for someone who’s capable of walking. When the clinic failed to
generate the expected traffic, research revealed that most patients thought
“ambulatory” meant that people arrived there in ambulances.
Another familiar healthcare
example is that when a medical test comes back “positive,” it’s rarely a good
thing. Or have you ever had a nurse tell you that you had to be “NPO after
seven?” That’s medical shorthand for “no food or liquid by mouth” after 7 p.m.,
but if you didn’t know that, how can you be expected to follow the directions?
Within companies and
organizations, specific departments often have their own ways of speaking and
writing that baffle folks in other areas. Ever watched a colleague struggle
with assistance from the help desk? The technology-savvy experts who man the
desk often speak in very different words and phrases than the
technology-challenged workers they’re supposed to support. The result is
frustrations on both sides and misunderstandings that get in the way of what
should be simple solutions.
One profession that’s become
notorious for this self-inflicted failure to communicate is education. I
believe that the vast majority of conflicts between teachers, administrators,
and parents are the direct result of differences in language. At a parent-teacher
conference, parents will hear that their child “scored in the 74th percentile
on a norm-referenced assessment” and have absolutely no clue whether that’s a
good thing or a bad thing. If the teacher instead said “Johnny scored higher
than 74 percent of students his age nationwide,” the parents wouldn’t be
confused. I suspect that a large number of parents who hear that an essay is
being graded against a “rubric” wonder what a sandwich made with corned beef
has to do with English. And what you and I refer to as “schools,” educators
call “buildings.”
What’s the lesson here? It’s
simple. If you want to communicate effectively with customers, prospects, or
any other audience, you need to communicate in their language, not yours. You
can’t expect your audience to know your company, industry, or profession’s
jargon, and it isn’t their responsibility to become educated enough to
understand you. Speaking in language that’s familiar to them is the best way to
ensure that they’ll understand what you want to convey, and to avoid the
misunderstandings that can derail relationships.
Source: - http://www.sitepronews.com/2017/07/03/why-you-need-to-talk-like-your-customers/
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