Write a minimum 850-word reflective journal entry on this assigned article in Microsoft Word

SMR722

How Should Companies Talk to Customers Online? The words service agents use to engage customers often end up backfring.

Brent McFerran Sarah G. Moore

Grant Packard

Reprint #60209 https://mitsmr.com/2D7hXIO

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

DIGITAL

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

DIGITAL

How Should Companies Talk to Customers Online? BRENT MCFERRAN, SARAH G. MOORE, AND GRANT PACKARD

The words service agents use to engage customers often end up backfring.

More and more consumers are engaging with customer

service through digital channels, including websites,

email, texts, live chat, and social media. In 2017, only half

of customer experiences with companies involved face-

to-face or voice-based interactions, and digital

interactions are expected to represent two-thirds of

customer experiences within the next few years. 1 The

vast majority of customer service interactions around the

world begins in online channels. 2

Despite the convenience and speed of such interactions,

they lack some of the most important aspects of ofine

customer service. In-person interactions are rich in

nonverbal expressions and gestures, which can signal

deep engagement, and an agent’s tone of voice can convey

empathy and focus in phone conversations. Over time,

these interpersonal touches help companies build and

sustain relationships with customers.

But can some of that beneft be captured in the world of digital customer service? We argue that it can — with the

right words. Our focus on words is consistent with a

growing recognition among businesses that language

matters, digitally or otherwise. Apple, for example, has

explicit policies detailing which words can and cannot be

used, and how they should be used when interacting with

customers. 3 The use of customer service scripts is also

commonplace in service contexts, where employees are

encouraged to use specifc words when interacting with

customers. 4

However, we fnd that most companies are taking a

misguided approach in their emails, texts, and social

media communications with customers. They’re using

words that, while designed to engage customers, can

sometimes alienate them.

Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. All rights reserved. Reprint #60209 https://mitsmr.com/2D7hXIO

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

About the Research

DIGITAL

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

Our research 5 focuses on personal pronouns (I, we,

you), which psychologists have linked to critical personal and social outcomes. 6 Customer service agents use

personal pronouns in nearly every sentence they utter,

whether it’s “We’re happy to help you” or “I think we do

have something in your size.” Our research shows that

simple shifts in employee language can enhance customer

satisfaction and purchase behavior.

The Power of Pronouns Conventional wisdom says that being customer-oriented

is critical to customer satisfaction. That’s why phrases like

“We’re happy to help you” have become so popular in

service settings. Agents are often taught to lean on the

pronoun “you” and to avoid saying “I,” and our survey of

more than 500 customer service managers and employees

shows that they’ve taken those prescriptions to heart. (See

“About the Research.”)

About the Research Our research looks at language in digital customer service

interactions. To test conventional wisdom and practices

regarding the use of personal pronouns in text-based

exchanges, we surveyed more than 500 customer service

managers or agents and analyzed more than 1,000

customer service emails from 41 of the top 100 global

online retailers. We also conducted controlled

experiments with 2,819 North American adult

participants in an online panel including managers,

agents, and general-population consumers, and lab

experiments with undergraduate students.

Our results reveal that service employees not only believe

they should, but actually do frequently refer to the

customer as “you” and to the company as “we,” and they

DIGITAL

tend to leave themselves as individuals (“I”) out of the

conversation. What’s more, when we compared service

agent pronoun use with natural English-language base

rates, we found that employees are using far more “we”

and “you” pronouns in service settings than people do in

almost any other context. Customer service language

seems to have evolved into its own kind of discourse.

To fnd out if this discourse is optimal, we took a subset

of the customer service responses we had collected, which

showed high use of “we” pronouns, and constructed

alternative responses, replacing “we” with “I.” For

example, “We are happy to help” easily became “I am happy to help” without changing the basic message. We

also removed references to the customer in some

responses. For example, “How do the shoes ft you?” became “How do the shoes ft?” We then randomly

assigned individuals to read either the company’s

response or our edited response and assessed their

satisfaction with the company and the agent, as well as

their purchase intentions.

We found some surprising results that are inconsistent

with current approaches.

Using ‘I’ Conveys Empathy and Action In all cases, our modifed responses with “I” pronouns

signifcantly outperformed the “we” pronouns that real

service agents were using. Relative to using “we,” the

beneft of using “I” stems from the fact that customers

perceive the employee to be (a) more empathetic and (b)

more agentic, or acting on the customer’s behalf.

We also examined these language features in a large data

set of more than 1,000 customer service email

Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. All rights reserved. Reprint #60209 https://mitsmr.com/2D7hXIO

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

DIGITAL

Say ‘I’ for Service Success

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

DIGITAL

interactions from a large multinational retailer of

entertainment and information products. We matched

these email interactions with customer purchase data.

Econometric analyses revealed the same positive results

of using “I” pronouns: A 10% increase in “I” pronoun use

by company agents corresponded to a 0.8% increase in

customer purchase volume after controlling for other

factors. Our analysis suggests that companies could

achieve an incremental sales lift of more than 5%, and

still fall within natural language norms, by increasing

their service agents’ use of “I” pronouns where possible.

Why is “I” a more powerful pronoun in agents’

interactions? After all, saying “I” too much can signal

self-centeredness, 7 and many leaders are, in fact,

criticized for speaking too much about themselves.

However, CEO speeches and corporate earnings reports

are not one-on-one interactions, which, as linguists point

out, can see the opposite effect: 8 When two people are

communicating with each other, “I” suggests a personal

focus on the issue at hand. Specifcally, our research on

customer service fnds that saying “I” signals that the

agent is feeling and acting on the customer’s behalf. For

example, telling a customer “I am working on that” conveys a greater sense of ownership than “We are working on that,” which can imply a diffusion of

responsibility. Similarly, “I understand the issue” shows more empathy than “We understand the issue.”

Ultimately, customers need to know that the agents with

whom they are interacting care and are working on their

behalf. Research has consistently shown that customer

perceptions of empathy and agency drive satisfaction,

sales, and profts, 9 and our studies show that “I” fosters

these perceptions to a signifcantly greater degree than

“we.”

Using ‘You’ Can Backfre While “I” is clearly better than “we” when referring to

who is providing service, what about using the word

“you”? Our studies suggest that service managers and

employees believe “you” conveys a customer orientation.

We also found that agents use it more frequently than

natural language would warrant. 10

However, peppering conversations with “you” offers little

beneft, because customers are already the implied focus

of these interactions. In fact, adding or removing

references to “you” (the customer) tended to have no

positive effect in our studies. We replicated these results

across a total of nine experiments (more than 1,200

participants total, about 55% female, 45% male) using a

variety of language stimuli covering a range of typical

customer service interactions. In our studies, the use of

“you” to refer to the customer as the recipient of the

agent’s actions — such as “I can look that up for you” — did nothing to improve satisfaction, purchase intentions,

or customer feelings that the agent was acting with either

empathy or agency.

Say ‘I’ for Service Success Customer service agents tend to use the “we” pronoun,

but using the “I” pronoun leads to greater customer

satisfaction and an increase in purchases.

Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. All rights reserved. Reprint #60209 https://mitsmr.com/2D7hXIO

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

DIGITAL

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

Sometimes, using the word “you” can actually have a

negative effect on company and customer outcomes. For

example, we found that saying to a customer, “Sorry your product was defective,” rather than “Sorry the product was defective,” resulted in decreased satisfaction and

purchase intentions. This result was driven in part by

perceptions that the employee wasn’t being accountable

DIGITAL

(that is, lacked agency), potentially shifting the

responsibility or blame toward the customer.

In short, the usual prescriptions and practices of referring

to the company as “we” and emphasizing “you,” the

customer, fail to reap the benefts that managers expect.

It’s more effective when agents speak from a personal,

singular perspective — treating customer interactions as

one-to-one, rather than many-to-one, dialogues. So front-

line service employees should be coached to do that.

There are simple language changes that any company can

implement. (See “Say ‘I’ for Service Success.”) By making

these changes to customer service language, organizations

can create more meaningful interactions with their

customers — and improve the bottom line.

Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. All rights reserved. Reprint #60209 https://mitsmr.com/2D7hXIO

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

DIGITAL

7.

8.

9.

10.

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

About the Authors

Brent McFerran is the W.J. VanDusen Associate Professor of Marketing at Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Sarah G. Moore is an associate professor of marketing at the University of Alberta’s Alberta School of Business in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Grant Packard (@grantpackard) is an associate professor of marketing at Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

References

1. S. Moore, “Gartner Says 25% of Customer Service Operations Will Use Virtual Customer Assistants by 2020,” Gartner press release, Feb. 19, 2018.

2. Microsoft, “2017 State of Global Customer Service Report,” accessed August 2018.

3. S. Biddle, “How to Be a Genius: This Is Apple’s Secret Employee Training Manual,” Gizmodo.com, Aug. 28, 2012.

4. C. Borowski, “What Customers Think About Call Center Scripts, 2014 Versus 2018,” Software Advice, accessed August 2018.

5. G. Packard, S.G. Moore, and B. McFerran, “(I’m) Happy to Help (You): The Impact of Personal Pronoun Use in Customer-Firm Interactions,” Journal of Marketing Research 55, no. 4 (August 2018): 541-555.

6. J. Pennebaker, “The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us” (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013).

DIGITAL

7. W. Ickes, S. Reidhead, and M. Patterson, “Machiavellianism and Self-Monitoring: As Different as ‘Me’ and ‘You,’” Social Cognition 4, no. 1 (March 1986): 58-74.

8. J. Fahnestock, “Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion,” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

9. J. Singh and D. Sirdeshmukh, “Agency and Trust Mechanisms in Consumer Satisfaction and Loyalty Judgments,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 28, no. 1 (2000): 150-167; A. Smith, R. Bolton, and J. Wagner, “A Model of Customer Satisfaction With Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery,” Journal of Marketing Research 36, no. 3 (1999): 356-372; and A. Parasuraman, “Understanding Customer Expectations of Service,” MIT Sloan Management Review 32, no. 3 (1991): 12-40.

10. Packard, Moore, and McFerran, Journal of Marketing Research, p. 543.

Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. All rights reserved. Reprint #60209 https://mitsmr.com/2D7hXIO

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

DIGITAL

MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW

DIGITAL

PDFs Reprints Permission to Copy Back Issues

Articles published in MIT Sloan Management Review are copyrighted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unless otherwise specifed at the end of an article.

MIT Sloan Management Review articles, permissions, and back issues can be purchased on our website: sloanreview.mit.edu or you may order through our Business Service Center (9 a.m.-5 p.m. ET) at the phone numbers listed below. Paper reprints are available in quantities of 250 or more.

Reproducing or transmitting one or more MIT Sloan Management Review articles by electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying or archiving in any information storage or retrieval system) requires written permission.

To request permission, use our website: sloanreview.mit.edu or Email: [email protected] Call (US and International):617-253-7170 Fax: 617-258-9739

Posting of full-text SMR articles on publicly accessible Internet sites is prohibited. To obtain permission to post articles on secure and/or password- protected intranet sites, email your request to [email protected].

Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018. All rights reserved. Reprint #60209 https://mitsmr.com/2D7hXIO

For the exclusive use of R. Ramos, 2021.

This document is authorized for use only by Rosendo Ramos in EMGT 6010 UPDATE-1-1-1-1 taught by STEPHEN FLAHERTY, Ohio University from Mar 2021 to Sep 2021.