Until now I have focused primarily on the ordinary business associations. In this blog I want to look at a special breed of consumer: the tourist/hotel guest. I am regularly surprised by the haphazard nature of international city marketing here in the Netherlands. Quality English language texts are standard in Belgium, for instance, even outside of major cities.  Aside from Amsterdam, many cities with significant tourist potential in the Netherlands do little to attract guests from abroad, despite desperately needing the revenue that they would bring. Even more surprisingly, some hotels chains do not optimize their marketing; many websites even have English texts that contain elementary spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Hotel guest priority list:

Hotels typically have two main types of guests, business and pleasure. There are common detonators, with some exceptions—groups of teenagers want to party rather than to sleep; the elderly are less likely to be wifi-obsessed—most guests are looking for:

·         A comfortable, clean, quiet place to sleep

·         A place to relax and plug into (or out of) the world

·         A place to forget worries, let someone else clean, and otherwise take care of things…

In a descriptive text, therefore, these items should naturally be emphasized. Perhaps more important, however, is providing information and links in your website to indicate local highlights and events. These encourage guests to stay longer. They might even decide to tack a vacation onto their business trip, bringing those lucrative tourist dollars/pounds/yen/euros to your establishment and local area.

Don’t underestimate the breadth of the foreign visitor’s interest. For instance, many visitors are fascinated with the two World Wars and would enjoy a short description of the local history of the era around the hotel, and the existing memorials. Others want information about museums, temporary exhibitions but also a general text about the permanent collections. Other people are particularly interested in architecture and would be interested in a list of monuments. These are often already available here in the Netherlands, but generally not in English.  If a city has parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, areas of natural beauty, then a general text about them is also worth placing. Musical events and festivals are also ideal content to provide in a website, or at least a link to the appropriate site. 

This kind of free information is generally greatly appreciated by clients because you are providing the basic information, which saves them time.  Further it entices people to plan for more time in the area and in the hotel!  In addition, if being better prepared means that they enjoy their stay more, you increase the chance that they provide positive feedback. Which is, after all, free advertising and is particularly convincing for potential guests.   

Customer relations are a crucial element of any business, the POMPI: point of most potential irritation. Skillful dealing with customers--retail or B2B--requires a significant amount of patience, knowledge of psychology and a healthy dose of common sense. The “customer is king” is hardly a new concept but in the modern world the stakes are significantly higher. Nevertheless, many companies seem to have practices that are stuck in the 1980s and have cut back on critical staff training despite a workforce that lacks manners:  the casual approaches in both schools and families have resulted in a lack of etiquette and customer respect. This can form a real danger for the public image of your business.

The pissed-off-customer tsunami: the grudge factor

Anyone dealing with customers in a POMPI position should, first and foremost, be drilled to focus on the long-term relationship instead of the few euros, pounds or dollars the company may lose in a single transaction. A simple example from my own experience:   a prominent department store refused to make a duplicate of a photograph that I wanted to use as a gift, despite my having proof that their processing had ruined the original negative. Result: for the price of one replacement photograph the store lost my total business for more than a year and I never placed photo orders there again (think: annual vacations, second child, several new pets, etc.). You do the math. I HAD been a loyal customer before that.

In my example, the attitude of the person handling my complaint exacerbated the situation. Blind to the big picture, she was clearly an inappropriate choice for a public-service position. Most people can surely think of at least one example of a company that they abandoned or at least treated more negatively after they felt cheated, handled with suspicion, or were just not heard. If you were a loyal customer, the potential losses are huge.

Like it or not, your company needs to focus on keeping the customer happy and loyal. An angry customer WILL hold a grudge. My example, from many years ago, was relatively simple and included the two traditional negative responses:

o   losing the customer’s business
o   bad publicity when the customer reports the incident to friends and family

With the internet, it comes as no surprise, your risks spread out like the flood waters of eastern Japan. Now that smart phones/tablets/laptops are added to the customer’s arsenal there is as significant risk of widespread negative feedback when they tell the whole world about how rudely they felt that they were treated without even having a cooling off period after the event!

Never before have the dangers been so great and they are likely to intensify as more and more consumers are taking matters into their own hands and rating establishments. So choose your personnel carefully and train them well to give the customer the benefit of the doubt and to never, ever, EVER underestimate them.

And a final tip: do not ignore the “point of most potential irritation” support staff!

Being the buffer between your company and increasingly demanding customers is a high-pressure job. Employers need to appreciate, encourage and invest in their POMPI staff.  Signs of frustration will reflect badly on the company. Address this issue directly and with sensitivity by, for instance, listening carefully to your employees and, when necessary, investing in:

·        extra staff support
·        ways to help them let off steam
·        methods to improve their emotional and physical health

These are small investments if one considers the big picture: you are supporting the staff that holds the key to the return a critically endangered species: the loyal customer.

Last time I discussed how to make phone and email portals to businesses more customer-friendly. Today we will look further into communications with the low-tech population and ways to welcome guests for personal visits to your business. 

Snail Mail
It is hard to fathom, but not all customers use computers. Response staff should resist the urge to send computer references for further information to the low-tech crowd: these will likely annoy rather than enlighten. Pamphlets, printouts from the internet site and other printed materials are preferable. A telephone call can help appease the frustrated customer, who already feels (and is) left behind by technology. Never forget that behind every customer is a network: family, friends, neighbors and other connections that will appreciate a company that addresses the concerns in a sympathetic manner. In this way, even the “disconnected” customer can provide more positive feedback for your company.

Personal visits
Many websites lack 21st-century instructions on how to reach companies.
Verify that your internet site includes:

• coordinates and other GPS-friendly details. If necessary, give an alternate street address that a GPS is more likely to recognize.
  
• a clear note of significant road-work--inevitable in metropolitan areas--preferably with a link to a site that gives up-to-date information on road closings. 
  
• detailed information on parking, including free options for the thrifty customer.
  
• updated public transportation information, if applicable. 
  
• unless it is obvious, instructions on how to get from the parking lot/bus stop/train station to your establishment. 
  
• time indications: if visitors need to allow for extra time for parking or walking, it should be noted. 
  
• Any further details for those with mobility issues. 
  

In addition, if you have invested in signage in the vicinity, make sure it is complete. It is frustrating to be led partially to a destination only to come to a cross point and have no indication of which way to go.  

Further: once customers arrive, are the entrance and reception areas clearly indicated, attractive, inviting and wheelchair accessible? Are visitors warmly received? Is there a comfortable waiting area, preferably with internet potential?

In short, an accessible company is customer-friendly. Take steps to optimize accessibility by empathizing with your customer’s needs. The most important way to do this is to provide clear indication that your company values their time. That powerful message should keep them coming back for more! 

It is critical to regularly step back and analyze your business from the perspective of the customer, who is increasing impatient, judgmental and acutely aware of their options. Think: how can we improve things for this instant-gratification generation? If necessary, hire someone from the outside to look over customer reception in each of the standard channels (more to come in a future blog!):



Telephone
The definition of consumer hell is an endless maze of push-button choices or waiting for an eternity while listening to mind-numbing music that is interrupted by insipid messages like “for further information, check our website.” Telephone choice menus and waiting lines are so 1980s and should be eliminated or cut down to a bare minimum. Yes, you want to take care of as many problems as possible without involving human labor, but it is safe to assume that your customer HAS already inspected the website or simply does not have access to it.

One possible, more customer-friendly, system falls back on the ages-old system of having a general receptionist answer and take a message. These are immediately sent to the appropriate authority, who answers by phone or email. Or, if the customer insists, they will be transferred to the specialist but then the choice to wait is their own. This is, of course, not the only method. Whatever one chooses, it should take into account the impatience and easily irritated nature of the modern consumer: by streamlining the process and shortening the average waiting time, you will do wonders for your customer image.

Email
Initial automatic-reply emails reassure the customer that their request has been received by your company.  Customers expect their queries to be answered promptly (preferably immediately!), so assure that the email turnaround time is short. 

However, quick replies ≠ thoughtless ones. After one computer-generated response, one should be able to expect a personal reply. With rare exceptions, your customers will not to write to your company unnecessarily and they will have perused the website before trying to make contact. A “stock” email crafted with several links for further information that do NOT ADDRESS the actual QUESTION gives a sloppy and uncaring impression. The underlying assumption is that the customer didn't look hard enough for the answer. Although that may be the case, it could also be that the solution is not there or is buried in an illogical place. Links are just irritating if the material requested is unavailable.

Response staff should therefore first 1) read the question carefully and 2) examine whether the answer really is available on the website. If necessary, the response-team member can send a general, but whenever possible, personalized message that they are looking into the matter to buy time with their impatient twenty-teens customer. A telephone call to them can also do wonders, sometimes looking at the website together can help to better identify the problems and save valuable staff time. Most customers will appreciate the personal service. (Staff should, however, also be trained in the fine art of politely extricating themselves from the occasional “sticky” customer who is starved for contact!)

Having waited an eternity yesterday to speak to someone at the Belastingdienst (the Dutch equivalent of the IRS), I was reminded of their motto "we can't make [doing taxes] more fun, we can make it easier!" They should start by making a major overhaul of their telephone system! 

 

Not all sites need a total English-language rewrite.  Many will only need a light weeding to polish their texts, often a matter of a few hours’ work.  It is not very sexy work and it perhaps makes for a rather boring blog (!) but here are a few do-it-yourself tips that can make a major difference.

Less is more:

• Break long sentences into shorter ones. 
  

• Eliminate unnecessary details, words. Be brutal.

Avoid basic errors:

• Transfer the text into a word document (or other program with English spell- and grammar-checks). Correct accordingly. 
  

• Be alert for homonyms, which spell-check will accept but wrong is still wrong: “to, too, two;” “their, there, they’re;” but also “choose, chose;” “advice, advise” and “accept, except.” These are the key ones; lists of others can easily be found on the internet. 
  

• Be particularly careful with technical terminology:  when you use specialized jargon, explain it. Do not assume your audience will be experts. 

• Provide a short identification of lesser-known place names, and other proper nouns.

Two final grammatical tips:

• Use active tense rather than passive tense. For instance, "I love puppies" reads better than "Puppies are loved by me." 
• Search the word “have.” Many people overuse the continuous tense (“I have worked; I have had the function”). The simple past tense is stronger: I worked; I had the function/I was. 
  

For non-native writers, I always recommend asking a native speaker to do a final check, preferably one who works with language and who will take the time to read the text in a concentrated way.

Let me know if this helps!
Lee

“Gebakken lucht” translates to “deep-fried/baked air.” It is a marvelous Dutch term for something without substance. In the context of spoken language you can translate it to the closely related “hot air.” When describing written texts, a more accurate translation is perhaps “nonsense,” or one of the three “gs”: “garbage,” “gibberish,” or the inelegant, but rather funny, “gobbledygook.” 

Historically “fried air” was acceptable, even encouraged, in written texts. This was particularly true in academia, the business world, or any technical field. The more obscure the gobbledygook, the better. It made one look erudite, intellectual. The world has changed: people want to be able to enjoy reading texts and to understand them. As well they should. 

Deflating the fried air balloon.

Modern consumers don’t have time for unnecessary detail. Companies with the highest ratio of information to time will win.  Millennials—the 18-35 year olds, whose umbilical cords came with a chip—also want to be entertained in the process, and be able to share something amusing with their extended network. And all of this should be accessible on a screen that is smaller than the average wallet. Many websites that were built more than three years ago should wisely be trashed and rebuilt from scratch no matter how large the investment was at the time.  It is sad, but true.

If your company needs to modify its website anyway then please consider (sit down and take a deep breath) having the text first professionally written in the language that has the broadest reach in the business world: English.  

Why English? 

There is nothing superior about English—that it is a primary language is a fluke of British expansionism and history’s cruel joke on the other great colonial powers. Mix in MTV, Disney and Brad Pitt and the staying power seems assured. If yours is one of the many, many companies whose main clients are from non-English speaking countries, then by all means, concentrate your translation eggs into one of their language baskets. However, if you need an English version anyway, consider letting it be primary. Once you have a good, clearly worded English version, you improve your chances of correct translations. You can avoid the “third-generation” translation phenomenon: it is a common practice to have a text translated first into English--subject to inaccuracies and awkward phrasing (see my first blog)--and using that as a basis for other translations. 

If your translated English version is less than stellar, imagine how reliable and elegant the subsequent versions will be: double-baked air will definitely not improve your client base! 

   

Yesterday I went to the Technishow and ESEF industrial fairs in Utrecht.  Considering how professional most companies appeared otherwise, I was surprised by the English texts: few participants have clear messages in their written materials. Instead the texts often consisted of long strings of products alternating with equally lengthy series of intellectual-sounding gobbledy-gook, punctuated by “positive” adjectives. Add a few customer-friendly messages and stir in a dash of modern politically-correct jargon and you have a brochure text. And perhaps that is all one really needs? 

Maybe so, if the expectation is that people to just glance through the brochure and not to really read it. It is considerably more damaging if the same type of writing fills the company’s website, their "calling card." And, after all, all texts reflect a company and should project the same professional image that they have worked so hard to build into beautiful and eye-catching displays, attractive giveaways and polished presentations.

More important still:  if you cannot produce a coherent message in your written materials--
particularly key elements such as your mission statement--what does it say about your brand? 

What is the problem? My theories: a) texts are translated and sometimes too literally. This generally indicates that the original version is also too convoluted, or b) they use technical writers instead of copywriters. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, but the combination is rare.

In the end, “how” does not really matter. If the house is burning around you, do you take the time to argue about who is to blame?  

A few tips for extinguishing the fire yourself:

• Use bulleted lists.
• Less is more: eliminate unnecessary detail. A few adjectives are fine if they liven up the whole but use them wisely.
• Identify and limit your key messages and make them shine. 

Fairs like these are enormous investitures of time and money.  In the coming weeks the companies that participated will hopefully be busy with orders, and catching up with all of the work that has been postponed while preparing. 

So even if it won’t happen today, put a BIG note into your agenda for next month: start a thorough spring cleaning! Objective: to clarify your company’s vision!

Whenever I tell Dutch people that I write marketing texts in English, they inevitably reply “oh, so you translate?” Why does “write” equal “translate?” It is a fascinating phenomenon, and one that says a lot about Dutch culture, with its focus on language, translation, and English. 

Certain texts beg to be translated. If it is clearly written, comes quickly to the point, contains no unnecessary detail and uses attractive language then why would one bother to take the time to rewrite it? Unfortunately, however, such ideal texts are rare. 

Transcreation is an alternative to translation. It is used to create a new text based on something written in another language.  A delightful concept, and it is precisely what I want to do!  If you can write a text in a natural way then you avoid the awkwardness that often accompanies translation. Translation is bound to the original, and the terminology and word order affect how you write. It requires extra vigilance, and usually more time, to make it sound natural while maintaining the original meaning.  With transcreation you are liberated to a great extent, and you can put the emphasis on areas that are key to the new target audience.  Empathizing with the intended readers will also help you to fill in areas that translators often neglect, for instance, providing further definition for the names of people and places that are unfamiliar to foreign audiences. 

Ironically, perhaps, many Dutch people recognize when a text is “krom” (literally “crooked” or “bent” but used in the sense of “lame” or “half-baked”), they notice when it does not read naturally.  Through transcreation many of the common problems are avoided.  And generally writing a free text will take much less time than a translation, and time is, after all, money!  So please, please think about what you really need: a strong text or one that stays perfectly loyal to the original?  Please, please consider thinking outside of the translation "box!"