How do you talk to your customers?

Companies work a lot on recreating and refreshing their 'tone of voice' for customers?

What do customers prefer? Do they prefer different tone when looking for different services – a formal tone on a banking website and an informal one on a shopping website? Is there a pattern we can crack? How can you test your 'tone of voice' with customers?

These are just some questions we brainstorm at work many a time.

Some recent usability tests and interviews that I was a part of revealed the following.

Customers said that although they find websites using informal tone friendlier, they stick with ones with formal tone for trustworthiness and reliability. 'If a website sounds way too friendly or humorous, I'll be judging its credibility', some said. However, they also complained that no product/service is so hard that it cannot be explained in a user-centric tone.

So how to ensure you have a user-centric tone of voice without losing the credibility of your product/service?

The convention still holds true – communicate to your customers in the simplest language and to the point.  

Nielson Norman Group has done some work on this topic. You can read The Impact of Tone of Voice on Users' Brand Perception.