5 Ways to Determine the Right Customer Service Tone and Voice

According to the 7-38-55 rule by Albert Mehrabian, only 7% of communication is conveyed through words. The remaining 38% relies on the tone of voice and 55% on body language. 

With most service interactions today taking place via phone or digital channels, body language is hard to communicate, and without that, words alone can also fall short . So, you need to develop the right customer service tone to communicate your message as intended. 

The way you communicate impacts how customers perceive your brand. The right tone and voice not only linger in customers’ minds but also foster loyalty and trust in your brand. 

It’s not what you say, but how you say it… 

Suppose you order a product online, and it gets delayed due to some reason. You reach out to a customer service representative only to get the following response. 

“Well, I hear what you are saying, but delays happen sometimes. Please wait a bit longer. Your order will arrive soon.” 

This is a transactional tone of voice at best – not very reassuring, right?

Now, let’s try adjusting the tone without altering the underlying message: 

"I'm so sorry to hear that your order was delayed. I understand how frustrating this must be for you. Let me check the status and do everything I can to expedite the delivery for you." 

While the latter may not guarantee faster redressal, it clearly shows that the agent does care about their customers – customer empathy is what matters the most in customer service. 

You get the idea and are probably intrigued by where this conversation is going.

By the end of this article, you'll be equipped with tips on how to master your customer service tone, and examples you can apply right away to make marginal yet definite improvements across your most important customer-facing function. 

Differences between tone and voice

Customer service tone and voice are often uttered in the same breath or used interchangeably, but they differ from each other.

What is a brand voice?

Your brand voice showcases the personality of your brand, which remains consistent across all communications. It’s how your brand speaks and can be described as friendly, professional, or quirky.

For instance, Coca-Cola’s messaging often focuses on happiness and joy. Phrases like "Open Happiness" and "Taste the Feeling" slather the audience with a sense of positivity and upliftment. 

On the other hand, there is Apple’s innovative and aspirational messaging, which manifests itself through phrases like “Think Different” and “The Power to Be Your Best.” This sleek, minimalistic brand voice reverberates with customers of all ages.

What is a brand tone? 

While your voice is constant, your tone can change depending on the situation and platform. The tone is the emotional inflection applied to your voice and can be empathetic, encouraging, formal, casual, etc. 

For instance, imagine a customer contacts a brand's customer service to inquire about a refund for a defective product they received.

Here’s what different tone variations would sound like: 

• Empathetic tone 

"I'm truly sorry to hear that the product you received was defective. I understand how frustrating that must be. Let's get this sorted out for you right away." 

• Formal tone 

"We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the defective product. Please provide your order number, and we will process the refund according to our company policy." 

• Casual tone 

"Oh no, that’s not good! Sorry about that. Just give me your order number, and I’ll make sure we get this fixed for you ASAP." 

You get the difference?

Another point to note is that your customer service tone can vary widely between platforms. It focuses on individual interactions while adhering to the overarching brand voice. For example, your customer service tone in a call center can differ from your social media tone. Call center agents practice proactive listening whereas on social media, they can be more candid and reactive since that’s the prevalent vibe.

When combined, tone and voice shape how your messages are received and interpreted by customers. Let’s now understand why tone of voice is important in customer service.

Importance of a well-defined customer service tone

At some level, businesses require systematic processes in place to scale their operations, and the customer service department is no exception. Having a well-defined customer service tone is integral to your customer service operations since it helps achieve several branding milestones, such as:

• Maintaining Consistency

A consistent, brand-specific tone of voice ensures that all customer interactions reflect your brand’s personality and deliver a uniform experience. Just as customers expect their favorite dish to taste the same each time they visit a restaurant, they also expect a cohesive experience when interacting with your customer service team. 

According to Marq’s brand consistency report, companies with cohesive branding often see up to 20% more overall growth and 33% higher revenue compared to those with inconsistent brand messaging.

A consistent service tone not only meets but also reinforces customers’ expectations while preserving the unique identity and recall value of your brand. When all teams — whether local, partners, or agencies — communicate in a consistent, prescribed tone, it leads to a unified and cohesive experience across all interactions.

• Building Trust 

Trust is cultivated when your brand meets your customers' aspirations and addresses their concerns in a reassuring tone. A positive, knowledgeable tone of voice instills confidence in your customers that they are in able hands. 

By aligning your communication style with your customers' preferences, you demonstrate a high level of customer-centricity, further strengthening their confidence in your brand.

• Improving customer satisfaction 

According to Harvard Business Review, 80% of companies use customer satisfaction scores to gauge and improve customer experiences. An appropriately chosen tone can soothe upset customers, clarify misunderstandings and prevent negative customer sentiment, thereby boosting customer satisfaction for your brand.

• Aligning with brand identity 

Brand identity is reinforced through a consistent tone and voice that echo your brand’s core values across all communications. Iconic brands like Nike and Tesla remain relevant because they have adhered to their unique tone and voice over the years. Nike's tone of empowerment and motivation and Tesla's advocacy for sustainability and innovation are prime examples of how a well-defined voice establishes an unshakeable brand identity. 

• Ensuring compliance & dispute resolution

A professional tone helps in clearly communicating policies, protocols and procedures to minimize misunderstanding. Having this clarity can prevent disputes from arising in the first place and, even if they do, a favorable resolution can be reached before the aggrieved customer runs out of patience. 

Now that you understand the ‘why’ of customer service tone, let’s navigate the ‘how’ part. 

How to determine the right customer service tone for your business

We know you are too busy to do experiments, fail and start over. So, we put together this brief guide to help you determine the right customer service tone for your brand in one go. 

1. Define your brand personality

Your brand personality is the foundation of your customer service tone and voice. To identify and establish your brand personality, start by asking yourself the following questions: 

● What are the core values of your brand? 

● How do you want your customers to perceive your brand? 

● What emotions do you want to evoke in your customers?  If you’re struggling to identify your brand personality, start with these four prevalent brand personality templates to define your brand and its perceived public image:

💬The Informer

• Provides valuable information to the audience.
• Serves as a go-to source for industry news, updates and educational content.

Example: The New York Times is a source of informative and educational content the world over. In all its communication, The NYT strives for an educational tone. 

💃The Entertainer

• Uses wit, clever wordplay, memes, and trending humor.
• Ideal for brands looking to connect on a more lighthearted level.

Example: Brands like Duolingo and Zappos create humorous and entertaining content even on serious platforms like X (formerly Twitter). They strive toward a lightweight, casual tone of voice.

🔗The Connector

• Acts as a social butterfly of the digital world.
• Actively responds to comments and engages in meaningful conversations.

Example: Airbnb and Harley-Davidson promote shared experiences among customers, hosts and guests. These A-listers encourage community building and engagement in their conversations.

🎓The Thought Leader

• Positions itself as an expert in its niche.
• Publishes in-depth articles, whitepapers, case studies and thought-provoking content.

Example: Harvard Business Review and IBM, known for their authority in business management and technology, respectively will speak from a position of authority.

2. Know your audience

Understanding your target audience is key to determining and improving your tone of voice. Consider the following attributes to build a detailed audience profile: 

● Demographics: Age, gender, location and cultural background can influence communication preferences.

● Psychographics: Interests, values and lifestyle can also shape how your audience prefers to be addressed. 

● Customer Expectations: What do your customers expect from your brand in terms of communication? Formality, casualness, humor? Seniors often demand respect and professionalism, while younger demographics appreciate humor and satire.

Compile all these audience insights into a customer profile document, giving each profile a fictitious name, as shown below:

Instead of assuming your customers’ likes and dislikes, gain insights into your audience’s preferences by conducting surveys, analyzing feedback and using behavioral data analytics.

3. Watch your competitors

If your competitors are succeeding in customer service, they must be doing something worth looking into. While you shouldn’t copy their strategies to the letter, analyzing competitors can provide valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t.  Competitive insights can reveal how they communicate with their customers, specifically:

• What tone and voice do they use? 
• How do their customers respond? 
• What tones strike a chord with their customers?

Fortunately, there are competitor analysis tools that can generate actionable insights and recommendations you can apply in your customer service operations. Alongside, you could keep an eye on your peers’ Google Reviews Page, social media accounts and random brand mentions across the Internet to understand how they respond to positive reviews as well as escalations. 

If 24-hour vigilance seems like a task, use social media listening that captures relevant brand mentions by tracking your given keywords. This way, you are always on top of conversations around your competitors. 

4. Create tone and voice guidelines

Once you have a clear understanding of your brand personality and audience preferences, it’s time to document your tone and voice guidelines. Your brand voice document should cover the following: 

● Brand voice description: A few pointers that capture the essence of your brand’s voice. Keep it concise and easy to understand for your customer service teams. 

● Tone variations: Prescribe different tones to be used in various customer service scenarios (e.g., cheerful when welcoming new customers, empathetic when handling complaints and professional when guiding through product demos).

● Cite examples: Provide customer service tone of voice examples of do’s and don’ts to illustrate the correct application. For greater clarity, include useful customer service phrases to guide newbie agents in typical scenarios.

5. Train your team

Ensure that everyone in your customer service team understands and can effectively implement your tone and voice guidelines. “Show don’t tell” is a handy training approach that is particularly helpful in voice training customer service agents. Use role-playing exercises to show the practical application of guidelines in atypical scenarios. Call center scripts are also a valuable training resource to utilize at this point.

Furthermore, you may encourage managers to assess team performance rigorously, offering constructive feedback and tailored learning paths to bring the team up to speed. Manual call quality assurance for this purpose is too tedious and error-prone which necessitates tool-led quality assurance.

Sprinklr’s AI-powered quality management helps reduce 90% of your call monitoring time and identifies skill gaps with precision. As a result, your managers can focus on larger business goals while Sprinklr goes about auditing 100% of your calls in the background.

Customer service tone tips you must know

Now that you are familiar with different types of customer service tone, it’s time to put your knowledge to action with these customer service tone tips:

1. Match the tone to the situation 

Trying to assuage a frustrated customer via humor might not be the best idea. Likewise, a user seeking help with software installation might not appreciate jargon or corporate speak. So, it’s essential to adjust your tone according to the context of the interaction:

• Positive interactions: Use a cheerful and enthusiastic tone to express gratitude in response to positive feedback. 
• Neutral interactions: Maintain a helpful tone for routine queries or information requests.
• Negative interactions: Adopt an empathetic and calming tone to address customer complaints or issues.

The key is to develop emotional intelligence in your customer-handling team, so they are equipped to judge customer sentiment accurately and adapt their customer service tone accordingly.

Here’s what CX guru, Marija Skobe-Pilley says about the role of emotional intelligence in customer experience: “While advanced technologies or AI-powered processes are essential, the human element plays a critical role in building satisfaction and loyalty."

2. Be authentic 

Ensure your tone and voice reflect your brand’s genuine personality. Customers can easily detect insincerity, which can damage your reputation. 

Word of caution: Don’t try too hard to appear authentic, as this might be perceived as too good to be true. So, here’s what you can do instead:

• Help first, business later: Approach every interaction with an intent to help the customer. Customers often remember brands that extend a kind gesture without expecting a sale in return.
• Own your mistakes: No business is perfect. Mistakes happen, but it takes real courage to own up to one’s mistake. When you refuse to admit a mistake or a fault in your products/services, customers find it rude and see to it that you never get their business again.
• Be upfront about your limitations: Because, sooner or later, your customers will find out. 

👉 Read more: 13 Examples of Good Customer Service for Your Business

3. Use positive language 

Positive language helps create a more favorable interaction and reassures your customer that the solution to their problem is only minutes away. Here are a few examples demonstrating the difference between positive and negative tone of voice in customer service.

4. Show empathy 

Empathy is vital, especially when dealing with complaints or issues. Acknowledge the customer’s feelings and display empathy by saying: 

● “I understand how frustrating this must be for you.” 

● “I’m sorry you’ve had this experience.” 

Empathy can help de-escalate tense situations and build rapport. 

5. Keep it simple 

Clear and concise communication is a recipe for customer service success. Avoid jargon and complex language that might confuse customers. Simple language helps ensure your message is understood and reduces the potential for misunderstandings. 

6. Personalize interactions 

Hearing your name in a conversation lights up certain areas of your brain – in a good way. By addressing customers by their first names, you grab their attention which sets the tone for a meaningful conversation almost instantly. 

Personalization makes customers feel special and appreciated. In addition to using their name, reference past interactions to show that you remember them and value their business. But digging through scattered customer records can be a pain, especially in time-bound call centers.

This is exactly where a Unified Agent Desktop comes into play, bringing all relevant information and insights on a single tab. It offers a single-screen view of all customer interactions, reducing agent workload by over 50% and allowing agents to handle multiple concurrent interactions with quick access to conversation history and customer details.

7. Use humor wisely 

While we all appreciate a dash of good ol’ humor from brands, it should be used wisely. Make sure it’s appropriate for the situation and audience, and you are not pressing a sore nerve. Avoid humor in serious or sensitive situations, as that might be perceived as dismissive or unprofessional. Consider cultural differences as what’s funny in one culture might not be so in another.

8. Seek feedback 

Encourage your customers to provide feedback on their experience. Use customer surveys, follow-up emails or review platforms to gather insights into how they perceive your communication. Feedback helps identify areas for improvement and implementation ensures your tone aligns with customer expectations. 

Concluding thoughts

Determining the right customer service tone is essential for creating positive customer experiences and building a strong brand identity. Equipping your customer-facing teams with a platform like Sprinklr Service can significantly enhance their ability to achieve higher productivity and deliver seamless customer experiences. 

Sprinklr offers a unified AI platform that integrates various functions such as service, social, marketing and insights. This integration allows brands to reach, engage and listen to customers across more than 30 digital channels. 

By presenting all the insights through a centralized dashboard, Sprinklr can help ensure consistency and coherence in customer communication.

Want to experience the Sprinklr difference first-hand? Sign up for a free trial today!