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Hone your tone of voice: A linguistic perspective on how to talk to customers

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Re: Hone your tone of voice: A linguistic perspective on how to talk to customers

#51

Post by colechristensen » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 6:44 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #16

The number of times I've been faced with condescending comments from developers of mobile and web apps here and on reddit is pretty amazing to me. The presumption of cluelessness on the part of most developers faced with any kind of non-praise feedback is stark and amazing. I can understand why it exists -- since the degree of cluelessness out there is quite amazing -- but it's pretty much anathema to anything in goo…

'just' is a pejorative. It is explicitly expressing contempt for anything but the suggested directions.

"Could you just" is easily translated as "You're an idiot if you don't"

Re: Hone your tone of voice: A linguistic perspective on how to talk to customers

#52

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 12:47 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #25

alleyshack wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely hate people using my name in conversation. As you say, it feels patronizing, and to me it also feels fake and manipulative, especially in the context of customer support. It's interesting to me how much advice about communication involves using a person's name. Do most people like hearing their name dropped frequently in conversations with strangers or near-strangers? Or is this one of those weird unprov…

Using a name feels even more unnatural when done incorrectly. For example, I get this all the time: I would be happy to help you with this Mr. Nick I have no idea why this happens — are there countries in which people call each other "Mr. [first name]"?

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