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Respond concretely
Regardless of what company we work for or role we have within that organization, we all know that we should listen. Bosses should listen, salespeople should listen, even in our personal lives, we should listen. But one question is how we not just listen, but show that we’re listening. Because even if we’ve listened to what someone said, even if we’ve understood what they’ve said, we have to show them that we’ve listened. How do we do that?
A couple years ago we looked into this question in a context that matters a lot, and that is customer service. I had had a flight canceled and had called customer service and had a difficult interaction, as most of us do. But I also feel for that representative. You know, they have to listen to people like me calling and complaining all day. But we wondered, “Well hey, could the language we use in these interactions, could it increase our impact by showing other people that we listened?” And so we worked with a few different companies. We worked with a large online retailer. We worked with an airline. We analyzed thousands of customer service interactions to look at the language that we use in those interactions. And we found something quite interesting. When customer service agents use concrete language, customers were more satisfied and purchased 30% more stuff in the next six months.
And so what is this concrete language and how can we take advantage of its power? And so often, certain words can be described as abstract versus concrete. Concrete things are things like floors and tables and dishwashers and pens. These are all things we can touch, we can feel, we can see. But if I say something like love or strategy or vision, those are examples of more abstract rather than concrete language. All those things that are harder to picture when we close our eyes. And it turns out though, that while some things are abstract and some things are concrete, we can even refer to the same thing using more concrete language.
Imagine I’m a customer service representative and you call up saying, “Hey, I need this T-shirt in a certain size.” I could say something like, “I can help you with that.” Or I can say, “I’m going to go look for that blue T-shirt in a medium.” Both of those indicate some ways that I heard you, that I want to be helpful, but by using concrete language, the particular T-shirt and a particular color and a particular medium, I’m showing you that I not only heard what you said, but that I’m going to act on it. Same thing, I could say something like, “Hey, your refund will be there soon,” or “Your money will be there tomorrow.” “Refund will be there soon” is a bit abstract. I don’t know exactly what you mean by refund. I don’t know when it’s going to get there. But if you say something like, “The money will be there tomorrow.” I have a very good sense of what money is and I have a very good sense of what tomorrow is. And so our research shows that when we use language, like “Our money will be there tomorrow,” it increases customer satisfaction because it’s easy for the listener to know that we heard them.
Pitch abstractly
So concrete language has a variety of benefits. First, it shows people that we’re listening. Second, concrete language is more memorable. It’s easier to understand what someone is saying and remember it when they use concrete language. Because it’s just easier. It’s easier to sift through and it’s easier to remember what someone said. But an important question is whether concrete language is always effective.
And so a few years ago, some researchers looked at this in the context of raising money. They looked at entrepreneurs pitching VCs to raise money, and they looked at the speeches or the written content those entrepreneurs submitted to VCs, and they looked at how much money they raised. In those situations, concrete language didn’t help raise more money. In fact, just the opposite. Abstract language helped raise more money.
Well, if you think about the job of a VC, you’re not just trying to understand how a business works. You’re trying to understand how likely that business is going to be successful in the future. And not just to make $5 or $10, but a billion dollars. You want it to be a big, huge business. Contrast pitching a business using concrete language versus abstract language. Imagine I said, “Hey, there’s a new company called Uber, and what it’s going to do is give you a ride from home to the office.” It doesn’t sound like a particularly big business, but I know exactly what it does. Imagine instead, I pitched Uber as a transportation solution. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to do. A transportation solution is pretty abstract, and it’s a little bit vague. But let me tell you, the market for a transportation solution is much larger than the market for something that’s going to give you a ride from home to the office.
Abstract versus concrete language depends on what we’re trying to achieve. If we want to be memorable, if we want to show listening, if we want to help people understand what we’re talking about, well then using very concrete language is going to be more effective. On the other hand, if we’re trying to pitch a business, we’re trying to make it seem really big or make ourselves seem like a big-picture thinker, then abstract language can be more impactful.