Make Sure Your Employees Don't Talk Like a Pirate to Your Customers

I didn’t have much time for lunch today, so I zipped over to the local Jimmy John's sandwich shop to pick up a sub. Free plug: they make a darn fine sandwich. The bread is good, which I think is the secret to a tasty sub. It’s lightly sweet and has just the right chewiness.

Anyway, I ordered my usual, the "J.J. Gargantuan," which basically means they take every single ingredient they can find in the shop and stuff it into a bun. I paid for the sandwich and walked down to the pick-up window.

After a few minutes, the woman there looked at me and said, "Aarh?"

It was a noisy shop and I assumed I had missed something. I replied, "What?"

She repeated, "Aarh?"

Now I was really stumped. I felt kind of stupid, because she clearly felt that she was asking me a perfectly reasonable question, but I had no idea what she meant. The thought crossed my mind: "Is it Talk Like a Pirate Day? I thought it was next week. And if it is today, what does ‘Aarh?’ mean in Pirate talk?"

What I said out loud was, "I’m sorry, what?"

She leaned toward me and, making an effort to speak a little more loudly and clearly, said, "Gar?"

Now the light dawned: she was referring to my "Gargantuan" as a "Gar" and was inquiring whether I was the fool who’d ordered the monster sandwich. So I said, "Yes," hefted my sub off the counter, and headed back to work.

This is a minor example of a major problem: employees using internal jargon when communicating with customers. They make sandwiches fast at Jimmy John’s, everybody’s hustling, so it’s perfectly reasonable that they’ve developed short nicknames for their sandwiches. If I had to say "Gargantuan" twenty times a day I’d get tired of it too. But insider lingo is no good when you’re talking to an outsider. Even if the sandwich-making person next her said, "here’s the Gar" when she handed the sandwich to her, she should have been trained to turn to me and say, "Did you order the J.J. Gargantuan?" She could, in her own mind, add "you unspeakable glutton" if she wished. The key thing is, I would have understood what she was saying.

Just last week I experienced this same problem in my own organization. I’m creating a new program to do spot checks on telephone skills, which are very important in my business. We taped a few samples of employees talking to customers to get a sense of what the issues might be, how to set up the evaluation process, the best way to turn the tapes into positive learning opportunities for the employees, and so forth. Mostly what I heard was smart, friendly, talented employees communicating very effectively with customers. What I also heard was smart, friendly, talented employees using too much insider jargon. Like, "The PTP put your PD at 32 but the QME came back at 18 so we’re offering 25."

I don’t really blame them. It’s demanding, fast-paced work and all day long they’re talking to each other, their supervisors, and lots of other industry folks using terminology that’s familiar to all of us in the business. So it’s not surprising that when they’re on the phone with industry outsiders sometimes they’re going to use those same terms and forget to explain what they mean. They stop hearing the jargon as jargon, so when it comes out of their mouths it doesn’t occur to them that they’re not actually communicating.

So I’m going to create some refresher training that will sensitize them to the problem and provide them with some techniques for remembering to speak in plain language when they’re on the phone. If you have any employees who speak to industry outsiders, you might want to do the same.

The only other thing I have to say is, "Aarh, matey, that was a sandwich fit for a pirate king!"

Comments

[Tom A]

I agree with everything you have stated in your essay. I am a high school science teacher and the presence of insider jargon is just as much of a problem in education as it is in the business world. It is easy for parents and others to be "turned off" when talking to teachers who use sentences like "I emphasize performance based assessment in my metrics unit" rather than just saying "I will grade Suzie on her ability to actually measure objects with a meter stick". Thanks for your reminder.
Tom A.

[Reagan]

Your value-added input is appreciated, Tom. :) I have a theory, which I'll explore further in a future post, that one reason people use insider jargon is to establish status and group membership. They're attempting to appear professional and impressive. Therefore, by using the lingo you cite, the teacher is conveying the message, "I am an education professional and you are not, therefore you must respect my opinion and status." Of course, this is a self-defeating strategy, because the most successful professionals are the ones who are confident enough to speak clearly, using plain language, while those who habitually employ jargon often appear insecure or narrow.

[John P]

Regarding "Talking like a pirate", as an IT professional, acronym usage can be a fine line. I and my coworkers at times use techno babble to impress and make the sale but at other times can really backfire when client won’t ask for a clarification but just tune out. And these types are such masters at non-verbal communication, you will never catch on that they have already made up their minds to NOT hire you. I have a few candidates that I need to safely relay "those who habitually employ jargon often appear insecure or narrow". Thanks for communicating with direct but still eloquent language.

[Reagan]

That's a good point, John. Sometimes if a lawyer is trying to impress me, I'll throw in a little legal jargon to make them realize I'm a lawyer too, which levels the playing field. It can be a good idea to establish your "credentials" as an expert by judiciously using some industry lingo. The key thing, as you say, is to be aware you're doing it and to do so strategically rather than allowing it to become habitual and hinder communication.