What was the problem?

The client company enjoyed a reputation for speaking the customer’s language, in a sector where many brands don’t. But they felt they could do even better.

We were commissioned to look at the way the company was talking internally about a key issue, using the output from consumer research projects to put this in context.

What did we do?

We looked inside and found reassuring evidence of the consumer voice inside the organisation. Customer language and thinking were indeed integrated into the company’s own expert discourses.

But there was a glaring exception - a persistent linguistic habit that, it seemed to us, was functioning as an organisational euphemism.

There was one issue that was very real to customers, with which the company was just not comfortable. It was something they had difficulty talking about, so (unusually) they tended to skirt around it.

What did they get out of it?

As part of a far wider programme of research, this was a bit of consciousness-raising. Especially, we helped raise the visibility of a crucial customer issue to a senior team.