Remove These Words From Your Vocabulary

I’ve got a potty mouth, everyone who has met me knows this. But there is something that can be much more damaging to your relationship with your client than a few swear words here and there. I have removed several words from my own “client relations” vocabulary through the advice of friends, colleagues and books I have read over the past few years. These words tend to put the client on edge, and especially for a new client, can form a barrier across the relationship that you are trying to form with them.

There are many reasons that these words are not appropriate for the business world. This doesn’t mean that I do not use them at home, or with very close clients whom are also friends. My point is that you should be aware that you use them at all and examine what message you are really trying to convey to the client.

just
ie. “I just think this design is what you should do.”
The problem as I’ve seen it with just is that it provides no factual or substantiated weight to your point. Rather, it makes your statement less important, as if there is no certain thought behind your statement at all. Most often we use the word in conjunction with the word think, which can be the most damaging from the client’s point of view.

honest
ie. “I honestly don’t know how that pixel got moved.”
I love the word honest. Honestly I do! In fact, I used to use it all the time, but what I have found is that when most people hear the word honest, they immediately think dishonest or lying. I think many clients also associate the word with sales, and the last thing a client wants to do is buy from a salesman, they want to by from a friend. This word also comes in the synonyms of frankly, truly, and the truth is.

easy
ie. “Its as easy as moving the database from the legacy system to MySQL.”
The great thing about the word easy is that it almost always can predict that the future of your statement will be anything but. To say something is easy, implies that it is too small for the client to worry about, but what really ends up happening is that it is usually this item that the client will fixate on because you have tried to downplay it. This word also comes in the synonyms of "simple", "no problem",and "likity split". Yes, I’ve really heard a colleague say that last synonym before!

actually
ie. “Actually, the real objective is to design a new way for people to use toilet paper”
The word actually is always used to debunk a statement that has been already made. There is no way to use the word that would not force the listener to become on guard. If you use this word with a client then you are putting them down and trying to prove that you are right and they are wrong. Debate is fine and healthy in a client relationship but in this manner, and with this word in particular, you can do more harm than good.

always / never
ie. “He's always late for our meeting.”
Always and never are usually extreme generalizations unless we are talking about mathematics or science. To same a person "always does" something or a certain thing will "never happen" is to automatically catch yourself in a lie. Nothing is constant in life, and people are even more unpredictable. When you generalize, you also are dangling very close to stereotyping, which in itself is very dangerous. Instead of generalizing like this, provide yourself an out. Instead of the example sentence above, try something like, "He must be running behind today, we'll wait a few minutes and give him some time to get here."

bad
ie. “Your current logo is extremely bad.”
Nothing is bad. I repeat, nothing is bad. Everything that is bad could become good with some attention and dedication. Nothing is going to irk a client more than bashing their current identity or project which you are about to redesign. Instead of pointing out the negative aspects with the word bad, do it in ways such as saying, "the arc used on the swoosh provides a false sense of movement to the user, this might not be best way to represent a website based on gardening." Bad also instantly puts the receiver of the criticism on the defensive. Think about the last time someone said your work was bad? How did you feel? The best advice is to be aware when you are about to use it, change your tone and vocabulary, and provide plenty of reasons that the design falls short.

cool
ie. “What do you think of the design? It's cool.”
I am extremely guilty of using the word cool as an adjective, especially when giving creative direction. I regretfully picked up this bad habit from a former boss who used the word as often as he took a breath of air. For this reason, cool tends to not come across as a word that can really provide any sort of guidance to the designer. Instead of using cool, I have found that being specific on why it is cool makes all of the difference.

Lastly, another good reason to remove these from your vocabulary is because many of them are negative in nature, either showing your expertise in a negative light, or worse, forcing a negative emotional response from the client. In a report from ABC news Robert Schrauf, associate professor of applied linguistics at Penn State, says "half of all the words that people produce from their working vocabulary to express emotion are negative. And 30 percent are positive and 20 percent are neutral." The study takes a closer look at emotive words, but nonetheless, we can conclude that it is also applicable to the topic we are discussing here.

So there you have it. These are the words I try not to use with clients and I think it has really helped me to form some closer bonds with them. I think it really boils down to keeping you out of the negative light in your client’s eyes, because you can rest assured there are plenty of other vendors that they deal with that will continue to use these words, all the while making you even more of a pleasure to work with. Enjoy!