Customer Service Voice: What It Is and How to Develop It

Customer service voice refers to the tone, wording, and style a company uses to foster positive customer interactions. It includes interactions between customers and agents — both human and AI — across all touchpoints, from phone and email to chat and social media.

Positive customer experiences are more important than ever. Our research shows that 81% of service reps and 73% of mobile workers say customers expect more of a personal touch now than in the past.

We'll explore the importance of customer service voice, including examples and best practices for implementing and improving it with the right customer service software.

• What is customer service voice?
• The importance of tone of voice in customer service
• Building your customer service voice
• Best practices for effective customer service voice
• How to measure the effectiveness of your customer service voice
• Future trends in customer service voice

Customer service voice is the way your company communicates directly with customers through specific language, tone, and attitude. For example, a service rep might use a combination of empathy, active listening, and wording from a pre-approved script to assist a frustrated customer. And, you can train AI agents like ones built in Agentforce in your company’s customer service voice so that customers who interact with them also feel heard and supported.

Customer service voice incorporates your organization's brand voice, but goes beyond it with guidelines and scripts for specific customer service scenarios. It's a way for companies to ensure consistency across its messaging channels in their customer support software like Service Cloud.

A consistent customer service voice helps you establish your brand and create trust with customers. For example, a friendly, professional, and empathetic communication style can help customers feel heard and can lead to positive reviews, higher customer satisfaction rates, and revenue growth. Other key benefits include:

• Increased customer loyalty. When your customer service voice makes customers feel understood and valued, they're more likely to continue doing business with you and recommend you to others.
• Positive brand perception. A professional and friendly customer service voice can significantly affect your brand's public perception, creating a positive image and reputation.
• Higher employee engagement: Clearly defined communication guidelines can empower customer service representatives to confidently handle customer interactions, leading to better morale and performance.

Language and tone of voice can be extremely nuanced, so providing reps and AI agents with guidelines to help them say the right thing, in the right tone, at the right time will help them deliver excellent customer service.

Here are some important aspects to consider when developing your customer service voice:

• Tone. The tone your customer service team uses when communicating with customers matters as much as their words. For example, the wrong tone can convey unintended meaning and lead to a negative response.
• Empathy. Customers are more likely to feel like your company cares about them as individuals when agents listen carefully and empathize with their situation.
• Consistency. When your human reps and AI agents use consistent language that communicates your values and personality across all channels, customers not only get a better sense of your brand, they also are more likely to develop trust in your company. An AI agent built in Agentforce can be trained on trusted company data to deliver customer service using your branding, every time.
• Clarity. Speaking clearly and slowly, using simple language, avoiding jargon, and having the right customer information at hand can improve your customer service voice and create positive interactions.

Let's look at how two companies use their customer service voice to ensure customer satisfaction.

A customer decided to cancel their internet service with a major provider. They were frustrated with the company's continuous rate increases and how difficult it was to reach a human customer support representative. When they called a more affordable internet service provider to learn about their offerings, Service Cloud, the company's contact center software solution, immediately connected them with a service rep who had all their details in front of them.

After learning that rate increases were an issue for this customer, the rep spoke to them with empathy, offered them two free months of service and mentioned but didn't push the company's pricier services. The rep's genuine tone and compassionate actions made the caller feel valued and excited to sign up for their services.

When an online art supply store incorporated their brand voice into their AI agent responses, the results went viral. The company’s previous chatbot sounded robotic and didn't match their brand's quirky, fun, and artistic personality.

The agent sounds more human, incorporates brand-specific language and tone, and integrates with CRM data for personalized responses. For example, when a customer asked the AI agent about a missing delivery of acrylic paint, its response was: "Oh, no! So sorry to hear that. Hang tight while I look into it for you. While you wait, imagine who would win in a paintball fight: Andy Warhol, Picasso, or Banksy."

After giving the customer a delivery update, the AI agent found the customer's favorite color from CRM data. "I see your favorite color is magenta! Can we send you a free bottle of magenta acrylic paint to make up for the delay?"

Not only did this customer appreciate the personal touch — over time, the company's sales improved after glowing social media reviews revealed dozens of similar positive experiences with its AI agent.

Your tone of voice has the power to make customers feel positive or negative about your company and its offerings. Customers notice when a service rep sounds annoyed or rushed, uses a sharp or snarky tone, or doesn't sound focused on the issue at hand. They will also notice robotic-sounding agents (or reps reading from scripts), and are much more likely to appreciate when the rep or agent sounds positive, upbeat, and focused on their situation.

Our research found that 65% of customers expect companies to adapt to their changing needs. Adapting your customer service tone of voice to fit the situation is crucial because it directly influences customer perception.

For example, using an empathetic and compassionate tone with customers who are experiencing difficult life situations is a good way to build trust and goodwill. Interactions with frustrated or angry customers may require patience and understanding, along with a serious and professional tone to resolve the conflict. If the customer has a simple and straightforward request, an upbeat, positive, and even humorous tone is typically appropriate.

You may think tone of voice only comes across in phone conversations, but you also need to include guidelines for incorporating it into written customer communications like emails, social media replies, and automated responses from agents and voice technology.

Proper grammar, spelling, punctuation, tone, and correct customer information — across communication methods — should be a priority. Mistakes can be costly in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty. For example, if you spell or say someone’s name wrong, have inaccurate customer information pulled up, or say something that could be interpreted as rude or insensitive, it can negatively impact the customer service experience and drive them away for good. Be clear, conversational, polite, and incorporate your brand values and personality into your customer service voice.

The best way to start developing your customer service voice is to create a style guide. Your style guide should go beyond just outlining the language and tone of voice your reps use to communicate with customers. It should include guidelines for how to:

• Speak clearly and slowly, use simple words, and avoid jargon, idioms, and off-brand language
• Incorporate your brand voice, personality, and identity into customer interactions
• Identify where consistent wording is required, regardless of channels
• Adapt tone of voice depending on the situation and channel
• Demonstrate kindness, empathy, and active listening
• Maintain professionalism
• Handle complaints and resolve conflicts with incident management
• Start and end customer interactions
• Write for various customer service channels, such as emails, WhatsApp, and social media replies

You can also solicit and analyze feedback from customers and staff to develop your customer voice style guide and continue to improve it. Feedback — especially from customer satisfaction surveys — can help you make impactful changes to your customer service voice (more on this below).

Our research found that 88% of customers are more likely to purchase again if they receive good customer service. Making your customer service voice a priority is one way to accomplish this.

Here are some best practices to ensure customer service voice success:

• Be consistent across platforms. When reps and AI agents use the same product messaging via chat, email, voice, and social media, it helps build customer trust. Be sure to give reps and AI agents guidelines and examples of what consistent language looks like across platforms.
• Adapt tone to the communication channel. While it's important to use the same messaging across channels, your tone may change depending on the platform. For example, your brand may use a less formal tone on social media than on email. Create guidelines so reps and agents know which situations require a specific tone.
• Train your reps. In addition to style guide training, reps need to practice using their customer service voice when interacting with customers. They may need to develop specific communication skills, such as active listening and conflict resolution. Resources like Salesforce's free online learning platform, Trailhead, offer training courses and valuable peer-to-peer insights through the Serviceblazer Community on Slack.
• Train and test your AI agents. Like your reps, AI agents built in Agentforce learn from data sources like text transcripts, voice recordings, and interaction logs. Before you start training your AI agent, add your customer service voice into your training data as needed. Include ways to measure customer service voice in the testing phase.
• Analyze data and adjust. Use customer service analytics, customer surveys, and call recording transcripts to identify areas for improvement.

When you analyze how well your customer service voice is working, it helps you gather insights to improve your processes and interactions. Here are some methods for measuring customer service voice:

• Make it a KPI. Include customer voice in your customer service operation's key performance indicators (KPIs). This will give you measurable data you can analyze and improve upon. Analyzing call interactions, customer survey feedback, and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) can help you better understand the impact of your customer service voice.
• Survey customers. Send out customer satisfaction surveys after each interaction and include questions about customer voice and tone. Surveys should also allow customers to explain what they liked, disliked, or would improve. You can also learn how likely your customers are to recommend your company by calculating your net promoter score (NPS).
• Customer service analytics. Collect and analyze data from all customer interactions — phone conversations, emails, chats, social media, and surveys — to learn how your customers feel about the way your service reps and AI agents communicate with them.

Our research found that 87% of decision makers plan to increase their AI investment. As companies invest more in customer service AI, they can incorporate their customer service voice into voice AI technology and AI customer service agents to ensure customer satisfaction and consistent communication across channels.

Knowledge management will also play an increasingly important role in ensuring excellent customer service. Incorporating your customer service voice into your knowledge base, customer service voice technology, and AI agents provides customers with quick responses, correct information, and the right tone and brand voice. Agentforce can engage customers autonomously across channels 24/7 in natural language within the guardrails your business has set.

By investing more in customer service AI and automation, companies can set up reps and AI agents to interact with customers using a tone that matches their customer service voice and provides positive customer service experiences.