Writer / Initiative lead
Help Center writers, GoDaddy content teams (Brand Writing, Conversation Design, Customer Education, UX Writing, Email Design), Customer support, Customer Research
Jan - Dec 2022
Confluence, Contentful, Jira, Miro, Microsoft Office, UserTesting.com
The voice of the Help Center was inconsistent across content. Our voice and tone principles were outdated and we didn't have a method or cadence for auditing articles. There was a disconnect in the voice across GoDaddy channels, like our chatbot, videos, etc., and we didn't have a way of predicting or understanding how changes in tone affected our customers.
Define our voice in alignment with the GoDaddy personality and identify how our tone may change across Help content based on the customer's emotional state. Refine based on customer feedback via user testing. Align with other content teams by establishing a cadence and method of communication.
If we use tone with intention, we can build trust and authentic relationships with our customers through all their interactions with GoDaddy. We'll also build the integrity and lifespan of our content by developing processes for implementing and maintaining our voice.
Initial timeline for voice and tone intiative
I hosted two kickoff meetings with seperate goals in mind:
Next, I defined our voice and built a framework for how our tone may flex across Help content.
Voice and tone principles represented in a color wheel
I established a methodology for testing and validating our tone using our onboarding content type:
The user test took several iterations in collaboration with the Customer Research team to refine and eventually consisted of 5 verbal and 7 rating-scale questions. We targeted specific GoDaddy customers based on the article content and associated products.
We measured the impact of tone based on two factors: (1) if the customer's interpretation of the tone matched our intended tone, and (2) if the tone affected the customer's sentiment towards GoDaddy. The tone was considered validated if there was an overall positive sentiment and if the tone was identified as intended.
Workshops: To help writers get used to writing with tone in mind, I hosted a workshop. I set the stage by explaining the tone profile and the best practices, and then break the team into smaller groups. In their groups, they'd workshop one of the writer's articles through the lens of tone. We'd come back together as a team and then share what we found.
Governance: I documented and shared a system of governance, encouraging the team to follow a research, discussion and implementation process to revise the voice and tone principles.
Syncs: Although the voice and tone work was completed, I planned to continue hosting quarterly syncs with the other content teams as way to maintain awareness of other customer-focused efforts.
Through the voice and tone initiative, I:
This intiative challenged me by forcing me to return to the foundations of why I'm passionate about what I do: "How do we help customers solve their problems?" It all comes down to the language - but that language changes based on context, and the context at GoDaddy was shaped by the customer's emotional state, their journey with the product, and their previous experience with us (Did they talk to a customer support agent? Did they get an email from us?). As a team, we had to first understand all the touchpoints that a customer might encounter and then build bridges between them. We had to make our voice consistent, but still distinguishable depending on when we interacted with the customer.
I'm so grateful for each team's openness to innovation, and for supporting me as I led this initiative. Projects like this are only ever successful if everyone is on board, so it wouldn't be possible without each team's support.