Professional services are intangible; they don’t have a defined shape or physical characteristics and no intrinsic colour, texture or flavour. More importantly, they don’t have a set of clear expectations which come with them. The actual composition of a service is more or less unknown until your communications are able to give it substance and make it real.
Writing about services is a bit like shining a torch into a dark cave, no one knows what to expect until you can see it in the light. Your communications are your torch and you’re helping your clients to see your service as it emerges from the dark unknown.
If you buy a torch, you expect it will illuminate things. If you buy a screwdriver, you expect it will turn screws. Certain products have physical attributes and characteristics that help them to better perform their functions. Using more robust materials and heavier alloys gives greater strength and durability, using better raw materials and improved machining processes usually deliver more reliable or enhanced performance.
Better technology in a torch means brighter bulbs which burn longer. Enhanced ergonomics in a screwdriver provides better grip, increased torque and greater comfort. You can pick them up, hold them, feel their weight and test them. Sometimes a product’s purpose and value can be interpreted by its physical characteristics alone – and then evaluated (roughly perhaps) in terms of its expected performance. It’s easier to understand and assess a physical product as your experience of it can be more immediate and personal.
But how do you do that with a service? How can you help your clients to have a more immediate and personal experience of your service before they purchase it from you? How will you encourage or persuade them to judge your service positively if they cannot interact with it? This is what makes writing about services so difficult… and so rewarding when you get it right.
But remember, you can’t allow your familiarity with your services to censor how you communicate about them to your clients. Things which you may take for granted or which are obvious to you may not seem that way for your clients. Think of it as navigating a darkened room in your home at night – you can remember where most things are and avoid bumping into them because it’s familiar ground. Now, imagine someone who’s never been in your home moving around in the dark and the results could be quite painful.
Your communications have to give your service substance and form. How you write about your service will help your client to begin defining its shape and form and creating reasonable expectations of its quality and performance. What you communicate has to help your client understand what your service is meant to do, what solutions it will provide and what added value is achieved by its particular features. You are the torch and your clients will only be able to see what you show them.
What you are writing should be creating a picture of your service, a story of words for your client to read and understand your service. And like any good story writer, you have to know your audience, appreciate their tastes and know how to hook their interest and keep them reading. This is why case studies are such an effective way to communicate about services – they are essentially short stories about your services that help to create a more complete picture of what your client can expect to experience.
If you would like help to communicate your own service offering in a way that appeals to your target market contact me for more information.
