Leslie O’Flahavan has been teaching people to write well at work for 30 years. Through her company, E-Write, she has worked with plenty of customer support teams. In this episode of The Supportive Podcast, she talks with Mat talk about what conciseness means in customer support context, why it’s harder than it looks, and how to teach it to your team. Try her 10% game with your own team!

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Some key moments

  • (3:35) Leslie’s core framework: relevance first, brevity second.

  • (8:15) Helping people do things is a form of empathy.

  • (9:33) If you want to include both essential and optional information, signpost it clearly.

  • (11:24) Hors d’oeuvres, not lasagna. Small, navigable pieces the customer can take or leave..

  • (15:34) How to play the 10% game.

  • (20:07) Marketing is dating. Service is marriage repair.

  • (26:44) AI is good at brevity and bad at judgment.

Too long, didn’t watch? Here’s a concise version

  1. Relevance before brevity. Conciseness means more than cutting words. First, determine whether the information is necessary and helpful, then trim.

  2. When in doubt, help the customer do something. A customer who can make progress — even if they have follow-up questions — will be happier than one who is stuck.

  3. AI can spell, and it can cut. AI tools cut words efficiently, and can apply spelling and grammar rules. It cannot apply human judgment.

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Mathew Patterson
Mathew Patterson

A veteran support leader, Mat spent years teaching better online support at Help Scout before founding More Human Content. Subscribe to The Supportive or find him on LinkedIn.