Your customers have already written your best lines

You will be able to explain what voice of customer means and pick out usable phrases from the messages your customers already send you.

Most marketing copy fails for a simple reason: it is written in the seller's words, and the people reading it do not talk that way. If you open the websites of ten tuition centres in Singapore (a number picked for illustration), you will see the same words again and again: all-round, nurturing, quality, proven, passionate. Then look at the WhatsApp messages parents send to those same centres. They describe their problems in vivid, specific language: "My son freezes during exams even when he knows the work." "She used to like maths until Primary 4." "We tried two tutors already and nothing stuck." (These messages are invented examples.) The websites answer with words that could describe any school in the world.

This gap between how customers talk and how sellers talk is the most common reason marketing copy does not work. The fix is mostly a matter of research rather than writing skill. You need voice of customer: the exact language customers use to describe their problems, the result they want, their doubts, and what finally made them act. Copy built from it works because readers recognise their own situation in it. A headline such as "exam nerves even when your child knows the work" makes a parent feel understood before they have learned anything about the centre.

Customer language has four qualities that seller language rarely has. It is specific: a parent says "freezes during exams" where the website says "academic challenges". It carries emotion: "we tried two tutors already" signals frustration and a fear of wasting money a third time. It names the alternatives: a parent who mentions YouTube videos or a cousin who tutors is telling you who you compete with. And it often contains the objection you need to answer, as in "worried it will be another expensive thing he hates".

You probably already have plenty of this language. Look through enquiry messages, emails asking about prices, notes from sales calls, and reviews on Google Maps or Shopee. Read your competitors' reviews too, because people say there what they wish had been different. Three-star reviews tend to be the most honest, since the writer liked something and was disappointed by something else.

As you go, copy each phrase word for word and note beside it where it came from. Do not tidy it up or translate it into marketing terms, because the rough version is the valuable one.

Once you have a few dozen phrases, look for repeats. One customer saying a phrase is an anecdote. Many customers saying a version of it signals a shared worry and a likely headline: one parent is an anecdote, while eight parents are a headline waiting to be written.

The method works outside tuition as well. An online seller of baby carriers finds buyers repeatedly writing "my back hurt after ten minutes with the old one". A financial adviser hears young clients say "I know I should be doing something with my CPF but I do not know what". A hawker brand moving into delivery reads reviews praising "rice that is still fragrant when it arrives". (All three are invented examples.) In each case the customer wrote a better line than the business would have come up with on its own.

There are limits to how you use what you collect. Customer phrases are raw material for copy, and you still have to choose, structure and edit them; later modules cover how to turn them into headlines, pages and posts without losing what makes them work. Some phrases are too specific to one person, or contain details you should not publish, so check each one before it goes anywhere public. Customer words must also stay truthful: you cannot take praise for one service and use it to sell another.

Writers who skip collection end up facing a blank page and filling it with the same words as everyone else. Writers who collect first start every piece with a file of lines their readers will recognise.

Your task: read your last 20 enquiries, reviews or customer messages, or your competitors' reviews if you are just starting, and copy out every phrase that describes a problem, a hope or a doubt, exactly as the customer wrote it, with the source noted beside each one.

Go through your last 20 enquiries, reviews or customer messages and copy out every phrase where the customer describes a problem or a hope in their own words.

Course

• Content and copywriting that people read