Your customers have already written your best lines

You will be able to explain voice of customer and find usable phrases in the messages your customers already send you.

Open the websites of ten tuition centres in Singapore and you will read the same words on most of them: all-round, nurturing, quality, proven, passionate. Now read the WhatsApp messages those centres get from parents. 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. The parents are describing problems in vivid, specific language. The websites are answering with words that could describe any school in the world.

That gap is the most common reason marketing copy does not work, and the fix is mostly research. Voice of customer is 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 the reader recognises their own situation. When a parent reads a headline that says exam nerves even when your child knows the work, they feel understood before they have learned anything about the centre.

Customer language has a few qualities that seller language rarely has. It is specific: a parent writes freezes during exams where a website would write academic challenges. It carries emotion: we tried two tutors already tells you about 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 are competing with. And it often contains the objection you need to answer: worried it will be another expensive thing he hates.

You already have more of this material than you think. Every enquiry message, every email asking about prices, every note from a sales call, every review on Google Maps or Shopee is customer language. So are the reviews of your competitors, which are especially useful because people say there what they wish had been different. Three-star reviews tend to be the most honest, because the writer liked something and was disappointed by something else.

The process is simple. You collect phrases, word for word, and note where each came from. You do not tidy them up or translate them into marketing terms, because the rough version is the valuable one. Once you have a few dozen, look for repeats. One parent saying freezes during exams is an anecdote. Eight parents saying some version of it is a headline waiting to be written, because many of your readers are carrying the same worry.

This applies far beyond tuition. An online seller of baby carriers might find buyers repeatedly writing my back hurt after ten minutes with the old one. A financial adviser might find young clients saying I know I should be doing something with my CPF but I do not know what. A hawker brand moving into delivery might find reviews praising rice that is still fragrant when it arrives. In each case the customer has written a better line than the business would have invented.

There are limits. Customer phrases are raw material, not finished copy, and you still need to choose, structure and edit them. Some phrases are too specific to one person or include details you should not publish. And customer words must stay truthful when you use them: you cannot take praise for one service and apply it to another. Later modules cover how to turn these phrases into headlines, pages and posts without losing what makes them work.

For now, start collecting. Writers who skip this step end up staring at a blank page and filling it with the same words as everyone else. Writers who do it start every piece with a file full 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.

Read your last 20 enquiries, reviews or messages from customers and copy out every phrase that describes a problem or a hope in their words.

Course

• Content and copywriting that people read