Keep customers, increase sales and make your company a better place to work

1. © soh (Europe) Ltd 2015, all rights reserved.
Keep customers, increase sales and make your company
a better place to work by developing your advisors' tone
BRANDtalk®
Spoken tone of voice programme

2. In a nutshell
How?Why?What?
Our new programme improves the 'way'
that advisors and staff speak with both
customers and each other. It
concentrates on two things: positive
words and how they're said.
It's the result of over a year's work by a
multidisciplinary team whose skills
include psychology, service, education,
eLearning, voice coaching and
performance.
About the programme team
In our research study improving tone
of voice increased CSat scores by
95%.
Tone of voice has always been
recognised as important to customer
relationships. But, businesses are
often unsure how to train, coach,
measure and manage something that
can seem subjective.
Business benefits
Research - why Tone of Voice?
The programme is modular and can
be as simple as training. Or, cover
everything from training to
management and even recruitment.
At the heart of the programme are
fun and effective courses. These are
adapted to meet your needs and
feature interactive seminars, rich
multimedia eLearning and a
comprehensive reference guide.
About the programme
1© soh (Europe) Ltd 2015, all rights reserved.

3. Business benefits
1. Customer
satisfaction
Our research showed that
carefully choosing words and
how they are said improved
Customer Satisfaction, NPS and
Customer Effort scores.
The programme and courses are
built from the ground up to
improve service and make the
most of a great opportunity to
boost your service scores.
2. Sales
3. Advisor
career support
4. A better
place to work
Every good salesman will tell you
it's about 'the way you say it'.
Our Sales-thru-Service workshop
and basic skills course will help
you to define the best approach
and support this with tone and
language. Together they'll give
your advisors more of the skills
and confidence they need to
serve and sell successfully.
Using the right tone is a key skill
for anyone within a customer
facing role and advisors will
benefit from structured
development.
Our programme provides a
complete and effective approach
so that advisors feel supported in
developing the spoken skills they
need for their chosen careers.
Tone of voice is essential for
effective interpersonal
communication. The ability to use
it well is a skill not only for service
and sales but for business and
life too.
Our Workplace Skills course is for
non-service/sales staff. So, your
whole business can benefit from
better spoken communication.
2© soh (Europe) Ltd 2015, all rights reserved.

4. Research - why bother with tone of voice ?
1. Our research showed it increased CSat by 95%
In our study on a call to a mobile provider, improving tone had a significant
effect - boosting CSat by 95% from 3.9 to 7.7 (0-10 scale)
soh Research 2014
2. Managers believe it's a significant contributor to CSat
+76%
+95%
What
drives
CSat?
Contact centre managers rated 'Polite and Friendly Advisor Tone' - as the
2nd most important factor in customer satisfaction
1. First call
resolution 54%
2. Polite & friendly
advisor tone 20%
3. Short
queues 15%
4. UK
advisors 9%
5. Short IVR 2%
6. Transfers 1% Contact Babel 2014
Call 1: Neutral tone
Call 2: Improved tone - voice
Call 3: Improved tone - voice and words
4. Studies show dramatic effects
Legal action - A study by researchers at Stamford concluded
that surgeons with a vocal tone that was 'dominant' or lacked
'concern' were far more likely to be sued for malpractice.
Broken relationships - Renowned relationship psychologist
Dr John Gottman showed that signs of 'contempt' in vocal tone
or body language reliably predict relationship breakdowns.
3. Negative tone is a caller irritant
78% of callers said that an abrupt, disinterested, negative or
distracted advisor tone would be very or extremely irritating.
45% said that they would tell their friends about an extremely
irritating experience and 33% said that they would complain.
89% said that they would be unlikely to return to a business that had
extremely irritated them.
soh Research 2014
3© soh (Europe) Ltd 2015, all rights reserved.

5. Quality Management - Wshop
Managing spoken comms quality
Assessor - Training
• Assessment ref guide
• Training: Direct & Train Trainer
Recruitment Strategy - Workshop
Recruiting for spoken skills
Advisor Basic Skills - Course
• Ref guide • eLearning
• Training: Direct & Train Trainer
Advisor Basic Skills - Course
• Ref guide • eLearning
• Training: Direct & Train Trainer
Coaching Skills - Training
Direct & Train Trainer
Difficult Calls - Workshop
Handling your difficult calls better
Sales-thru-Service - Workshop
Improving sales performance
Workplace Skills - Course
• Ref guide
• Training: Direct & Train Trainer
Quality Management - Tools
• Reference calls
• Assessment ref guides
Performance Management - Wshop
Incentives and rewards
Discovery
About your operation, brand & objectives
Service & Brand Language Workshop
Build brand & service savvy language examples for advisors
Communications
Inform and get buy-in for your programme
Spoken
tone of voice
BRANDtalk®
improvement
programme
9
10
11
12
21
8
7
6
4
3
Scripts - Training & Writing
• Writing • Ref guide
• Training: Direct
5
4
© soh (Europe) Ltd 2015, all rights reserved.

6. Martin - Research & Product Management
A well known writer on service insight, Martin has spent 15 years in the
sector defining products and services to help organisations overcome
their service challenges. Previously he worked with some of the
world’s best known brands, such as BA, BMW and Apple on
research, product and market development programmes. He's currently carrying out
new research into service communication for a Doctorate, has a first and two post
graduate degrees in Engineering and Design, and has been a visiting lecturer at
Imperial College, the Royal College of Art and Brunel University.
Martin is responsible for the overall design of the programme and keeping the content
up-to-date with the latest techniques and scientific thinking. He also manages and
contributes to our research and insight programme.
Rob - Head of Professional Services
With a Masters Degree in Business Administration and first hand
experience of running operations and service centres for both BA and
HSBC - it's fair to say Rob has had a great deal of experience of both
management theory and practice. Also, as head of consulting at QPC
and NICE, he's helped many of the UK's best known contact centres, such as Sky and
Barclays, successfully choose and implement technology and processes to support
workforce, quality and performance management initiatives.
Rob's role is to help you to define the goals for your programme, adapt it to meet your
needs, measure the results and optimise it over time. He's also responsible for running
the Quality Management, Performance Management and Recruitment workshops
within the programme.
Janina - Senior Voice Consultant
As a voice expert, Janina helps many of the best known companies in
the UK, such as Allianz and Virgin Media, to develop their tone of
voice – allowing them to communicate more effectively and bring their
brand personalities to life. She trained as an actor and, as a
qualified Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) licenced practitioner, combines her
knowledge of voice with a keen interest in psychology. Janina is also a successful
voiceover artist and can be heard on TV ads, IVRs and in-store promos for leading
brands such as Disney, Cadbury and Mercedes Benz.
Janina helps to write the spoken skills courses, is a consultant for the language
workshops and trains both trainers and advisors.
The core programme team
Carole - Psychology Consultant
Carole is a qualified Psychologist with a special interest in education.
A lecturer for over 25 years, she has a first and two post graduate
degrees in Psychology. As a senior lecturer Carole was responsible for
writing several courses for academic institutions, meeting the training
needs of students and the stringent requirements of exam boards.
Carole provides guidance on psychological principles for the programme and our
research. She also uses her considerable knowledge of teaching best practices to
shape the training approach we use.
Our programme is designed, managed and delivered by a team who have skills and
experience in all of the areas needed to improve customer experience through tone:
voice performance, education, psychology, eLearning, management and service.
Simon - eLearning and Multimedia Design
Since studying animation and graphics at college Simon has gained
over 15 years experience of creating fun and effective training videos
and eLearning for companies from Sky to Siemens and Thomas Cook.
Simon designs, produces and edits content for the reference guides, course seminars
and eLearning. His aim is to make learning fun and memorable. Simon is also
responsible for customising our course materials to meet your needs.
5© soh (Europe) Ltd 2015, all rights reserved.

7. Great results - just some of the tone of voice
projects our team have worked on
We re-wrote 600 scripts /
prompts and trained staff on how
to do it. CSat rose by 7%,
enquiry resolution was up 8%
and repeat calls fell.
During the Christmas rush call
queues are a real worry. We
provided help for advisors on how
to keep the right tone, whilst
cutting AHT and wait times.
Our tone and language workshop
improved advisor performance by
giving them, and managers,
practical knowledge they could
apply every day.
Moved the advisor 'approach' from
transactional to interactional to
boost CSat. Support included
workshops, written guide, training
for managers and the QA team.
European TV & phone provider
Advisor 'tone of voice' training
for trainers. The fun and
intensive course was tailor made
to support a comprehensive
'brand education' initiative.
Major insurance brand
A complete programme that's
introducing new tone 'traits' and
supporting CSat, NPS and Effort
Score improvements as part of a
new business and brand strategy.
6

8. About us
8
We make sure that your service communications – whether they're audio, written or conversational –
are helping you to keep your customers, sell more and save money.
We use a mix of creativity, consumer insight and service know-how. It works . . . just ask:
Aviva AXA Barclaycard British Airways Britvic Capita Circle Housing Coca Cola Direct Line
Dow Jones Hiscox HMRC Ibis Iceland Intel Interval International John Lewis Jurys Inn
Macdonald Hotels MBNA McAfee Mercedes Benz Microsoft MORE TH>N National Trust
Next Novotel npower Royal Caribbean Ryman Sage Santander Sky
Student Loans Company Talk Talk The Cooperative Financial Services TNT United Utilities
uSwitch Virgin Atlantic Virgin Media Virgin Money Vodafone

9. What we do
ConversationWrittenAudio
IVR - phone automated service
Language, voices and user interface
(UX) design
Call queues
Strategy, messages and music
In-store and environmental
Music, messages and strategy
Letters, reminders, bills and
welcome packs
Printed, email, pdfs, online and texts
Websites
Help pages, FAQs and knowledge
management articles
Calls
Scripts, tone of voice and
knowledge management articles
Web chat & social media
Scripts, tone of voice and
knowledge management articles
Face-to-Face
Scripts and tone of voice.
Training Managed Services Consulting
7

10. If you’d like to find out more about how we’ll help you to meet your
service objectives by improving your communications,
drop us a line.
email: hello@soh.co.uk
call: 0330 123 9933
www.soh.co.uk
Click to follow us
soh – service communications experts© soh (Europe) Limited 2015 All rights reserved