Maintaining a standard voicing is hard for even one person. As your company grows, though, it becomes exponentially more difficult to maintain a consistent voice as each person contributing to your copy dilutes your initial vision.
At Twilio we’ve spent a lot of effort on maintaining a consistent voice as we’ve grown 10x in employees over the past two years. One great way to do this is ‘gold standards’ to refer to as Zach suggests. I think an even better way to do this is to have a rock solid, company-wide understanding and buy-in of the mission.
This starts at the top. We’re lucky to have a CEO who excels at getting everyone on the same page. This trickles all the way down through the ranks.
It’s also important to keep all the departments that actively talk to customers in tune with each other. If you progress through talking to a developer evangelist, then a sales engineer, then later a support person you should be getting the same message all the way through. Consistency builds trust.
Even within departments it’s important to have everyone on the same page. They do not have to use the same words, but they should be saying the same thing. If you’ve ever encountered different reps from the same company and got conflicting information you know how that affects your trust level with that company. It can also give you the impression that they don’t have their act together.
Consistent voice is one of the most important things I’ve tried to enforce at Twilio and based on the way I hear people talk about us, I believe it has paid off in spades.
