Category Archives: Talking to your employees

When communication dies a digital death

Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees

At a café last weekend with my family, we were shown to a table and given menus. It was a busy place and it quickly became clear that the expectation was – if we ever wanted to be served – we would have to order and pay via the QR code printed on our table.

Now, this is not a post written simply to bemoan the loss of human connection during my dining experience (well, not completely) but it is a warning that when the digital experience comes at the expense of human connection, businesses should take care.

I can’t get no job satisfaction
Anyway, back at the café , there followed a frustrating few minutes doing battle with the QR code, until the job of ordering went to the Gen Zs on the table. The order went in and the drinks and food arrived, so I suppose if the only measure of success is the customers getting their food, then it was a success. But that doesn’t really tell the whole story and reflect the overall customer experience.

And, by the way, it’s not just customers who can get frustrated stabbing away at a menu on a phone, the waiters themselves are reduced to food and drink runners which can’t be a fulfilling way to pass a shift. Isn’t the best part of being a waiter chatting and interacting with the customers (yes, I know it can also be the worst)? But It surely should never be the role of the digital experience to take out one of the most valuable customer interactions a business like a café or a restaurant can have.

Human to human
From a communications perspective, whether it’s a business dealing with customers or talking to its own employees, the temptation to maximise the digital route is obvious, but it should never be at the expense of human connection. There are times when a customer wants to speak or see someone, and similarly, there are times when an employee will take on a message better when it’s delivered in person.

So, the next time your business is about to press the button on a new automated, digital, human free service, think about what it is you’re trying to achieve and just whether your purpose wouldn’t be better served by something with ‘a little more of the human touch’ (thanks Bruce).

Great messaging needs great consistency

Communicating in a crisis, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees

One thing about effective messaging that is key for any business is consistency. Together with ‘clear’ and ‘concise’, it’s part of the three Cs of great communication (I’d be tempted to add a fourth C – creative – to that list).

Your mission…should you choose to repeat it
I thought about this while absorbing the latest UK local government election results and it made me think that a big problem for the Labour government is the lack of consistency when it comes to their messaging.

When coming to power in July 2024, they made a great noise about their “mission-driven” government. But when was the last time you heard any of the government’s front bench politicians talk about those five missions so carefully laid out?

*Clumsy metaphor alert* A chef needs consistency, so why not a communicator?

Of course, you might argue that the original mission-driven messaging here was too vague or disparate, but that’s not really the point I want to make: if the spokespeople don’t keep their discipline and the communication advisers allow the focus on their original messaging to be lost, no one – least of all the intended audience – really knows what the key messages are.

Forget me not
I think it’s a major problem for any organisation or business that builds a message platform which quickly gets forgotten, or subsumed by some other idea that similarly falls by the wayside.

I see it with the development of company values: often there are too many and they change too frequently. Try asking people in the business if they can tell you what the company values are and their inability to repeat them might surprise you – that’s a failure right there of the four Cs of great communication.

What do you stand for?
This is not a post about the political rights or wrongs of the current government, but it is a post about the need to be ruthlessly consistent about what it is that as a person, a business, or an organisation you stand for.

Content creators: beware of AI telling you what to think

Content marketing, Social media, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees, Writing

Have you ever Googled your name? Of course, you have. Who doesn’t want to know about the weird and wonderful places where their name crops up online? Now, though, through the miracles of AI, you can go a step further and ask Google what it actually thinks about you.

Try it, ask it anything about yourself. I thought I’d have a go.

“Ahem, a question for Google’s AI assistant: is Sebastian St. John-Clarke any good at content creation?”

I’ve a delicate ego, so for the few seconds it took a data centre in Slough to come up with an answer, I fretted. My career is on the line here. But I need not have worried, dear reader, for the answer it came, with only good things to say:

My AI-powered testimonial
Sebastian St John Clarke is regarded as an expert in content creation specifically for B2B sectors and the insurance/reinsurance industry. With over 25 years of experience, he leads Paper Plane Communications, where his work focuses on storytelling and simplifying complex corporate messages.

His expertise is built on a “simple and engaging” philosophy, prioritising brevity and narrative over technical jargon.

B2B Specialisation: He has a strong track record of delivering communications for high-profile financial services and insurance firms.

Diverse Formats: His portfolio includes high-level copywriting for trade publications, blog creation and drafting whitepapers.

Training & Strategy: Beyond execution, he facilitates creative writing courses and idea creation workshops for corporate clients.

Buffing up my self-esteem
There was more, but I think you get the idea. AI really is a lovely, thoughtful thing and would be welcome to pen my career obituary. There is, though, more to this exercise than just a buff up of my self-esteem. Of course, all that Google knows is to repackage viewpoints that are already out there. And where did it scrape these viewpoints from? Well, from the very places where my name appears most regularly: my LinkedIn page and my own company website.

Admittedly, it’s added some verbiage that I wouldn’t write myself – I’m far too modest to say I’m “regarded as an expert” – but Google has simply recycled all the nice words it found on the internet that, by the way, I wrote in the first place. It’s saying what I’ve said about myself, but in an even more positive and flattering way.

For originality, only a human will do…
The point of this exercise? It’s not about knocking the power and uses of AI; the progress large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini have made in the last few years is incredible. It is, though, a reminder that AI assistants are not capable of being particularly objective, original or of always telling the truth. They are simply recycling the information that’s already out there.

From a content creation perspective, that’s not a bad thing if you want a first draft and would prefer AI to do the initial heavy lifting. But, by doing so, be aware that you’re not necessarily creating an objective, original or even factually true viewpoint. Only a human has the power to give you all that.

‘Damned with faint praise’ or ‘when less really is more’

Content marketing, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees, Writing

While perusing the bookshelves for some unchallenging summer holiday reading, I cast aside my usual literary haunts – James Joyce’s Ulysses perhaps or maybe War and Peace – and picked up a paperback which looked like it might be a good yarn.

Rightly or wrongly, I’m often swayed by the reviews you see all over a book cover provided by whoever the publisher could persuade to say something nice about the book. In this case, I was swayed but, sadly for the author and the publishers, not into buying the book.

There was only one review on the cover, which read: “This is just the novel for whiling away a few pleasant evenings with a nice cup of tea”.

It seems to me that this is the equivalent of a potential house buyer looking around a house and proclaiming “nice size room” if they can’t think of anything more positive to say.

It reminds me of that old communications adage that ‘less is usually more’. In this case, it would have been better to have left the book cover to speak for itself.  

Happy holiday reading everyone – maybe even enjoy with a nice cup of tea!

Top tips for a career in communications (and one thing to never get wrong)

Communicating in a crisis, Content marketing, Social media, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees, Working with the media, Writing

Somebody asked me for the best bit of career advice I could give after years of working in the communications business. I thought long and hard about it and came up with a few thoughts.…

Be curious; listen more than you speak; know your audience; tailor your messaging; keep it simple; less is more; be nice (or at least not objectionable); proof read and proof read again; don’t misspell a spokesperson’s name; be clear and concise; don’t be afraid to introduce a bit of humour; don’t be afraid to challenge those around you (and particularly those above you); the legal team might know the law but that doesn’t mean they write better than you; trust your instincts (they’re almost always right); don’t use jargon/corporate speak; if you don’t understand what’s being said, chances are most others don’t know either; and don’t let ‘busyness’ steal time needed for thinking creatively…

And then I realised, all these things are great and ‘must haves’ but ultimately it comes down to one thing:

Never – and that means absolutely never – send an email with an attachment without first opening the attachment and checking it is actually the attachment you want to send.

Have that as your bedrock and you’ll go far.