In a world where texting and online chat have become the preferred communication channels, you may have picked up on some unspoken rules of online punctuation. The punctuation we learned growing up no longer carries the same meaning over here in the digital realm.
These modern days are a blur of emails and tweets so we’ve adopted an informal style of writing to echo the communication style used in texts and instant messages. The tricky part of this colloquial style however, is that some punctuation now carries hidden undertones you might not be aware of.
We decided to explore some of these punctuations because depending on who you’re talking to, it can dramatically influence the customer service experience. For example, say you’re trying to fix a pressing issue with your online order so you tweet at the company to see if they could help track your order. Read the two responses from the customer support agent and think about how it resonates with you.
“Sure! What’s your tracking number?”
“Sure. What’s your tracking number?”
While the two responses are nearly identical, the response with the period instead of the exclamation mark could come off as passive-aggressive to someone who is used to communicating through texts and instant messages.
The mass majority of the business world is used to a formal approach of communication in person and online through email, where written content is taken literally and as is. On the other hand, there are different tendencies when talking in the social and mobile world, which means something as innocent as the period – formally used as a neutral way to end a sentence – is taken out of context and is used to express disappointment, disagreement, or reluctance to agree with the sentence it just concluded.
Evolving Linguistics
Punctuation – while admittedly a little slippery – is vital to our communication because we speak and write with often long sentences strung together to form the meaning we intend. Without punctuation, we’d spend much of our days simply trying to understand where one sentence ended and the other began or wrestling with the world’s longest run-on sentence.
Punctuation not only clarifies the sentence, giving structure and telling the reader to reset to a new concept, but it’s vital in conveying the sentiment of the sentence, which in turn, heavily influences how customers might feel about the service interaction.
While this punctuation phenomenon may have started as a generation gap, it’s something that’s being adapted on a broader scale by everyone with the increasing use of mobile, instant messengers and social sites like Facebook and Twitter.
It’s Not You, It’s the Technology
Today’s internet culture favors a more informal punctuation style. And it’s not to say the language used in text messages (u, lol, idk) and IM’s is wrong, but this very casual conversational tone can sometimes come off as vapid, insincere and uneducated – we’re sure you’ve witnessed it over social media before.
With letters and emails, you express your side of the conversation in one shot, so you need to formally break up the sentences so it’s easy to digest each thought. But on mobile, IM’s and social media, the conversations are happening in a real time dialogue; there isnt’ a need to have formal sentence structures that are used in emails and (sadly) antiquated handwritten letters. Instead, punctuation marks like the comma and periods are replaced with line breaks and emojis.
Yes, smiley faces are used to end sentences these days :)
An American University study of college students’ texting and instant messaging habits found they only used sentence-final punctuation 39 percent of the time in texts and 45 percent of the time in online chats.
Texts and instant messages are a continuous conversation, which is probably why it feels unnecessary to formally mark the end. You want to leave the door open for new thoughts instead of shutting down the conversation. It gives an impression that you’re busy or don’t want to bother carrying on a conversation. And to be quite honest, adding sentence-final punctuation – especially over instant message – can actually be a bit awkward. It’s like saying bye to somebody only to realize you’re both walking the same way.
It’s not anyone’s fault, people just happen to read sentences differently depending on their communication habits.
Why You Need To Pay Attention
This younger, informal punctuation-loving generation is going to face more and more customer service encounters, most likely online. Fittingly. They might be confused or put off because of the way you wrote something … because you added too many periods. Sure, it sounds silly but it’s true!
Not long ago, my 17-year-old son noted that many of my texts to him seemed excessively assertive or even harsh, because I routinely used a period at the end. – Mark Liberman, Professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Thanks.” translates to “thanks for nothing” and “Glad I could help.” translates to “I hope this encounter never happens again.”
It’s Not Just The Period
Since we can’t read the facial expressions to help decipher the sentiment of what was being said, we’re left with no choice but to use extra punctuation marks to help emphasize our emotions.
- 1. To express strong emotions, whether it be excitement, rage, or applause to a great joke, one would use “!!!!!”
- 2. To express excited disbelief, one would use what’s officially called the “interrobang,” that looks a little something like “?!?!?!”
- 3. The ellipsis “…” is a popular – and rather vague – punctuation that can mean multiple different things depending on the context, such as suspense, guilt, annoyance or simply a pause.
Philosophers, linguistic professors, and writers alike all have made an attempt to create an “irony mark” to ease this confusing madness of “guess what I’m really trying to say.”
It’s Not What You Say, But How You Say It
You only have one opportunity to make a first impression. This saying seems cliche, but the message still holds true.
As a seasoned customer service manager or agent, you already know the tricks of the trade in using the right words and adding personalization across all communication channels from traditional mediums like phone and email, to modern platforms such as web chats and social media.
But knowing the right way to address your customer only goes so far. It’s easy to decipher the friendliness of the customer service agent over the phone in a matter of seconds, but when you can’t hear the voice and the way the messages are expressed, customers depend on the little things like punctuation to decode your friendliness level.
So before moving your customer support team into the social world, remember that the digital language is a whole new beast. We’re not saying that you need to adopt the modern truncated language style, but just know that it’s okay to be a bit more informal. The style you’re used to over email doesn’t always transfer over social media, so don’t shy away from using exclamation marks in favor of the “passive-aggressive” period.
Interested in learning more about how to serve customers over social media? Download our whitepaper on “How Social Media is Changing the Call Center World”.