Problematic language is expensive (Part 3): The mystery of the disappearing revenue
For the past two months, I have been writing about ways that problematic language can cost a company money. Serious money.
As a culture “detective,” my investigations reveal issues that many companies didn’t even know existed.
In September, I pointed out a few ways that problematic language can tank sales. I’ve collected multiple examples of prospects who walked away because of a few ill-chosen words — leading to lost sales totaling millions of dollars.
In October, I talked about issues with recruiting. While many companies pour money into talent acquisition, it is rare for them to also train their recruiters and hiring managers in inclusive language practices.
And candidates who are greeted with problematic language will often withdraw their candidacy. They tell me: if employees or leaders are disrespectful of, marginalize, or erase them at a time when they are supposed to be putting their best foot forward, how much worse would it be in everyday interactions when things are “back to normal”?
Veronica Mars and her camera. Photo via UPN/Wired magazine.
1. Problematic language can incur serious economic damage.
2. It is often invisible to companies what the costs of the problematic language are.
Prospective clients are ghosting more and more these days. It’s unlikely that an offended prospect will take the time to explain to a company what their sales rep said and did wrong.
Prospective candidates too often ghost. And when offended or irritated, they also are unlikely to take the time to educate the company about why they don’t want to work there.
Without doing “detective work,” most companies never learn how problematic language and culture are creating leaky buckets — so they don’t even try to find and plug those particular leaks.
It is expensive to not use inclusive language.
In this final article in my three-part series, we’ll look at how problematic language can negatively affect overall revenue.
3. The mystery of the disappearing revenue
The Chief Revenue Officer of the startup was puzzled. The products were good and the customer feedback on the products was good — but they didn’t seem to be making any real progress increasing their market share.
We happened to be together waiting for a meeting to start, and he was complaining to a colleague that he couldn’t understand what was holding them back.
Because I had been auditing their website and interviewing employees, I had some ideas. But, based on his resistance to a recent training I had run (eye rolling, ostentatious yawning, dismissive comments), I was pretty sure he wouldn’t welcome my insights. So, I kept them to myself.
But now I will share a few of them with you — as always, sufficiently anonymized to make the organization unrecognizable.
Images on their website and in marketing materials didn’t reflect the diversity of the potential customer base. They were mostly of younger white people, most of whom appeared to be male.
They used language on their website, user interfaces, and sometimes marketing materials that suggested that gender is binary, erasing their nonbinary audience.
Their intake forms had only two options for gender, Male or Female. And they didn’t give a range of options for honorifics — for example, a non-binary person who uses Mx. wouldn’t be able to select that option from the drop-down list.
Their intake forms and other forms didn’t take into account non-English names. Potential customers with short names like Ng were met with an error, where they were told their name wasn’t acceptable. People couldn’t put in accents or other diacritics that were important in their language and changed the pronunciation of their name (like é or ç or č). People with names like Meng Yao were treated as if their name was just Meng, and the white space between the two parts of their personal name wasn’t accepted. And family names were called “last names,” even though potential clients in Korea and China have family names that precede personal names.
And forms did not allow this variation to be taken into account. For a company trying to expand into East Asian markets, this must have sent a message that they weren’t really taking into consideration the perspectives of people in these countries.
They had ageist language in marketing materials, similar to “So easy, your grandmother could use it!”
There were complaints that customer experience staff used language that was disrespectful of women. Including language that suggested that female customers weren’t competent rather than getting to the root of the technical issue being faced by the customer.
Veronica Mars and Wallace Fennel investigate via laptop (Photo from Warner Brothers)
Because of issues like these, the company’s public face suggested that they were only thinking of and catering to young white men who spoke only English and had a technical bent.
(The fact that this customer base was a direct reflection of the founders and leadership team is probably not a coincidence.)
By not being careful to avoid problematic language, the company was alienating potential customers (or current customers) who were:
Non-binary
Female
Not young
In Asian markets.
When you look at revenue issues through an inclusion lens, the mystery of the disappearing revenue suddenly isn’t so mysterious.
Note that some of my clients are worried that a shift to inclusive language will make them sound too “woke,” or alienate more conservative employees or customers. But there is always a way to replace problematic language with something more inclusive that doesn’t have a specific political or cultural “flavor.” For example, instead of a welcome video on a website that begins, “Hey, guys!”, a video can start, “Hi, everyone!”
Without a comprehensive analysis, the costs of this problematic language were hidden. The company was looking elsewhere for answers and missing some clear explanations that were right under their noses.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again:
Problematic language is expensive. And its negative effects on a company’s revenue are often hidden.
In this case (and many others), some proactive work could really plug those leaky buckets: for example, audits, updated forms and protocols, and inclusive language training for marketing, front-end developers, and customer experience staff.
By taking the time to locate and eliminate problematic language, companies can stop losing money they don’t even know is flowing down the drain.
Industry-leading inclusive language expert Suzanne Wertheim facilitates in-person and virtual inclusive language trainings, as well as offering empowering and educational inclusive language keynotes.
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