BANNED WORDS - Words that should never be uttered to clients…

Communicate more effectively and keep your clients engaged by staying away from the dangerous 4, 5 or even 6-letter words that confuse and distract the less tech and biz savvy. Some of these include…

Written Mar 25, 2008, read 646 times since then.

Have you ever worked with someone who just uses words they don’t need to, or maybe you’re the one who occasionally tosses in an a little technical lingo?

Well… STOP IT!

You know who you are. Please stop. Using valueless words does not make your product better. It just creates space between you and you coworkers, customers and public.

Communicate more effectively and keep your clients engaged by staying away from the dangerous 4, 5 or even 6-letter words that confuse and distract the less tech and biz savvy. Some of these include…

WYSIWYG
AJAX
e-[ANYTHING]
Wigitify
Web Services
Social Media
VOIP WIMAX
Proprietary Platform
Ecosystem Platform
Synergistic
XD - 3D Holographic Mobile Streaming (ok, made this up)
Work Bandwidth
Social Widget Platform
Innovative Solution Builder
Health 2.0 (see Jasmine's note below)

What are these things? Can't we just speak 'normal'?

The age of Web 2.0 only makes things worse where geeking-out is glorified and out-acronyming someone is considered a valid 'dis'.

This list of banned words falls into three categories…

Tech-Speak Gibberish
Just like in the SNL clip, these are used by computer guys/girls and can include a mesh of computer/sci-fi terms interwoven into an impenetrable mesh of gobbledygook - and who likes gobbledygook? Nobody, that's who.
Smartie Talking
Slather in some multisyllabic business speak and layer in words made up by 15-year old Swedish kids without batting an eye. As a general rule it’s best to stay away from anything you might have heard used in Office Space.
Absolute Nothingness
Take for example "innovative solution-building". It just pulls at the soul. Doesn't "we help your business succeed" just sound better?

Using complex technical or industry terms might be fun while playing Dungeons & Dragons with your buddies (R.I.P. Gary Gygax), but when you're engaging your clients there really ISN'T any need to get all technical on them.

Everything can and should be explained in a simple and straightforward manner. Let’s give this a try with some phrasing for a few difficult issues…

Laptop Hard Drive Failure
COMPLEX – “The buffer overran its bounds and the read head dismounted”
SIMPLE - “Your hard drive is broken, you should buy a Mac.“

Sniping, Dishonest Employee
COMPLEX – “Yeah, so we’re restructuring and need to realign business sensibilities during this transitional relationship period.”
SIMPLE - “Pat, you’re fired”

Brain Tumor
COMPLEX – “The frontal lobe is overcompensating for high pressure glandular stimulation”
SIMPLE - “Something is blocking your body from working properly, we’re going to fix it.”

Simple just works and all without using any dreaded banned words!

BEFORE YOU BERATE THE AUTHOR- Now I am not implying that there aren’t legitimate times when these tech or more complex phrases should be used. There obviously are.

What I am encouraging is that tech professionals use the LEAST amount of acronyms possible and that they stay away from any word that was created less that 6 months ago (ex: twitify, etc).

So, help make the world a better place and communicate more efficiently by staying away from the banned list.

Can you contribute any other terms you’ve heard (and heard too much)?

**UPDATE**

Speak to your audience? It was mentioned that one should always focus on their audience - great point Michael! However, I would still stand by the core message of this article - be a minimalist when it comes to discussing tech or biz.

Lets look at the example of Apple v Microsoft. They both do something VERY complex for a variety of audiences (general consumers, techie folks, businesses), but they take alternative approaches. Apple stays STEADFAST in winning by playing it simple, while Microsoft at times has made things a bit more complex .

Learn more about the author, Joel Ballezza.

Comment on this article

Posted by Michael Halligan, San Francisco, California | Mar 25, 2008

This is somewhat ridiculous. Any broad generalization on proper terminology to use with customers is sure to fail. Learn your customer, and learn how to speak to them. Bob might be an acronym kind of guy, but Jessica might hate acronyms. Sell to your customers, not to the generalized advice of somebody on a web forum.
Posted by John Robertson, Burien, Washington | Mar 25, 2008

Not ridiculous. Anyone that changes their entire approach because of an article they read online probably has more problems than that anyway. Let's simply say:

Communicate to the person in front of you, and be a skillful enough communicator and an aware enough person to know exactly who that is, at any given time. Be literate enough and have enough mercy on your audience to KNOW when you are using slang or technojargon, and check the person's technical depth as you go...there's no harm in asking "do you know what WYSIWYG means?" quickly, before proceeding to discuss it.

There is merit in the notion of not piling on technospeak that people don't understand. The whole point of communicating is to bring about understanding. Communicating in a way that undermines that defeats the purpose. I suspect that was your whole point all along.
Posted by Joel Ballezza, Seattle, Washington | Mar 25, 2008

Thanks Michael and John! I've updated the post.
Posted by Chris Haddad, Seattle, Washington | Mar 25, 2008

Hi guys,

The real key here is to speak in the language that your customers use. If your customers have a "secret language (aka Jargon) that they commonly use to describe a concept, then you put that in your marketing and sales material. If they don't, then you keep that stuff as far away as humanly possible.

And that's what the marketing weasel has to say about that.
Posted by Jake Brewer, Washington, D.C. | Mar 25, 2008

Clearly you want to speak in terms that meets anyone where they are, but I think the post is right on in that there's really never any good reason to say something like "innovative solution-based synergies"

I like your style.

http://realist-idealist.com/2008/03/25/biznikcom-banned-business-and-networking-words/
Posted by Douglas Hawks, Redmond, Washington | Mar 25, 2008

I would do what you are suggesting but I'm afraid it would interfere with my stratical customer centricity.
Posted by Dan McComb, Seattle, Washington | Mar 25, 2008

In my experience, people who regularly use overly important words instead of simple, clear ones are often trying to hide behind the fact that they are insecure about the value they are bringing to a project, and therefore feel the need to justify their worth by virtue of their vocabulary. Or they work at mega corporations and are well trained in the art of doublespeak and obfuscation (wait! I mean, "are trained to lie to their customers").

Biznik Business Networking
Posted by Jasmine Holmes, Gilbert, Arizona | Mar 26, 2008

I agree completely with Joel on this subject. Coming from a corporate world, I have had to work really hard to stop using senseless jargon and start speaking English again. The whole web 2.0 phenomena has seemed to spawn a whole new generation of these types of words and phrases. To make matters worse, it seems like a lot of these ideas are so new that no one really agrees on exactly what they mean.

Along those same lines, I think customers throw out these terms to us without really thinking about what they mean and what it is they want. I had a customer tell me they wanted a site that used "Health 2.0" but I could not find a single definitive answer as to what that is.

My point is that both service providers and clients should ban these types of words from their vocabulary and concentrate on saying exactly what we mean. I think we would all be much happier and less confused!
Posted by Joel Ballezza, Seattle, Washington | Mar 26, 2008

Great point Jasmine. We all get sucked into the vacuum of nothingness.

-added Health 2.0, guess my article is up to "Banned Words 3.0 ... Beta" haha ;)

Everything should be easy.