Every organization talks about customer experience. While they invest in developing technologies, processes, and performance measures, one thing continues to shape every customer interaction more than anything else: communication.
Customers can forget a policy or a procedure. But they never forget how they were addressed.
Communication consultant, trainer, facilitator, and speaker Charlotte Purvis has spent more than 25 years investigating and analyzing the words customer service professionals use every day. And she developed a practical framework that helps teams communicate with greater clarity, confidence, and consistency: the 3-F Formula (Friendly, Formal, and Focused).
All those years culminate in this: communication shapes relationships, performance, and leadership.
The Communication Challenge Many Leaders Fail to See
The first thing companies tend to forget is that communication issues start with the frontline employees.
Charlotte often points leaders toward a different conclusion.
“It’s important for leaders to remember that their customer service brand is on the line each time one of the representatives interacts with a customer,” she has written. She also suggests that leaders try their customer service process themselves to identify training weaknesses before their clients notice them.
It moves the focus from individual to system issues. When there are problems with communication, it is usually because of a misunderstanding of what needs to be done, inconsistent coaching, or insufficient practice.
Research supports this view. A Harvard Business Publishing study suggested that “Communicating for Impact” is one of the most important capabilities of leaders at the moment. The majority of senior leaders and managers consider communication an essential leadership skill and recognize the need for more training in this area.
For Charlotte, communication is not a soft skill. It is a business skill.
How Childhood Curiosity About People Led to a Career in Communication
Well before becoming a consultant, Charlotte was intrigued by how people communicate and interact with one another.
This interest later formed the basis of her entire career.
During all those years of working with different kinds of organizations, such as businesses, universities, non-profits, governmental agencies, and healthcare programs, she noticed one thing: the companies that made effective communication a priority tended to create stronger customer relationships and stronger internal cultures.
Her career also included work that required thoughtful communication in sensitive situations. One example involved training customer service professionals to communicate effectively with individuals with HIV. Charlotte invited them to think about the calls they received, especially the calls from those who had just left the doctor’s office and learned they were living with HIV. Experiences like these reinforced the importance of empathy, respect, and intentional language.
These lessons remain relevant to this day.
Instead of teaching communication as a list of rules to follow, Charlotte teaches people to use it to strengthen their connections with others.
Her 3-F Formula provides organizations with a systematized way of communicating. Organizations use the framework to create consistency across phone calls, emails, chats, and in-person interactions.
The Importance of Communication for Leaders
Many people think of communication training as something done by customer service representatives. However, Charlotte believes that leadership development is just as crucial to the discussion.
According to her, leaders establish the communication bar for the team.
When addressing customer service performance, she states that leaders have an obligation to set expectations and make clear to workers how professionalism is demonstrated in customer service communication.
Gallup’s research reflects the importance of this point. The study found that 35% of employees said better communication would help them gain greater clarity about workplace expectations. Hence, communication is one of the most powerful factors driving employees’ understanding and engagement.
Charlotte’s approach helps leaders move beyond vague advice such as “communicate better.” Instead, she focuses on practical techniques, word choice, tone, and consistency.
Her goal is to help leaders communicate in ways that build confidence across the organization.
A Vision For Better Conversations
Charlotte Purvis has based her entire career on the following idea: words matter.
From her fascination with human relations to her current work with companies to enhance their customer communications, she has been driven by one objective all along: to enable people to interact more confidently, clearly, and purposefully.
As the nature of the workplace changes, communication remains one of the most important qualities that both leaders and teams can develop. Charlotte’s work proves that communication is about having impactful interactions that make your clients feel understood, your employees supported, and your organization work better.
