Four free tools to help providers communicate better

We’ve all experienced it at some stage. We’ve sat across from an expert – like a doctor, a chemistry teacher or a financial adviser – who used technical words that didn’t make sense.

What they were saying sounded right, but it felt really complicated. And because of that, we didn’t take action.

If you’re serving clients, this contains a valuable lesson that complicated communication simply doesn’t cut through.

You might be an expert who cares for your clients and has the knowledge to serve them well. But expertise isn’t everything that goes into providing a great service – and communication that’s complicated can be disempowering and cause people to walk away.

FACT: Within the service-based sector, consultants who speak and write to their market at the level you’d expect a child in Year 4 or Year 5 to understand are known to achieve better results. That’s because simple converts.

This means that whether you’re asking a person to buy a luxury car, explaining an exercise program, or recommending technology to assist them, simple works better.

To that end, we wanted to share four free tools that automate clear and simple communication. They can help empower your clients to get better outcomes, which equals better results for your business too.

Whatever you’re writing, simply copy and paste it into these apps (excluding private information) and they’ll do the work for you.

Using these tools can keep you aware of the importance of making verbal conversations simple too.

1. Hemingway App

Hemingway App is a free tool that highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors. If you see a red highlight, your sentence is too dense and complicated – so try to simplify it.

2. Grammarly

Grammarly is a free tool that recommends improvements and highlights mistakes as you write. Unlike Hemingway, you need to download and install it. It contains paid upgrades.

3. Microsoft Word's readability tool

Microsoft Word's readability tool does spelling and grammar checks. When Word finishes checking the spelling and grammar, and errors are corrected, you can choose to display information about the reading level of the document, including readability scores.

4. ChatGPT

ChatGPT certainly disrupted the market when it launched! If you're using it, remember to exclude private information, because everything you put into it trains the technology to become smarter. But, you can remove personal information and run the rest of your content through it, asking ChatGPT to rewrite it to make it easier to read. Then, you can check your content again in Hemingway.

Happy writing and, for your clients, happy reading!

PS. If you’re a client and you think one (or more) of your providers could benefit from knowing about these tools, share this article with them!