Guest Post: 4 Takeaways from Time Spent with the “Words Matter” Team
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In June, the Wix Writers’ Guild traveled to Paris to get first-hand feedback about our text from experts in the field of content creation and Wix users. The first of its kind, the feedback session brought together 3 online marketing professionals, 4 Wix users and 3 Wix experts. The goal? To conduct a comprehensive quality assessment of all Wix text in French. And of course, while in Paris, we took advantage of the time and place to host a Words Matter workshop covering the Wix Way of marketing, SEO and blog writing.
Here’s what Paris-based digital content and marketing agency, Keyzz, posted on their site about their experience with the Writers’ Guild.
“As part of a collaboration with Wix, 3 experts from Keyzz—a digital content and inbound marketing agency—were invited to give their opinion on several types of Wix text, their content strategy and their blog articles. A Tel Aviv-based startup, Wix is the #1 competitor of Wordpress and has 147 million users around the world.
“Words Matter” was the official name of the event, but we learned from the experience that at Wix, users matter too.
In giving their users so much special attention, Wix spent the last few days distinguishing themselves from their heartless, cold competitors.
From listening to clients to anticipating their needs
2 days of meetings, 4 carefully-selected professional writers, 9 users with various levels of experience, and 5 members of the Wix Writers’ Guild spent 2 days passionately discussing text. To meet users and to be challenged: that is what Wix sought to achieve during the 2 days of sessions filled with exercises, discussions and sharing.
What made Wix’s approach so unique was that they created a strong professional intimacy with the users. They interacted with users in a way that will ultimately help Wix improve the text in their products and better anticipate users’ needs.
In return, we hope our experts were able to give some pearls of wisdom to the impressive Wix team. From our end, we received a beautiful lesson about “client culture.” In a digital world where everything is cold and impersonal, and where communication is usually done over email and often in different time zones, Wix chooses closeness and proximity.
Lesson 1: Accept the challenge
At Keyzz, we partner with many digital platforms so naturally we’ve taken part in plenty of training sessions (at Google, Marketo, Hubspot, SEMRush). We often work with the customer service departments at these companies and we also offer our clients inbound marketing training. (We hold 50 annual workshops.)
From all this experience, we have to admit that it is not always easy to accept the challenge of being criticized. To avoid this, in fact, it’s often easier to blame the client or the user.
The Wix team, on the contrary, welcomed this challenge. They were able to create a safe and comfortable space where users could say exactly what they think and be 100% honest.
Wix’s attitude was never fake and never calculating. The team simply showed true gratitude for each piece of user feedback, and did it all with a smile.
Lesson 2: Be smiley
Yes, even at work, you can be happy and smile—even when a user brutally challenges the quality of a blog article. During Wix’s Words Matter events, everyone was encouraged to smile. In exchange for a bit of feedback, everyone was offered a cup of coffee—with a smile of course.
Throughout their week here, the Wix team transmitted their love for their work and how much they enjoy meeting users. They understood intrinsically that when a client feels that you love what you do, they’re that much more eager to help you out and trust you.
Smiling makes you attractive and approachable, of course, but smiling while constantly trying to improve your product does even more: It turns your clients into your greatest advocates.
Lesson 3: Create events that represent your brand and expose your clients to English
A great teaching moment for our startup clients: Bigger is not always better. When you run an event, there is no need to invite thousands of people, bring in pseudo-gurus as guest speakers and rent out the fanciest, most extravagant rooftop in Paris. Start with the basic assumption that your users want to like you. Then be true to yourself and to your brand.
Show off your teams, make them work, be spontaneous, be professional and take control in an oh-so-American way! We call this method, “Team first - customer within.” Your users will feel valued and glad they chose your product; your team members will bond and feel proud.
Lesson 4: Thank your users (and those who aren’t yet)
One last lesson to share from our Words Matter experience: Even though we were part of a paid panel, the team considered us and treated us just like their own Wix users. We received a friendly welcome, a paid lunch and gifts to thank us for our time...
Kindness leads to excellence. And today at Keyzz, we’re all sure of one thing: Wix users are treated like real professionals.
In fact, this is precisely what distinguishes Wix from every other digital company we’ve worked with (in particular a certain search engine that one might be considered a monopoly). At Wix, you are treated like a pro!
With kindness and gratitude, sprinkled with a touch of hard work and a whole lot of professionalism, Wix took us behind the scenes to learn about their digital strategy. They capped off the week with a 4-hour evening workshop in the Marais, joined by about 50 other attendees.”
You can read the French version of the article here.
We always love feedback!
If you have comments to share about our text, please send them over to textfeedback@wix.com
