A Dramatic Change Doesn’t Have to Be a Traumatic Change

The word dramatic is a great word. When you use it to describe changes you make to improve customer service, it has a positive meaning. It sounds like you’re making big changes for the better. However, if you shorten the word to drama, it takes on an entirely different meaning—one that’s negative. Merriam-Webster’s definition for how the word is used in this context is that it is “a state, situation, or series of events involving interesting or intense conflict of forces.”
So, make dramatic changes, but don’t let them cause any drama. That drama could turn your dramatically positive experience into a traumatically bad experience.
What got me thinking about this was a recent conversation with Antony Brydon, the CEO and co-founder of Directly, a support automation company. We were talking about how sometimes a company will make a change that dramatically—in a negative way—impacts the customer. Specifically, he mentioned that as