What is a story? How do I tell one?
"Crafting" stories isn't supposed to be complicated. It doesn't have to be. Let's talk about how to create a simple kind of story—one that will be fun to listen to and have a deeper meaning.
Originally posted here: LinkedIn.
I've always wanted to write a LinkedIn article that is actually useful.
Everyone agrees on the importance of storytelling. Yet I can't find a brief guide that defines a "story" in a straightforward way. I can find some guides that tell you what one is, but they make it sound like a lot of work.
★ Telling a good story should be natural, easy and fun. Here's my definition: a story is something people enjoy listening to that conveys a message in an indirect way.
That’s it. The rest of this article is just how that works in practice.
Say “here’s a scenario…” and you're halfway there. Call it an example or an anecdote if you want; the effect is the same.
Make a story
We’re still doing sales here. Note what problem your product solves, or why someone would want to buy it.
Here's a situation:
Of the various channels of communication with companies, contact centers are the easiest to exploit.
Bad people obtain account information online.
Malefactors impersonate their targets to gain access to, for example, bank accounts and steal money.
Bandwidth has a product named Call Verification that makes doing that harder. It's a firewall for phone calls.
For…say…a financial institution with multiple public-facing Toll Free numbers, I hope the benefit of such a product is clear.
I said above that we are getting a message across. The message is: Call Verification by Bandwidth will help you reduce fraud.
To make it more compelling, you can frame it as a story. Convey the above indirectly in an interesting way.
Here’s me telling a story
This a story I told to a team at a major investment bank:
This bank has special client associates who work with mid-size hedge funds across the world. They may be “mid-size,” but they still manage portfolios north of $100 million dollars. These top-tier clients have dedicated Toll-Free numbers that route them to their own special department.
Because these are big clients with sophisticated needs, they're not really calling into a contact center. They're connecting to a pool of associates—generally young professionals in their first few years with the firm.
In the bank's consumer call centers, agents are trained weekly on filtering out fraud attempts. The transaction values are also smaller. Even if a fraud attempt is successful, the payoff is a few thousand dollars at best.
The bad guy has an idea: what if he puts in some extra work and invests in fresh data from a dark corner of the internet. If he can impersonate a hedge fund executive just one time, he might be able to route a few million dollars to an account of his own. It's bold, daunting and will be hard to pull off. But he's never heard of anyone trying this avenue before.
Using his ill-gotten, but accurate, account information for a fund, the bad guy calls this special fund management Toll-Free number. He passes through five layers of security and authentication. Ultimately, he's connected with an associate.
The associate has an economics degree from a prestigious university and an MBA with a concentration in finance from another brand-name program. She is undeniably smart. But she’s 26. She's in her first job out of college and has her hands full catering to demanding finance types.
Now, she is trained on how to identify fraud. It's a section of her department's yearly e-learning requirement, along with HR policies, the importance of data privacy, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and a reminder not to take bribes.
She knows the call wouldn't make it to her if the caller hadn't proved his identity through several layers of security.
The bad guy introduces himself and explains that an investor wants to withdraw funds and create a trust for his son. He knows all the details. He knows the name and number of the fund in question. He asks to initiate a transfer of $2 million to a bank account in Delaware.
So she does. A week later, the transaction goes through. The Delaware bank account is owned by a company with a vague name registered in George Town on the Cayman Islands. It shares a headquarters address with 12,000 other companies. Once it lands in paradise, the $2 million is split into eight random amounts, which are sent to eight different accounts at eight different banks and begins an international odyssey. Eventually, it evaporates into the ether.
The associate severely reprimanded but isn't fired. Some time later, she quits her job to take another position at a different bank. She would have loved staying on, but she'll always be the junior associate who lost $2 million in ten minutes.
Now, with Call Verification, you're more likely to catch these calls. We'd augment your question-and-answer security questions, taking each inbound call and assigning it a score...
Ok, I know this is way longer than it needs to be. The part about the Caymans could definitely go. But answer honestly: was at least mildly interesting?
It takes longer to tell this to a customer, but the counterintuitive part is that it won't feel longer. A boring YouTube video can drag at 10 minutes. A good movie can fly by despite a two-hour runtime.
If you can sell by simply stating “our product does X, which helps people like you have desirable outcome Y,” God bless. You're good.
I’ve had more luck with stories. As it happens, I've had more fun too.
I have a feeling that's not a coincidence.
Beautiful 😍 what a great information 😁 keep going ✨