Jargon Kills (Other People’s Time)

A Cautionary Tale for Writers and Speakers

Are you inadvertently wasting other people’s time when you speak or write? Here’s a cautionary tale for anyone who works in a field that uses acronyms, abbreviations, and other jargon.

“We had an NPS of 80.”

That comment came from a marketer on a panel discussion in a video. She was referring to Net Promoter Score -a metric of how willing customers are to recommend a business to others.

A few people commented on that score, and then the conversation moved on. I thought nothing of it, alas.

But here’s the thing-not everyone on the panel came from the world of marketing. Probably not everyone in the audience, either. The average person on the street has no reason to know or care about Net Promoter Score.

One of the panelists was mystified, but didn’t want to interrupt to clarify. As she told me later, “When you’re in the thick of it, you don’t like to ask, because you don’t like to look like an idiot.”

(We’ve all experienced that uncomfortable feeling when we don’t know something that others do.)

This woman (my new friend and ally in the jargon battle) is clearly diligent, because she set out to learn what the term meant.