What Would Mr. Rogers Do? How to Stress-Test Any Client Touchpoint

There is a 1970s children's television show that had a more rigorous empathy standard than most businesses apply to their client communication. And the test its head writer used on every single sentence before it could air is one of the most useful frameworks Nikki has ever brought into a client engagement.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• How the Mr. Rogers' writing team stress-tested every sentence before it aired, and the three questions that changed what made the final cut
• The real revenue problem hiding inside your most reasonable-sounding policies, and why "it makes sense to me" is the wrong question to be asking
• Three real business examples run through the Mr. Rogers’ test
• The mindset shift that separates technically correct from actually remembered

If you've ever sent a policy, an email, or an out-of-office and wondered why it landed wrong, this episode is going to show you exactly why.

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A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This is the one I was telling you about. It is the You will not believe this play so that I've just found literally a sensitive link to literally everyone I know. Their biggest thing is that the channel is a my senses is my favorite. Girl. 10 out of 10 would recommend. There's a line of dialogue that almost made it into Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. And this line was simple. It was pretty practical, and I'd say fairly reasonable and obvious from an adult perspective. And the line was don't play in the road. And before it could air on Mr. Rogers, Barry Head killed it. Barry Head was the head writer on Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, and his actual job, beyond just writing the show, was to make sure that every single sentence that came out of that television show was true for every single child who might hear it. And I say every single child because it's not most children, it's every child. And don't play in the road doesn't survive that test. If you've ever wondered what a children's television show from the 1970s has to do with your client experience, then please stay with me because by the end of this episode, you're going to have a test, just from Mr. Rogers right to you, that you can run on any touch point in your business. And I promise you, there's going to be at least one thing that doesn't survive it. Welcome to Would Recommend. I'm Nikki McKnight, a customer experience and operations strategist and founder of The Ops Shop. This show is all about the businesses customers can't stop talking about and what they actually did to earn it. Today is a Nikki Talks episode, which means it's just me and a framework I've been noodling on for a few weeks and a decision tree that we can take from Mr. Rogers' writing team that I think everybody who runs a founder-led business needs to steal. Let's get into it. So, Barry Head. Before anything made it to air on Mr. Rogers neighborhood, it went through what the team called the neighborhood writing guidelines. Some people are going to call it the Fred Rogers Communication Approach, whatever you call it. It's a philosophy, it's a standard. If you know me and if you know the work that I do, you know I love the word a standard. Because this philosophy, the standard was the same. Every single sentence before it makes it to air has to go through an empathy stress test before it makes the final cut. And I'm not talking about grammar, I'm not talking about clarity, it's empathy. Because the question that the Mr. Rogers team was the most concerned with was not, is this correct? The thing they wanted to make sure they always considered was: is this statement true for every single child who might hear it? And that question, this philosophy, this standard, changed everything about how they wrote that show. So let's talk about exactly how they did that because that's why we're here. So let's take that original line: don't play in the road. Again, it seems pretty obvious for a kid's show. Barry's team sat with it and started asking questions. And I'm talking about questions like Does every child who hears this have a road near them? Does every child have somewhere they can play? Does every child have the executive function to process a negative command and then redirect themselves towards something safer? And then I'm sure parents can identify with this is does telling a child not to do something actually stop them? Or does it, you know, just make them want to do it even more? Or does like does it plant the idea of, you know what, I should go play in the road. That sounds fun because they're telling me not to do it. So here's the thing about this planting the idea. Um the brain doesn't process negatives the way adults assume it does. Because if I tell you right now, hey, you, Jennifer, don't think about a pink elephant. What is happening in your head right now? I bet there's a pink elephant there now. So don't something like don't play in the road doesn't actually protect the kid. It just put the road in the kid's head, and then they just go out the door and they go, oh, road, that's where I should be. So the rewrite is not stay away from the road. It wasn't a softer version of the same instruction. The line actually became ask someone who loves you where it is safe to play. Right? Don't play on the road. Ask someone who loves you where it's safe to play. It's the same concern, but it's it really is a completely different direction because one of those is going to create anxiety and it fixates on the danger. The other is going to create agency and point towards safety. One assumes the child has the capacity and the resources to process a no, a prohibition. And the other one meets the child wherever they actually are and then gives them a path forward in the positive. That is the Fred Rogers test. But see, they're not just going to stop at something like the road. Every single sentence goes through the same process. So think about this. Tell your mom, right? Again, it's a pretty basic sentence, but then the question starts going, and I'm I'm pretty sure you could think about some of these. You know, does this child have a mom? Do they have two parents? Do they live with a guardian, a grandparent, an older sibling? Are they in foster care? Do they have someone who loves them, but maybe that person doesn't fit the assumed shape of the family? So tell your mom became, tell a grown-up you trust. Here's another one. Go home if you're scared, right? We would think, yeah. Like if you're scared, like go home. Like go, you know, go home and that's where you'll be safe. And you can talk to your parents, you can hide under your bed, et cetera, et cetera. But does every child have a home to go back to? Are you assuming that home is a safe place for a child? Or is that assumption doing harm to a child for whom home is the scary place? So the line became find a safe place, not go home if you're scared. So every single time the assumption they were making about how a kid would process information or what a kid would do got replaced was a with a principle. And the principle was written to travel with the kid wherever they are. And that means whatever their family looked like, whatever their home felt like, whatever was happening on the day that they heard it. I have often talked about people building services or programs or content on principles over methodologies. Like take Facebook ads, for example. If I was gonna create something, it's like five ways to write a Facebook ad or to launch Facebook ads, that is gonna change two days from now when Meta decides to change everything about the back end of the Facebook ads platform. I refuse, right? So unless you have a lot of money to keep that updated, it becomes useless right away. But instead, if you create a resource, create an offer that is about how to discover if paid ads are good for you, are right for you, and what platform you should be on, well, that's more evergreen because it's based in principle. So Barry Head's decision tree here for the Mr. Rogers show wasn't complicated. It's just asking questions most writers are going to skip. So he's asking, does this sentence assume something? Does it exclude anyone? Does it tell someone what not to do instead of where to go instead or what to do instead? And the big one, the one that I keep coming back to, and something I think we can all associate with the Mr. Rogers brand, that jovial, empathetic, kind man in a cardinal cardigan is is the sentence that I think is kind actually kind? Or does it just look kind from where I'm standing? Because I think Fred Rogers and the team around him understood that the sentence that you write and the sentence that your audience receives are not always the same sentence. So the gap between those two things for him was a moral problem. And in questions of morals, especially when you're in kids' television, he treated that accordingly and with the gravitas that it required. So now, here's where I want to make a turn because this is a business podcast and not a children's TV retrospective. Although I would say to you, go find clips of the Mr. Rogers neighborhood TV show on YouTube and kind of have this in the back of your mind. What are you noticing? So the gap here that I that I really want to identify is the gap of the sentence you write and the sentence your customer receives is not just moral for you, not like it is with Mr. Rogers. For you, this is a revenue problem. Most founder-led businesses are gonna write their client experience, they're gonna design their client experience from the inside out. And I want to be really clear that that's not a criticism. It's it's structural because you built the thing, you know the process, you know the flow, you know the refund policies, the intake forms, the automated emails that go out on day one, three, five, seven, nine after somebody signs up. You wrote all of it, you approved all of it, and it makes sense to you because you had the context. So to you, the instructions feel clear, the policies feel fair, and the welcome email that you sent uh feels helpful and warm because you had that in mind when you wrote it. But then when a client has a bad experience and you genuinely don't understand how, because everything looked fine from your side, honestly, how many of us, including me, have had a client say something, you're like, oh, I wish they would just read their emails, it was all in the email, right? I've done it, I've said it, I still say it. But here's something to notice you're standing on the inside of the sentence. Your client is standing on the outside. Feels fair to the person who wrote it and experienced as fair by the person receiving it, are two completely different things. And this is the gap that Barry Head and the writers at Mr. Rogers spent their entire career closing. This is the same gap that lives in your business right now that is doing the quiet damage. You probably can't see because you've never experienced things like a stranger would. And that's what I want to do a little magic on, do a little bit of a change today. So let's run the test. We're gonna take some real business copy, we're gonna put it through Barry's decision tree because theory is fun. But I want you to walk away with something you can actually use. So let's take a very common one in any type of business that has customer service. Um, submit a ticket and allow three to five business days, right? It's easy, it's clear. But let's, for the sake of this exercise, ask Barry's questions. So, question number one Does this customer have the bandwidth to submit a ticket and then track it and then wait and follow up if they don't hear back? How are they feeling right now? Are they anxious right now? Are they contacting support because something went wrong, which means they are already frustrated, they're already worried, and they're already doing the mental math on did they make the right decision by buying your software, booking your service, etc. Is this person coming off a bad experience with your last three competitors? So they are already halfway out the door before you even send them their first message. So, does this sentence, submit a ticket in a lot of three to five business days, tell them what not to do? Don't expect immediate help, don't call us, don't escalate. Instead of telling them where to go. So under Barry's checklist, under the Mr. Rogers communication structure, this does not survive. Instead, what if it became you'll hear from a real person before the week is out? Right? It's the same policy, it's the same timeline, but one of them sounds like a human wrote it for another human, while the other is gonna sound like legal reviewed it and just people are like, yeah, it's fine, cool. Something to think about. Let's try another one, okay? Another very common one. Please read our FAQ before contacting support. So again, we're gonna ask Barry's questions. Does this customer have time to read the FAQ? Does this sentence assume that they know where the FAQ is organized and that it's well indexed and the answer they need is actually in there? Does it tell them what to do before they're allowed to ask for help? Which, if you read it from the outside, is a mild accusation dressed up as a resource. Like honestly, I was having a problem with the software last week and I opened up the little chat thing. I had Googled, I had searched YouTube, I had looked at their help desk, and then I was like, well, the actual answer isn't here. And the it's an AI-assisted chat bot. First thing is like, type in what you want. It's like, read this article. I'm like, I already did. That's not what I'm asking for. And then it's like, okay, well, here's four more help articles. I'm like, none of this is what I'm asking for. And then the, you know, it just kept going. I was like, I have already done all this. They're essentially accusing me of not having checked anywhere else, which I can understand in customer service and tech. But don't make me feel like you're accusing me of wasting their time of as the customer support person. You're essentially saying, you probably should have done your homework. And maybe you have, just like I did, but the sentence that I'm receiving doesn't know that. The sentence is assuming that I didn't. So under the Mr. Rogers test, read our FAQ before contacting support becomes the fastest answers live here, right? It's the same intent. One of them, though, is a small kindness that trusts that the customer tried stuff. The other is a little bit of gentle gatekeeping that makes themselves makes your customers prove themselves first, which I'm already annoyed. Don't annoy me more. All right, let me give you um one more example that's not related to just uh customer support copy. Okay, here is an out-of-office message. Let's imagine that it says, I'll be out of the office until Monday. I'll respond to your email when I return. So ask Barry's questions. Um, does this customer know when you sent this auto reply? Do they know what day it is in relation to Monday? You know, which Monday? Monday two days from now, Monday, a week in two days from now. Are they reaching out because something is time sensitive uh in their business? Or is it something that can wait? Does this sentence tell them what not to do, which is don't expect a response, don't escalate, don't look for another way to reach me, instead of where to go? And this is a pretty easy fix. The out of office just becomes I'm out of the office and back on Monday the 12th. If something urgent comes up before then, so-and-so can help at this email address. So now we've we've relieved a lot of the ambiguity about which Monday, because I know plenty of people who are back in the office and that freaking out-of-office message is still on, so who knows if they're actually in or out. And the other one gives them a next step. So again, the point here is that every single time you are replacing an assumption with a principle. You're replacing the inside out view with the outside in one. You are asking yourself, because I'm assuming you care about customer experience, what does this feel like to receive? Not, well, it makes sense to me. And that is the mindset shift that I want you to take away from this episode because it is deceptively simple, but it is genuinely hard to sustain. Stop asking, does this make sense? Start asking, what does this feel like to receive? Because these are not the same question. The first one, does this make sense, is about accuracy. You can answer it from your desk with your context and the full understanding of everything that you have built. The second one requires you to step outside everything you know about your own business and read it cold. The first question is policies that are technically correct. The second question produces experiences that people actually remember. Because here is the thing about founder-led businesses specifically. Your reputation is not built on whether your policies are correct. Your reputation is built on whether your clients feel like you thought about them when you built the thing. Whether they can feel the care in the details, whether the experience of working with you matches the promises you made when they said yes. Satisfied clients renew, remarkable ones refer. And the gap between these two outcomes almost always lives in the sentences nobody thought to stress test, just like the writing team in Mr. Rogers neighborhood. So here is your mission for the week. I want you to pick one touch point. It could be an onboarding email, it could be a policy page, it could be a checkout confirmation. One thing. And I want you to read it like you absolutely know nothing about your business. Imagine you're the client on the other end, not the ideal client that you pictured when you built the thing, but the real one. The one who might be a little bit anxious, might be a little bit under some tie pressure or unsure that they made the right call, the one who has a kid sitting on their lap and is demanding their attention. And ask Barry's questions. Does this sentence assume something? Does it exclude anyone? Does it tell someone what not to do instead of where to go? And perhaps most importantly, is it kind from the outside or just from where I'm standing? Then you're gonna rewrite it toward the principle and not the procedure. You're going to write it toward the person on the other end of the sentence and not the process that produced it. Fred Rogers, the man in the cardigan, he built an entire television legacy on that single commitment. Your business doesn't need to have a legacy like Mr. Rogers. But at the end of the day, it does need to have fewer gaps between what you meant and what your customers felt. That's it for today's episode of Would Recommend. If this one landed for you, the best thing you can do is send it to another founder who needs to hear it. That's how this show grows. One recommendation at a time, which honestly feels pretty on brand. If you want to run your own touch points through this kind of audit and you'd rather not do it alone, that is what my Spark sessions are for. It is 90 minutes, your real stuff, no fluff. We're going through your actual client experience together, and we are finding those berry head moments before your clients do. And you can book it at the link in the bio. I'm Nikki McKnight. This is Would Recommend, and I will see you next week.