The voice charter template
One page that says how your company speaks. Copy it, answer the prompts, and the leader signs what remains.
One page that says how your company speaks. The leader signs it, because tone is a promise about how the company will behave, and only the leader can make that promise. The reasoning behind each section is in the voice charter chapter.
How to use this page: copy it, answer each prompt in your own words, delete the prompts, and sign what remains. Keep it to one page. If a section takes more than a few sentences, it is not decided yet.
Who we are
- What is true about your business that matters to a buyer? Three sentences or fewer. Take them from your claim inventory, the list of claims you can prove.
Our tone
- How does the company speak? One sentence, in plain words. An example of the form: "We are direct about evidence, careful with promises, and polite without being distant."
What we claim
- List up to five claims you make in public. Beside each claim, name its proof: the report, the certificate, the reference.
What we never claim
- List at least three things the company does not say, even when a sale is close. An example of the form: "We do not call ourselves the best. We do not quote a delivery time we have not confirmed. We do not name a customer without their consent."
Our languages
One line per language you publish in. Each line says how direct, how formal, and how warm the company sounds in that language. A native reader owns each line. Their job is calibration, not proofreading: does this sound like us, said properly here?
- Language: … How we sound in it: … Native reader: …
- Repeat the line for every language you publish in.
How we speak about compliance
For regulated sectors. Leave this section out if it does not apply.
- What may be said in your sector about safety, performance, and compliance, and in what form? Name the rules that govern claims in your sector, and who checks a claim before it is published.
Who decides in doubt
- Name one person who answers when it is unclear whether a text keeps this charter.
The long game we protect
- Which standing efforts belong to the long game: the published evidence, the teaching pages, the presence you keep up? The leadership reviews them once a year, and does not judge them by this quarter's numbers.
Signature
- Signed by, role, date.
- Next review, one year on. Between reviews, the charter changes only by a new signature.
Once signed, the charter gates content: a text that violates it does not go out, whoever wrote it, however good it sounds.