Episode 36: Helen Lawson, Co-op Funeral - The importance of empathetic language, voice and tone

Kristina Halvorson:

Hello. Thanks for joining me here at The Content Strategy Podcast. It has been really something else to see everybody's reaction and enthusiasm and excitement about the podcast being back in action. Thank you so much for your tweets and your LinkedIn shares and all the nice things that you were saying. I am so excited and honored by the folks that I've already spoken to and the folks that we're going to be speaking to, and I can't wait for you to meet them. I especially can't wait for you to meet today's fantastic guest. I first heard about Helen on Twitter, which is where I hear about everything, because apparently it is my sole source of news, and joy, and sadness, and whatever else.

I also heard her name on the lips of every content designer I know in the UK. Her work is really on the rise and being celebrated across a variety of groups and events. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Helen and then we're going to bring her on. So, when Helen saw someone cross the road rather than talk to her mom, after her brother died 20 years ago, she became passionate about improving the conversation around death. She went on to publish a book about bereavement for children, and worked with the charity Dying Matters to produce a suite of empathy, not sympathy cards. She once trained to be a funeral director and is now a lead content designer at Co-op Digital, specializing in and leading the tone of voice work for Funeralcare. Helen, welcome to The Content Strategy Podcast.

Helen Lawson:

Hello Kristina, thank you for having me.

Kristina Halvorson:

Thank you for being here. I'm so happy. Helen, where are you right now?

Helen Lawson:

I’m in Manchester, in the UK, which is where Co-op have their head offices, but I've lived here a long time. It's a great place.

Kristina Halvorson:

What do you like about it?

Helen Lawson:

Oh, well certainly not the weather, but it's urban, it's friendly, it's easy to get around. I used to live in London, which I loved, but Manchester has a lot of what London has but fewer people. So, that's what I think I like.

Kristina Halvorson:

I think you also have a cooler accent in Manchester. That's coming from a Minnesotan though. So, take what you will from that. Helen, I had the opportunity to meet you up close and personal when you submitted your talk proposal for Button, the content design conference, which is Brain Traffic's new event that's happening this October. Tell me a little bit about the talk that you're going to give and why the topic is important to you.

Helen Lawson:

The talk is called death and other difficult words, and it's a talk I'm super passionate about, because it's about encouraging people to have honest conversations around death using the right words, truthful words, no euphemisms. And trying to encourage people to talk more openly about it. Obviously in content design, so in print, online, in digital products that we build and make, but also in people's lives as well. I know at the end of my talk I always encourage people if you know somebody who's grieving, to look them up, drop them a text, call them, pop in. So it covers a lot of things really. And like you mentioned before about how somebody crossed the road rather than speak to my mum, that really had a huge impact on me. Because I metaphorically said to myself, "I'm never going to cross the road. I won't cross the road. If I see somebody walking towards me, who's gone through something so terrible. I'm going to go and say something. It doesn't matter what, just something."

And it sort of grew, this started as a 10 minute lightning talk when somebody dropped out of an event that we were doing a year ago. Now, I'm speaking at Button and it's amazing. And I think people are interested in this topic. I think it's one that people want to sort of hear more about.

Kristina Halvorson:

I have told you a couple of times now that when we were sorting through proposals for Button and this topic came across, I literally set it aside in a special gold star pile. It has a personal resonance with me because when my mother died suddenly and terribly in 2015, it came out of nowhere. I had never lost anyone before in my life, not a friend, not a grandparent, not an aunt and uncle. It started with my mom. And it was incredible to me, to see the people who somehow knew what to say and the people who didn't, and the people who knew what to say to a person were people who had lost someone that they had loved. And it struck me that I had never used the right language or said the right thing or sort of, what is it that we talk about?

We grieve outward in the circle. We don't grieve in on to the person who has experienced the loss, that I was really sort of putting my words in my grief on them inappropriately. So not only is this an extraordinarily important and personal topic in our everyday lives, but then you think about trying to translate that conversation, not only into the digital sphere, but also as a company online, who is providing specific funeral services to folks who've lost people online. It is a mind-blowingly complex, delicate conversation. I am really curious to hear from you about how you even begin to to tackle it? Was it that firsthand experience where you were experiencing, here's what people are saying that is helping. And here's what people are saying that is really hurting. How did you enter into it in the first place, this conversation?

Helen Lawson:

I mean, you hit the nail on the head a little bit there when you spoke about how the people that knew what to say are people that have gone through something themselves. It's kind of unfortunate that you have to join that awful club too.

Kristina Halvorson:‍

That's exactly right.

Helen Lawson:

You don't want to be a part of that, but when you've gone through it, you know a little better. I remember just after my brother died, a few years later, because of course the first couple of years it's just awful, aren't they? And I remember I actually actively called up some friends whose parents had died or a friend of mine, her mom had died and her dad had died before, so she felt orphaned. And I called her up to apologize for how terrible I must have been and how I didn't do enough, and I didn't check in often.

Kristina Halvorson:

I did the same thing with at least four of my friends. Oh my gosh.

Helen Lawson:

You don't know until you know, but that's what drives me to do this, because the more I can do talks like this and people listen to these talks. I get some amazing comments afterwards from people that have both been through something or haven't, or know somebody who has, and I just sort of think this is my way of giving back a little bit from what I learned from going through that awful grief. Something good has come out of it. I didn't go straight into doing this, because Andrew died 20 years ago now, and I've been working as a content designer for five years, but it was something I was always very keen on, on trying to, I don't know, you can't fix grief. You can't do anything like that, but you can just give people little moments of light and relief in that darkness, and that sort of felt really worthwhile pursuing for me.

Kristina Halvorson:

You have gone on from publishing a book about bereavement, working with the charity Dying Matters, training to be a funeral director, and now you're a content designer. Can you tell me a little bit about the path that brought you to content design?

Helen Lawson:

I didn't walk straight into content design. I worked as an advertising copywriter for 15 years. I used to write about large fitting bras and wide fitting shoes and car insurance, and how copywriters know a little about everything. And that was my routine, really. I've always loved words. I used to work in radio before that writing radio news pieces. And I set up my own little business selling the sympathy cards that you mentioned, but I didn't ever use the word sympathy because people are not really looking for sympathy. They want you to empathize. So once I was doing that and I wrote a little book for children about bereavement. I literally got a call out of nowhere from somebody going, "Co-op Funeralcare, we're looking for a content designer." I'd never heard of the term content design. It is a fairly new invention. Thanks to obviously Sarah Winters, who I think we both know, and I didn't really know what that meant, but I turned up and it was one of the most bizarre interviews.

I sat there with all of my cards, all of my bereavement cards that I'd made and all of these things, and I told everybody about my route and how I trained to be a funeral director, because I honestly thought that was what I was going to be. I thought if I could be a really brilliant funeral director and help people have a good funeral, because I'm also passionate about a good funeral can set you on the journey to better grief. And it's something to look back on. My brother's funeral, I would live it again tomorrow. I'd have him back first, but I would go through that day again because it was spectacular. He was a biker, proper biker, patch on the back. 220 motorbikes going side by side, slowly behind the cortege. I've got goosebumps.

Every time I think about it, it gives me goosebumps. And that's what made me think, if I could be a funeral director and help people have experiences like that, that would be great. But then you have to be on call and you have to work really hard. I have two children and I have a busy life. So, the next best thing for me really, and I feel so privileged and so lucky, but I get to write and set the tone of voice for Co-op Funeralcare, which is the largest provider of funerals in the UK.

Kristina Halvorson:

How did Funeralcare realize they needed a content designer?

Helen Lawson:

Well Co-op Digital, now Co-op Technology, we've had content designers for quite some time. We were early adopters of that discipline. I did a bit of a long waiting game really. I've worked on some digital products for Funeralcare. I worked on a sort of back of house arrangement digital system, that I worked with a team and we built it from scratch. The language in there is really important because we're a national business, there are lots of different regions, people have different ways of saying things. And there are back of house words that you use when you're talking about death. And then there were front of house words that you use. I learnt so much from doing that. And then I hung about a bit and just kept needling people.

Eventually, I was put in charge of the tone of voice for Co-op Funeralcare. This is like five years I've been at Funeralcare, and this has all happened just in the last year. And it's down to brilliant line management that I have, my line manager, Hannah Horton, who's such a content hero for me. And she sort of pushed me to the front and got me there and said, "You need to look at this tone of voice work." And I did, and everybody's come along with me. It was like pushing an open door. Everybody sort of gets it. You don't use euphemisms when you're describing what's happened. It doesn't soften the blow, we can't be misunderstood. So, all of those things that I've been saying for such a long time, I now get to say, and I now get to help the tone of voice for Co-op Funeralcare and act out. I feel like I'm in a really privileged position.

Kristina Halvorson:

Well, so is every single person who is coming across your content, that is clear. I want to talk a little bit about the services that your organization provides and the audiences that you need to deliver this content to. So can you first talk about the services?

Helen Lawson:

Co-op Funeralcare have just under a 1000 funeral homes across the UK. And so we will offer anything from a full tailored funeral, where you get to choose every aspect from the car, the coffin, all of those things, flowers, you can do whatever you like. And also they do sort of cheaper options as well for people where money is a constraint, or there's the David Bowie funeral, which is called the direct cremation, which is where we will take the body, and we will organize a cremation and return the ashes. And so, we do all sorts of services like that. And I've met lots of funeral directors, I've been into lots of funeral homes and done all the research that you need to do to understand this business. And I'm moved every single time I meet people at work for Co-op Funeralcare, because the thought and the care that they give to the funerals that they arrange is absolutely astonishing. And that's what makes you want to do a good job for them as well. You're representing them.

One of my favorite stories is there's a young funeral director called Ryan, who I worked with a lot. He worked on our digital product with us, and he told me how he had to arrange a funeral for a young boy. Always really difficult. And he got to meet the family. He met them, they showed him around the young boy's bedroom. He saw that this boy loved red London buses. He had little models of them all around his room and they talked about how much he loved them. And the family asked for four limousines to take family members to the funeral. And that would cost them a pretty penny. And instead of just getting four limousines, which is very easy to do, Ryan organized a red London bus.

So, when the cortege turned up outside the house, there's the hearse with the boy in the back. And then this big red London bus with Ryan, with his top hat and his full sort of funeral outfit on, welcoming people onto the bus with the boy's name was on the front. Everybody got given a ticket with his name on. And I just think that family is going to remember that moment and that thing, and every time. And I work with people who do that, who do that sort of thing, not every day, you can't go that far every day, but those are the sorts of services that funeral directors provide. It's event management, but the most sort of creative, caring and important event management you'll ever come across.

Kristina Halvorson:

It seems strange to be introducing this phrase into this conversation, but is that driven by corporate values?

Helen Lawson:

Yes, I think a little bit, because Co-op has very ethical corporate values that I'm a fan of. One of the reasons why I like to work for the Co-op, but also it's the people that want to become a funeral director is why I wanted to become a funeral director, and almost did. It's because you can come up with ideas like that and be creative, but also really make a difference, make an impact. So, not everybody gets a red London bus because not everybody wants that. But what is appropriate is what should happen. When I hear stories like that from my colleagues, I just feel so proud of what they do and I just think it's incredible.

Kristina Halvorson:

Absolutely. And I feel like my comment needs a little bit more context. I unfortunately have had now the opportunity to experience working with several funeral directors for various elderly members of my family, and they are to a person loving, present, respectful, empathetic. I do think in many ways it does need to be a calling. What I was trying to get at is that to have a 1000 of these funeral homes, and to be able to show up for families like that, to a person whether or not it's highly creative, that's got to be driven by to some degree leadership. To say, "This is what we stand for. This is who we put first," versus "Just let me sit you down at a table and talk you through our high-end line of urns." Right?

Helen Lawson:

Absolutely. And it does. I also think that we've recently been through a global pandemic, and without companies like Co-op, the size of us, because I know that for some people, perhaps we're too big for them, they would prefer a family, independent funeral director. I think without the Co-op over the last year and a half, there would have been a national emergency. Our colleagues have gone absolutely out of their way to make sure that everybody got as respectful a funeral as was possible within the restrictions. So yes, I do think it comes from the top. And if it didn't, I wouldn't work here.

Kristina Halvorson:

Tell me then about how that value set and how the nature of the services that are provided inform what gets built digitally? What content design is required or the rule that content design plays throughout the organization?

Helen Lawson:

We've made a lot of changes in the last year because I think sometimes we sounded like a corporation previously. The opening line on the Co-op Funeralcare website to a year and a half ago used to be, we've been arranging funerals for a 100 years. And when I came in and was able to look at that and I'm like, "Nobody cares that we've been arranging funerals for a 100 years. They really don't. What they care about is that you can do one for them now today." So we changed that sort of thing to try and make us feel a little bit more personal in it, because that's the experience you get when you go and arrange of a funeral with Co-op Funeralcare is a personal one, not a national corporation one. So, there was lots of work like that we had to do, but I'm so hugely passionate about not using euphemisms and not shying away from what we do.

I always say in my talk, if we can't talk about death as funeral directors, then who can? This is our business. This is what we do. And if you look at there's lots and lots of lots of bereavement charities, I'm sure there are in America as well, but certainly over here, every single one of them, even baby loss, baby death charities, we'll talk about the death of a baby. They will talk about, when someone dies. They will use the right language because it's the right thing to do. And that's our evidence-base there. I do know that sometimes when people see the word death or dying or dead, it might not make them feel great, but then it isn't great, but there's no room for confusion and no room for misunderstanding when you are clear like that in your language. I've spoken to lots of funeral directors and some agree with me, some don't.

One of the qualities in a funeral director is empathy, that we spoke about before. If somebody is sitting opposite you, and they're saying, "My mom has just passed away." I think it's perfectly fine for them to mirror that language in an empathetic way, "I'm sorry to hear that your mom passed away." So I wouldn't tell people how to speak, but as a voice, as a Funeralcare business in the UK, we need to speak with one clear voice. And the most important thing is to be understood and to help people get through the journey of arranging a funeral from A to B. I don't like to say that this is going to be difficult as well. We did use to say that across our site, we know that arranging a funeral can be difficult. Well, grief is difficult. Arranging the funeral doesn't have to be because that's what our colleagues are here for. That's what we're here for.

If you go to the dentist and they say to you, "This is going to hurt." You're going to flinch. We don't set ourselves up for saying this is going to be difficult. There's lots of different tonal changes that we made throughout this last year to get our language in a certain position. I'm really proud of it at the moment. I'm really proud of how we do it, but I would never tell a funeral director how to speak. I wouldn't say to them, "Please don't use that language." It's for them to know.

Kristina Halvorson:

That to me is an interesting conversation and conundrum, because you're essentially centralized services for a distributed organization. It is interesting when we start talking about the enterprise content strategy level, and we start talking about content systems within design systems, we want to create consistency of language. We want to create a unified front. I often say, your customer or your user doesn't care if they're hearing from you on a website, on the phone, via a text, they expect the same organization to show up. And so it's interesting to me that you are making room for it and have that trust with your funeral directors to say, "This is the kind of topic where we're not going to give you talking points here. You've trained for this, this is your space. We're going to let you shape this conversation and use the language, as it flexes with the person who has suffered the loss."

Helen Lawson:

And I think that's the right thing to do. The word trust is useful there because I think we have to trust the funeral directors that work for us, to know how best to speak to somebody when they are grieving, sitting in front of them.

Kristina Halvorson:

Let's chat about the content design work that you're doing. You're working on the website and you have digital products that are also available?

Helen Lawson:

Yep. We're very busy. We're working on a number of things at the moment but the roadmap is looking very full. We've just introduced something where you can now pay for a funeral online and you couldn't do that previously. We've got lots of things in the pipeline. I'm not always sure what am I allowed to talk about, and what I'm not. But we worked on a digital product a few months ago. It launched in January where a customer can come to our site or a client can come to our website, and if they don't want to speak to somebody because people don't always, they can go through... we call it the funeral online planner. So they can go, they can put in the name of the person who died, they can put some details in, they can pick a coffin, pick a hearse, pick some flowers, tell us which local funeral home they want to use, what crematorium, put some songs in there, hymns and all of their things.

That will just shoot off to their local funeral director who will give them a call and arrange everything for them. So, that's one thing that we're working on at the moment. I was skeptical about that, Kristina, I won't mind admitting. I wasn't sure that this was the one area in our lives where we didn't need human interaction, but it's been used successfully end to end about 600 times since it was launched in January. Which I know he's not a huge number, but it's bigger than I thought it was going to be. I think there is an appetite for people to self-serve. There is an appetite when you're grieving, your mind possibly wakes up at 3:00 AM, and maybe that's the time when you need to start making decisions about what hearse you want to choose, or what route the cortege should take. And your mind could be buzzing. If we can have this sort of online space where people can make those decisions and talk to their funeral director without having to see them personally, then that's a good thing.

Kristina Halvorson:

It sounds like when you are crafting that content, whether it's the UI content or positioning copy, marketing copy, whatever it might be, that you're erring on the side of clarity and directness. Is that right?

Helen Lawson:

Every time. Clarity, directness, brevity. People haven't got time to read a lot in their cognitive load. We can't overload them when they're distressed. The funeral is the ultimate distress purchase. It really is. There's nothing else really like it. So, we have to make sure that we can tell people really clearly, really quickly what it is they need to do. That's why euphemisms are a bad idea. They get in the way. So, absolutely. We have to use the right words and I would never use the word deceased in a client facing environment, but we do use the word deceased in back of house because it's a singular noun used to describe a thing that needs to move from place to place. But I would never allow that word to be used in a client facing environment because nobody wants to think of their person as deceased. So, there are lots of little rules where I become a brick wall and I won't allow certain things on the website and I think that's the right thing to do.

Kristina Halvorson:

Helen, when you first came to the organization, I'm going to assume just the fact that it said we've been arranging funerals for a 100 years, that you may have encountered some flowery language, some very sympathetic language or some we're going to couch what's difficult in softer language. How in the world were you able to talk to this company that's been around for a 100 years and convince them to lead with clarity and brevity versus trying to care for people's emotions?

Helen Lawson:

Well, I think I can be very persuasive and I can also be very tenacious and I didn't let it go. And I think that a lot of people got there too. All of my team understood and a lot of people, all our funeral directors understood. So it wasn't as difficult as you might think, but I was asked to approve a piece of printed collateral the other day, that was going to be sitting in funeral homes. And the first line in there was ‘we are so sorry for your loss’. And that's in a printed piece of paper that's going to go home with somebody. And immediately I rang somebody up because I think it was soon to go to print it, and I'm like, "You've got to take that line out. You can't say, that it's disingenuous."

If the funeral director wants to say that to them in person, that's absolutely fine, but a corporation the size of Co-op, even if we weren't the size of Co-op, even if you were a small family run funeral director, for somebody to read that on their own, away from an individual expressing that sorrow, I just think it feels disingenuous because funerals cost about 4,000 pounds as well. So, yes, we're sorry for your loss, but we're also grateful for your business. You have to be very careful when you're saying that sort of thing, but I think everybody was ready for change as well. I think that funerals have changed a lot. I think attitudes are changing really swiftly. Funerals, they haven't changed for hundreds of years. Everyone dressed in black, everybody in mourning. We call that the Queen Victoria effect, because she was in mourning for 30 years.

An interesting fact as well is it's also sort of suggested, that one of the reasons why so many funeral directors were men in the last sort of 100 years was because when Queen Victoria saw her husband Prince Philip dead, she said, "This is nothing for a woman. A woman shouldn't see this." So then all of a sudden what used to be a very much a female profession became very male. And now that's still your image. I bet you, when you think of a funeral director, you think of a tall graying, older man, perhaps, but that's changing too. There are lots of really progressive, exciting female funeral directors coming to the fore. And that really excites me about where it's going. And I think funerals are more colorful, perhaps.

I think it's too blunt to just say that they've become a celebration of life because I think aspects of funerals can be celebrations of who that person was, but they still can be very somber and very sad and difficult days. So, I wouldn't want to be so sort of flippant and say that funerals are an act a celebration of life because I don't believe that, but they are changing. Attitudes are changing and language is changing all the time. And not only do we have to keep up, but I think we have to lead. And that's what I think that we're doing with these tone of voice principles.

Kristina Halvorson:

How are those tone of voice principles documented? How are they shared? How do you help people continually embrace them and put them into action? What are your methods or working norms that help to inform that?

Helen Lawson:

Well, our tone of voice principles sit within our brand guidelines that are given to any agency or anybody that comes to work for us. But in the last sort of six months, I've run maybe about eight or 10 training courses. So when people come to write for us, I give them a little bit of a version of the talk that I'll be doing at Button, to explain the background as to why it's important to get this right, why it's important to not use the euphemisms and all those sorts of things and get people to really care about it. In fact, even when engineers join our team, several times now we've had changes. You'll get a whole group of engineers that come roll off on a project and then join a project. When they come, they’re used to just writing code and one bunch came from Sky Bet.

They'd been working on a betting website and I could see them more when they were working away to code, code, code, taking tickets off the board, producing code and making things happen. But I did a talk to them. I took them through what it's like to arrange a funeral because even people that write code, I think it's important that they are connected to what it is that they're writing and what they're doing and who it's for. And so I will do that and lots and lots of coaching, lots of training. And I'm also really available, I'm happy to read over anybody's work and I'll approve something for you. I'll give you a second eye on it and I'm happy to be involved because I think it's really important. I am looking at, I think though, because we've got a great team of writers, Co-op has really embraced the content design discipline like you said, and I think there's a lot of people really care about it.

Quite often I'm pushing an open door but I think people are bought in. They get it, language changes. It evolves, doesn't it? Clarity and brevity in kindness are just crucial to this business.

Kristina Halvorson:

Helen, we are just about out of time. I'm going to ask you a question that I'm pretty sure a lot of listeners have top of mind and it is not directly to do with content design. Moments before this interview, I had swung by the corner market and an old neighbor of mine just two weeks ago, suddenly lost her 28 year old son in a freak accident. And I had sent an email. I had thought, "Oh, I need to call, but I want to give them space. I know they've got a lot of people in the house." And here I ran into her at the checkout line.

I started openly weeping in front of everyone. You don't want to be the one crying while they're standing there comforting you obviously. That's not appropriate. Having gone through unthinkable loss myself, all I could say was, "This is impossible. And I love you. And I'm so sorry, and this is not okay." I didn't have any other words. Do people come to you and you say, "When somebody dies, what should I say?"

Helen Lawson:

I think what you said sounds absolutely right. I think it's okay that you showed emotion. Doesn't matter maybe you wouldn't have wanted to be at a checkout, but I think it's really useful that you show emotion about that. And I think one of the cards that I wrote when I had my little business, it just said, "I don't know what to say. So I might not say much. I just want you to know that. I'm sorry." Unless you're a really clumsy and an unempathetic individual, and there aren't many of those, you're not going to say anything that's going to make them feel worse. You are not going to remind somebody that their child has died because they've never forgotten that. So I think going up acknowledging it and just saying, I'm so sorry to hear about, and then say their name, because people don't say the name of someone when they've died.

It's really important because the person who misses them wants to hear that name, wants to feel it, wants to feel it in their own mouths, in their own ears. They want to know that they've been remembered. So, I think going up and just doing that, if you can't think of anything to say, just say, "I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry about what happened." I think what you said sounds perfect. It is utterly rubbish and completely difficult and saying something is important. I also think that the really important time to check in with people, because you're right in those first few weeks, or in the first few days after like an accident or a death or something, it can be busy, it can be busy. You can have a lot of visitors, a lot of flowers coming. And my goodness, do you need that. You really need that to fill your time when you're feeling so hurt. But it's after. It's after the funeral, people come to the funeral, very respectful, very wonderful. Lots of, lots of love.

Funerals are such a loving time, but it's a couple of weeks after the phone stops ringing, people stop popping around and they don't want to mention in case they upset you again. I feel like the most important thing that you can do is, this friend of yours that you saw at the checkout, call in on her in a month's time, or in two months, six months. At Christmas, make sure she's okay. Say, "It must be really difficult at Christmas without... " Say their name. I think we need to look after people longer when they're hurting. So that's some advice that I would give, but absolutely say something.

Kristina Halvorson:

That advice is just a gift. Thank you so much. Helen, I can't wait to hear from you again and see your smiling face again at Button, which is happening in October. And if you also want to see Helen speak at Button, you can go to buttonconf.com and check out our full lineup there. Thank you so very much for your time today, Helen. It's an honor to speak with you.

Helen Lawson:

Thank you so much. Can't wait to see you. Thank you.