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Messaging Framework From Customer Language

Four documents and three sheets that count your customers' words against your company's, then put a numbered verbatim behind every line.

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Pack of 7 files: 4 documents, 3 spreadsheets

Messaging Framework From Customer Language

Messaging FrameworkDocument
Voice of Customer AppendixDocument
Verbatim Usage StandardDocument
Rollout NoteDocument
Language Frequency AnalysisSpreadsheet
Claim to Evidence MapSpreadsheet
Proof Point RegisterSpreadsheet

Messaging Framework From Customer Language

Language Frequency Analysis

Their word against ours, counted

46 sources · 30 sales calls, 8 interviews, 6 months of tickets, 8 public reviews · Larkfield, inventory software

Concept	What customers say	Uses	What we say	Their uses
The core problem	flying blind on stock	31	real-time inventory visibility	0
What good looks like	know what we actually have	27	single source of truth	0
The blocking constraint	we are not ripping out the ERP	14	integration-friendly architecture	0
The finance friction	finance does not believe our number	9	auditability	1
The loss event	shrinkage	7	inventory variance	2
Improvement	no customer term found	0	optimise	1

The line that ends the argument

Customers said “single source of truth” zero times across forty-six sources. The messaging document it replaced used it four times, and the homepage still uses it twice.

Two verdicts nobody expects

Keep the jargon. “Shrinkage” survives at seven uses because customers genuinely say it. Replacing it with plain language would be an error the count already ruled out.

Make no claim. Speed to value has three mentions, two of them negative. The framework says nothing about it, and says so in writing.

Every count is split by source type and marked for whether it was unprompted, because in a sales call the rep speaks first.

Larkfield's messaging document says "unified inventory intelligence platform" and "single source of truth". Across forty-six sources, thirty sales calls, eight interviews, six months of support tickets and eight public reviews, customers said "single source of truth" zero times. They said "we are flying blind" or a close variant thirty-one times, nine of them using that exact phrase. Both wordings were available to whoever wrote the document. Only one of them came from a transcript.

This is why messaging arguments do not resolve. Two people argue from taste, taste has no tiebreaker, and the more senior preference wins. A count has a tiebreaker. Zero uses in forty-six sources against thirty-one is not a matter of opinion, and nobody disputes it without reading the transcripts, which nobody does. So the frequency sheet is filled before the framework, because a framework written first gets defended with evidence found afterwards.

Then the words go somewhere public, and a customer quote on a page is an endorsement under 16 CFR Part 255. An excerpt has to fairly reflect what was said, and a user testimonial rests on somebody who still is one. So every verbatim here carries its full surrounding passage rather than the pull quote, its consent scope by surface, and the date its user status was last confirmed. It installs into the marketing workspace beside the Search Console keyword map and the rest of the template library.

Every claim traced, every quote cleared, and the competition ranked honestly

The Claim to Evidence Map with statuses, the Proof Point Register with consent and confirmation dates, and the alternatives ranked by mention count.

Messaging Framework From Customer Language

ClaimsVerbatimsAlternatives

Claims

Claim to Evidence Map

One row per claim per surface. Four statuses, and one of them takes copy off a live page.

Claim	Where it is live	Sources	Types	Status	Gap
You promise stock you cannot ship	Homepage hero; ads	31	4	cleared
It reads and writes to what is already there	Homepage; every deck	14	2	cleared
Every adjustment carries who and why	Product page; finance one-pager	4	2	cleared
Finance stops arguing with operations	Case study headline	1	1	blocked	The one passage carries a qualification that cannot be trimmed away
Built for wholesale rather than retail	Battlecard	3	1	needs work	One source repeats a phrase the rep used earlier in the same call
Reduces the year-end write-down	Finance one-pager	2	2	needs work	Both sources call it a surprise. Neither says it got smaller
Cuts carrying cost by 20%	Sales deck slide 6	0	0	remove	Nobody in the building can name where the 20% came from
Live in weeks	Deck slide 9; pricing page	0	0	remove	Three mentions in the corpus, two of them negative
Easier to use than the alternatives	Homepage subhead	0	0	remove	Four passing mentions, and every competitor claims it

Claim

Where it is live

Sources

Types

Status

Gap

You promise stock you cannot ship

Homepage hero; ads

cleared

It reads and writes to what is already there

Homepage; every deck

cleared

Every adjustment carries who and why

Product page; finance one-pager

cleared

Finance stops arguing with operations

Case study headline

blocked

The one passage carries a qualification that cannot be trimmed away

Built for wholesale rather than retail

Battlecard

needs work

One source repeats a phrase the rep used earlier in the same call

Reduces the year-end write-down

Finance one-pager

needs work

Both sources call it a surprise. Neither says it got smaller

Cuts carrying cost by 20%

Sales deck slide 6

remove

Nobody in the building can name where the 20% came from

Live in weeks

Deck slide 9; pricing page

remove

Three mentions in the corpus, two of them negative

Easier to use than the alternatives

Homepage subhead

remove

Four passing mentions, and every competitor claims it

Three claims come off live surfaces. The 20% is the one that matters: it is on slide six of every deck, it has been quoted in a board meeting, and tracing it back finds no source in the corpus and nobody who can name its origin.

Blocked is not the same as removed. The finance claim has real evidence and cannot be used as written, because the only passage supporting it carries a qualification. Quote the qualification too, or paraphrase without quotation marks.

Two source types beats four sources of one type. Four verbatims from four sales calls all share the same contamination risk.

Verbatims

Proof Point Register

Full passage, not the pull quote. Consent scoped by surface. User status with a confirmation date.

ID	Source	Using at the time	Unprompted	Consent scope	Confirmed	Public use
V-029	Interview	Customer 5 years	yes	Site, deck, paid	quarterly	cleared, all surfaces
V-011	Interview	Customer 14 months	yes	Case study, site, deck	quarterly	cleared, full passage required
V-033	Interview	Customer 3 years	yes	Owned surfaces only	quarterly	owned only, paid needs re-consent
V-019	Public review	Customer 2 years	yes	Excerpt with attribution	overdue	conditional: passage qualifies the praise
V-004	Sales call	trial at the time	yes	None sought	n/a	internal only, not a bona fide user
V-041	Support ticket	Customer 18 months	yes	None sought	overdue	internal only, speaker did not know
V-037	Public review	churned at month 16	yes	None	lapsed	do not use
V-035	Sales call	Prospect	no	None sought	n/a	not evidence: rep said it first

Source

Using at the time

Unprompted

Consent scope

Confirmed

Public use

V-029

Interview

Customer 5 years

yes

Site, deck, paid

quarterly

cleared, all surfaces

V-011

Interview

Customer 14 months

yes

Case study, site, deck

quarterly

cleared, full passage required

V-033

Interview

Customer 3 years

yes

Owned surfaces only

quarterly

owned only, paid needs re-consent

V-019

Public review

Customer 2 years

yes

Excerpt with attribution

overdue

conditional: passage qualifies the praise

V-004

Sales call

trial at the time

yes

None sought

n/a

internal only, not a bona fide user

V-041

Support ticket

Customer 18 months

yes

None sought

overdue

internal only, speaker did not know

V-037

Public review

churned at month 16

yes

None

lapsed

do not use

V-035

Sales call

Prospect

None sought

n/a

not evidence: rep said it first

V-037 is the row this register exists for. A glowing public review from somebody who churned four months later. Under 16 CFR 255.1(c) a user endorsement needs a bona fide user at the time plus good reason to believe they remain one, and nothing in a normal marketing process was ever going to catch this.

V-041 is a support ticket, and it is the best-worded quote in the corpus. It stays internal. The person writing it did not know they were being read for marketing and no consent exists.

Every row holds the passage around the excerpt. A quote ending just before the word “but” is the case that field exists to catch.

Alternatives

The alternatives, ranked by mention count

What customers said they were actually choosing between, in the order the corpus put them.

Alternative	Mentions	What they said about it
Do nothing and count harder	19	“the plan right now is we count more often, that is the plan”
A spreadsheet somebody maintains	16	“Dev built it, Dev left, nobody knows what the third tab does”
The ERP module they already own	12	“we already paid for it, nobody could get it working”
Named competitor A	7	“quoted us more than the problem costs”
Named competitor B	3	“built for retail, we are wholesale”

Alternative

Mentions

What they said about it

Do nothing and count harder

“the plan right now is we count more often, that is the plan”

A spreadsheet somebody maintains

“Dev built it, Dev left, nobody knows what the third tab does”

The ERP module they already own

“we already paid for it, nobody could get it working”

Named competitor A

“quoted us more than the problem costs”

Named competitor B

“built for retail, we are wholesale”

Doing nothing outranks both named competitors combined, roughly two to one. The three largest alternatives are not vendors at all, which means the competitive deck is aimed at a fraction of the real competition and the framework should lead on the cost of the status quo.

The third row is a competitor already inside the account. Twelve customers are paying for inventory functionality they could not get working, which is a different sales conversation from a head-to-head and nobody was having it.

This ranking is the slide that changes behaviour, and it takes one afternoon of counting to produce.

Edit with AI

What's in the pack

Language Frequency Analysis

Their term against yours with counts split by source type, marked for whether each use was unprompted, and a verdict per concept.

Claim to Evidence Map

One row per claim per surface, with a status that includes remove, so unsourced copy comes off live pages rather than staying.

Proof Point Register

Every verbatim with its full surrounding passage, consent scoped by surface, and the date the speaker's user status was last confirmed.

Messaging Framework

Claims ordered by count rather than by preference, each carrying verbatim numbers, with the old wording and its zero beside it.

Voice of Customer Appendix

The passages at length, grouped by what they evidence, plus a written note on every claim the corpus could not support.

Verbatim Usage Standard

The four checks before a quote goes public, built on what the FTC's endorsement guides actually require.

Rollout Note

What to present in what order, what each team changes on Monday, and the answers to the four objections you will get. Route anything sales keeps hearing into the objection library instead of drafting a one-off answer here. Before the rollout meeting, run the headline claim through a message test rather than trusting whichever version the room prefers.

How to use it

1
Open in River, or take it blank
Open the pack in River and send your transcripts, or download the Word documents and CSV sheets and count by hand.
2
Send whatever you have
Sales calls, interviews, a ticket export, your own public reviews, lost-deal notes. Six transcripts produce a real finding.
3
Read the widest gap
Two numbers: how often customers used their phrase, and how often they used yours. That comparison is the whole argument.
4
Trace what is already live
Every claim on your homepage and in your deck gets a status. Most teams find one nobody can source and one quote from a churned customer.

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

Yes, with no account, no card and no email gate on the download. Edit with AI is the optional half: River reads your transcripts, runs the counts, and fills the framework with verbatim numbers behind each line. Every pack sits in the template library.

How many transcripts do I need?

Six sales calls produce a finding worth acting on. Forty produce one nobody argues with. The document you are replacing was almost certainly built on none, so the comparison is not against perfect research, it is against a workshop.

What if I have no call recordings at all?

Your corpus exists anyway. Public reviews of your own product are unprompted and quotable. Support tickets are the most honest source you have. Lost-deal notes count too, and re-reading those rather than trusting the loss reason field is where the positioning pack starts. Begin with whichever you can reach today.

Why keep jargon customers use?

Because the test is the count, not the plainness. The worked example keeps "shrinkage" at seven uses because customers genuinely say it. Replacing a customer's own word with a simpler one you invented is the same error as the original, in the other direction.

Why does a template care about FTC guides?

Because the point of this pack is putting customer words in public, and a quote on a page is an endorsement. The guides require that an excerpt fairly reflect what was said and that a user endorsement rest on somebody who was, and still is, a real user.

Won't this just produce dumbed-down copy?

It produces longer copy, more often than shorter. The worked example's problem statement is twice the length of the phrase it replaced, because a sentence the reader recognises as their own situation beats a compressed one they have to translate. Take the counted language into a homepage rewrite with a claim-to-proof map next.

What does Edit with AI actually do?

It signs you up, installs this pack as a private workspace, and starts counting. Send the transcripts and your current messaging document, and the widest gap between the two comes back with a full verbatim passage beside it.

Sources

Written by

Chandler Supple

Co-founder & CEO, River

Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.

LinkedIn GitHub X

Reviewed by

Brian Joseff, Co-founder, River

LinkedIn X

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Find out how often customers say your headline

Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and send it six sales call transcripts.

Edit with AI

Messaging Framework From Customer Language

Their word against ours, counted

Two verdicts nobody expects

Every claim traced, every quote cleared, and the competition ranked honestly

Claim to Evidence Map

Proof Point Register

The alternatives, ranked by mention count

What's in the pack

Language Frequency Analysis

Claim to Evidence Map

Proof Point Register

Messaging Framework

Voice of Customer Appendix

Verbatim Usage Standard

Rollout Note

How to use it

Open in River, or take it blank

Send whatever you have

Read the widest gap

Trace what is already live

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

How many transcripts do I need?

What if I have no call recordings at all?

Why keep jargon customers use?

Why does a template care about FTC guides?

Won't this just produce dumbed-down copy?

What does Edit with AI actually do?

Sources

Chandler Supple

More free templates

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