---
title: "Content strategy: How words build a product - The Intercom Blog"
description: "Words in a product evolve like the Ship of Theseus, with each change affecting identity; the term “page” long constrained web design, showing how working titles gain unintended baggage. Intercom’s content strategy transforms this organic dialect into an intentional one, addressing team silos and UI inconsistencies. They categorized every visible word—objects, views, people, actions—into a taxonomy and glossary that gave consistency and control over how each part is described and how parts relate. They interviewed all teams to map natural vocabularies, discovering job-related differences and treating them as assets. Finally, they derived three UI writing principles: speak naturally, speak directly to the user but never for the user, and guide users through complex ideas, recommending that content strategy start after discovering the organic voice already present."
---

# Content strategy: How words build a product - The Intercom Blog

[Intercom](https://yomu.fyi/company/intercom) · Oct 8, 2026

**Type:** Explainer

## Summary

Words in a product evolve like the Ship of Theseus, with each change affecting identity; the term “page” long constrained web design, showing how working titles gain unintended baggage. Intercom’s content strategy transforms this organic dialect into an intentional one, addressing team silos and UI inconsistencies. They categorized every visible word—objects, views, people, actions—into a taxonomy and glossary that gave consistency and control over how each part is described and how parts relate. They interviewed all teams to map natural vocabularies, discovering job-related differences and treating them as assets. Finally, they derived three UI writing principles: speak naturally, speak directly to the user but never for the user, and guide users through complex ideas, recommending that content strategy start after discovering the organic voice already present.

## Context

As a product grows, its vocabulary evolves organically, leading to team silos, inconsistent terminology, and UI discrepancies that weaken the product’s identity and coherence.

## Approach / What changed

Intercom’s content strategy team classified every visible word in the product into a taxonomy and glossary, interviewed members from all teams to map their natural vocabularies and treat differences as assets, and derived three UI writing principles (speak naturally, speak directly to the user but never for the user, and help guide the user through complexity) to guide a consistent product language.

## Takeaways

- Words in a product evolve like the Ship of Theseus; each rename affects the product’s identity, and working titles such as ‘page’ can unconsciously constrain design direction for years.
- Systematically categorizing every visible word in the product and interviewing all teams reveals job-specific vocabulary differences that should be treated as assets, not failures, to build a consistent product dialect.
- Content strategy work is most transformative when it discovers an organic voice already present, rather than applying an artificial voice; it is best started after the product has developed a natural lexicon.

## FAQ

### When is the best time to start product content strategy?

The best time is after an organic product voice has emerged, because the work becomes anthropological—it discovers existing patterns rather than imposing an artificial voice, leading to a more authentic product language.

### How does content strategy address team terminology conflicts?

By interviewing members from every team to map their natural vocabularies and understand how job functions shape word use; these differences are treated as assets, not failures, enabling a coherent dialect that respects diverse perspectives.

### How can naming choices affect product design?

Names unconsciously influence how designers think about features; for example, the word 'page' made web spaces seem fixed and constrained design thinking for years before the metaphor was broken.

**Tags:** [Content Strategy](https://yomu.fyi/topic/content-strategy), [Product Design](https://yomu.fyi/topic/product-design)

- Source: [Intercom](https://www.intercom.com/blog/how-words-build-a-product)
- Source URL: https://www.intercom.com/blog/how-words-build-a-product
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-10-08T21:00:34.768Z

[Read original post](https://www.intercom.com/blog/how-words-build-a-product)