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Hello, everyone! My name is Tainara Rebelo, and I work as a UX Writer at GOL, through a consultancy called Môre.

One of the projects I most appreciated working on was this one: the replacement of “forbidden words” in our cancellation flow.

Here’s the briefing: we were using words like “punição”, “multa”, and “taxa” in our FAQ to explain the cancellation of a service or a ticket on our website.

As a company — and as customers ourselves — we know that these words are very heavy. I mean… “I just bought a ticket, and now I need to ask for a refund because I’m not using it anymore, and you are punishing me?” You know?

Since this flow is not a happy one, we needed to think about how to make it less impactful, without failing to communicate what was important.

It’s the same old idea: there is always a way to say the same thing in a different way. And as a UX Writer, that’s my job.

First, I started with a discovery phase and selected all the “forbidden words” I wanted to replace.

Then, I searched everywhere those words were being used in our communication.

After that, I categorized them into “do not use at all” and “less problematic.”

Next, I looked at how competitors were communicating the same information to their audience, and how that felt to us. I found alternative terms and created a list of possible replacements.

Then, I analyzed other products — like banks and ticket sales for concerts or movies — because they face similar situations. This helped me understand how they communicate these “penalties” to their customers.

Finally, I revisited our research and data to understand whether our customers were bothered by our communication, and at which moments this was happening.

With all this data, it was time to analyze it. I used tools like heat maps and internal files where Customer Service had flagged recurring issues to the teams.

At first, I thought I would find excessive clicks on certain words or users going back and forth between pages. But I found a completely different problem: customers were not reading the FAQ at all. Instead, they were calling Customer Support and trying to solve the issue with real people.

I escalated this result to my team, and it became another task to address. However, I was still able to create a list of words that should not be used at all in our communication, which was later approved by GOL’s legal team.