Communications Coach
Advice at your fingertips
is advice you will use
The message that costs you a relationship gets written in about eleven seconds, on a phone, at the worst possible moment.
Sparks brings you texting and email support where you need it most.
The Communications Coach lives in your inbox as a Chrome plug-in for Gmail and Outlook on the web, and on your phone as a keyboard that works in every app you already type in.
Always available, whenever and wherever you need it.
The problem
Text and email strip out tone, timing and face. What is left is a few words, and a reader who fills the gaps with the worst plausible reading. “Fine.” “We need to talk.” “Per my last email.” None of those sentences contain the thing that ruins the evening; the interpretation does.
Then you reply. Usually within a minute, usually while the adrenaline is still up, usually in a way that confirms whatever the other person had already decided. The whole exchange takes ninety seconds and takes two weeks to undo.
This is not a small category of problem. Grammarly and The Harris Poll estimated poor communication costs US businesses about $1.2 trillion a year, roughly $12,506 per employee. SHRM’s Q4 2024 Civility Index estimated over 81 million acts of incivility a day in US workplaces, with 26% of workers saying they were likely to leave a job over it.
Insight is most valuable at the moment you need it.
Not in a session next Tuesday. Not in an app you would have to remember to open. In the box you are already typing into, before you hit send.
Your profile is the decoder
The Coach is not a generic writing assistant. It reads the message against what your assessments already established about you: your attachment patterns, your communication style, your conflict reflexes, your metacognitive awareness. The same three-word message means something different to an anxious reader than to an avoidant one, so the coaching differs too.
What it does
Three jobs, both surfaces
Decode what arrived
Tone, intent and urgency, read back to you plainly. Is this person angry, or busy? Is this actually urgent, or does it just look urgent? Most of the stress in a difficult message is uncertainty, and uncertainty is the part that is fixable.
Draft what you send
Ask for replies and you get options as cards, each with the tone and sentiment it carries, ranked for the situation. Pick one, edit it, or read all three and write your own. You remain the author.
Review before you send
Paste in what you already wrote at midnight and find out how it will land. This is the feature people describe as the one that saved them, usually about a week after they installed it.
Surface one
The plug-in for Gmail and Outlook
A Chrome extension that works in Gmail and Outlook on the web. One login, once. After that the Coach is simply present in the inbox: on a message you have received, and on the draft you are about to send.
Because it is a Chrome extension, it lives in the browser. That means Gmail and Outlook on the web today, and it means the desktop Outlook application is not covered. If your email lives in a browser tab, you are set.
- Read the email you are dreading and get its tone, intent and real urgency before you decide how to feel about it.
- Generate replies that fit both the situation and how you actually communicate, ranked by how appropriate they are.
- Check your own draft for tone and clarity while it is still a draft.
- Nothing is ever sent for you. The Coach does not have a send button.
Best for: the performance review reply, the message to the client who went quiet, the note to the colleague who copied your manager, the resignation you have rewritten four times.
Coach read
Frustration, low warmth, moderate urgency. The copy to Dana reads as pressure rather than escalation. Nothing here suggests a threat to the relationship.
Surface two
The keyboard on your phone
Coach read
Ambiguous by design, not necessarily hostile. Given your attachment profile, your instinct will be to ask what you did wrong. Consider asking for information instead.
The SPARKS keyboard installs alongside your normal keyboard on iOS and Android. Reach it with the globe key, the same way you would switch to another language. Because it is a keyboard rather than an app, it works everywhere you type: text messages, WhatsApp, Slack, dating apps, comment boxes, anywhere at all.
- It is there at 11pm, and at every other moment when the messages that matter arrive.
- Suggestions arrive as cards with tone and sentiment attached, so you are choosing rather than guessing.
- You never leave the conversation to get help with it, which is the difference between advice you use and advice you mean to use.
- You still type the message. Nothing sends itself.
Best for: Dating apps, the one-word reply from your partner, the group chat that turned, the message from your mother that you have read six times.
Side by side
Which surface does what
| Email plug-in | Phone keyboard | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Chrome, as an extension | iOS and Android, alongside your normal keyboard |
| Where it works | Gmail and Outlook on the web. Not the desktop Outlook application. | Every app that accepts typing |
| Reach it by | It is present in the message and the draft | The globe key |
| Decode incoming | Yes, full message tone, intent and urgency | Yes, on the message in front of you |
| Suggested replies | Yes, ranked and labeled by tone | Yes, as selectable cards |
| Review your draft | Yes, before you send | Yes, before you send |
| Sends anything for you | Never | Never |
| Setup | Install the extension, log in once | Add the keyboard in system settings, log in once |
| Confidential | No identifying information is shared | No need to do anything, private by design |
Privacy
What happens to the message you are asking about
Tokenized before analysis
Identifying details are stripped before content leaves your browser. What gets analysed is the shape of the message, not a record of who said what to whom.
No personal information retained
The extension does not hold on to personally identifiable information. Your profile stays outside the browser environment.
Yours to review or delete
You can review, download or delete your data from settings, at any time, without asking anyone.
Setup
Both take about two minutes
Email plug-in
-
Add the extension to Chrome
From the Chrome Web Store.
-
Log in once
With your SPARKS account. You will not be asked again.
-
Open Gmail or Outlook in the browser
The Coach is already there.
Phone keyboard
-
Enable the SPARKS keyboard
In iOS or Android keyboard settings, next to the ones you already have.
-
Log in once
Inside the SPARKS app.
-
Press the globe key
In any conversation, in any app.
The point is that you stop needing it
Every time the Coach shows you why a message read the way it did, and what a better reply looks like, you learn something about your own pattern. Over months, people report reaching for it less: they can see the negativity bias arriving before it lands, and they draft the calmer version themselves.
That is the intended outcome. A tool you depend on forever is a subscription; a tool that makes itself gradually unnecessary is a skill.
Included in every plan
The Communications Coach, both surfaces, is part of the free beta and of every plan after it. Organizational plans include it for every member.
Install it before you have to deal with another difficult message, not after
You already know which conversation this is for.
Sources
- Grammarly and The Harris Poll, The State of Business Communication, February 2023.
- SHRM, The Cost of Incivility, Q4 2024 Civility Index, 18 December 2024.
Message examples on this page are illustrative.