CorpComms Magazine

Communication has never been so easy. Telephone, email, social media and good old-fashioned letters are all essential ingredients in getting in touch with an organisation's customers.

So why is it so many companies, particularly those in the financial services industry, seem to make a mess of the way they impart information to their valued customers - or even when they try to lure new ones to part with their money?

To be sure, it is not entirely the financial companies' fault. By nature, they are offering a complex product: explaining pensions will, by necessity, always be more complicated than promoting baked beans.

But the problem is that if they are too hide-bound with technical wording then financial companies risk putting off - or worse, misleading - customers. An example - in which the identities have been changed to protect the (sort of) innocent - may be illustrative.

The benefits are administered by XYZ Consultants on behalf of the Scheme Trustee in accordance with the Trust Deed and Scheme Rules (the 'Scheme'). XYZ is not authorised to bind either the Trustee or your employer to provide benefits in excess of your entitlements under the Scheme.

Does any reader of CorpComms Magazine understand what that means? No idea? More importantly, does any employee of XYZ understand what this paragraph means? If not, how can the customers of XYZ be expected to read important documents - whether they are vital policy schedules or marketing literature - and understand them?

Certainly, financial companies do have to follow stringent regulations imposed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) on what they can or cannot write to their customers.

But that does not mean they should write gobbledygook - and indeed, it is not what the regulator wants. However, if it is too much of a struggle to persuade the compliance director and his ally, the company actuary, to write English then there is an army out there to assist - the professional copywriters who will junk the jargon in company literature.

Finding the right tone of voice

Copywriting specialists Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry recently put all the marketing and customer communications for insurer LV= through its paces and updated the wordy prose.

It was part of the process of rebranding the insurer from its former incarnation, Liverpool Victoria. And despite opposition at the time - that the long-established friendly society was forgetting its traditional roots - the new name and image has paid dividends: name awareness is up from 54 per cent to more than 70 per cent.

Part of the new image was the way the company communicated with customers. Rob Etteridge, client services director at Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry says: 'Often, we're called in as part of a rebranding exercise as part of a cultural change programme. What we do is come in and look at everything they write and find an appropriate tone of voice for all communication.

We talk to the company and find out how it views itself and how it wants to be seen - and from that we develop a company tone.' Etteridge points to the following example of LV= before and after its makeover. This is the 'before version' of part of the policy conditions on its '50 Plus Plan', a type of life insurance.

Liverpool Victoria Life Company Limited agrees to be bound by the terms and conditions of the Policy contained in these documents.

1. These documents consist of these Conditions and a Schedule, which together constitute a Policy. The Conditions are divided according to various types of policy and benefit, and the Conditions relating to a particular policy are referred to in the Schedule. Any endorsements issued, either at the outset or subsequently, form a part of the Policy.

2. In consideration of the payment of the Premiums, Liverpool Victoria Life Company Limited shall pay to the Person(s) Assured (or to such other person or body as described in the Conditions) the benefits described in this Policy when they become payable subject always to these Conditions.

Signed on behalf of Liverpool Victoria Life Company Limited on the Issue Date shown in the Schedule. A policy is an important document and should therefore, be kept in a safe place.

How many people would have read beyond the first line before either filing it away, either in a proper cabinet or a black plastic receptacle (along with the empty bottles)? But actually, the statement is vital information: not hanging onto a policy document could mean missing a payout. Here's the after version:

Welcome to LV=, and thank you for choosing our 50 Plus Plan. These conditions, and your plan schedule, application and any declarations you have made, form a contract between you and us. These are important documents so please keep them in a safe place. This contract is signed on our behalf and starts on the date shown in your plan schedule.

As Etteridge says, it is a matter of ditching the jargon but at the same time, keeping the language necessarily formal - these are legal documents, after all. 'There are FSA requirements on what can be said but under the Treating Customers Fairly rules companies are expected to communicate clearly with customers,' he says.

Nigel Snell, consultant corporate communications director, LV=, adds: 'Tracking studies show that our rebranding to LV= has measurably improved consumers' awareness of the brand and their likelihood of doing business with us. 'Improving our communications to customers has obviously been a key part of strengthening the rebranding, and our 'Tone of Voice' project has seen the revamp of over 10,000 LV= letters, application forms and other customer documents over the last couple of years. The project has also been crucial in embedding the LV= brand internally, making sure employees are aware that all communications with customers give some kind of impression of our brand, therefore it's vital to project a consistent image and set of values at every touch-point.'

Another of Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry's makeovers was on the insurer disguised as XYZ above. And this is the transformation Etteridge's company made of the previously torpid text shown above:

We administer your benefits for the scheme trustee(s) in accordance with the trust deed and the scheme rules (the “scheme”). We aren't authorised to make either the trustees or your employer pay any benefits over and above your entitlements under the scheme. On a similar note, unless you are specifically told otherwise, we won't be able to change or increase your pension entitlements. We've also done all we can to make sure the figures on this document are accurate. If there is an error here, we' ll always work to the figures in your scheme paperwork.

I hope you find the enclosed information sheet useful. If there's anything else you' d like to know, please get in touch. We wish you a long and happy retirement.

It is a much clearer tone - but one that remains correctly formal: pensions are, after all, serious things, and too informal a tone would create the wrong impression.

Setting the correct tone of voice is a particular speciality of Doug Nolan, who has made it his business for the past 14 years. His company, The Word Department, is based in Edinburgh, home to many of the UK's most traditional financial companies.

Nolan says the skill he is putting across is 'making companies communicate in writing with their customers as if they were speaking to them'. He makes sure the company knows how it wants to come across - how, if you like, it finds its own voice. 'It can be a difficult balance,' adds Nolan. 'You have to strike a compromise between being overly matey but not so formal you put customers off.' There is not one voice that fits all. The tone that a traditional, establishment investment trust will want to come across will be very different from an Internet-only bank.

'Part of the FSA's Treating Customers Fairly initiative is that financial must provide customers with clear information,' says Nolan. 'I can help get that information across in a way that's not too friendly but not too formal either.'

Nolan's pet hates in customer communications are abbreviations - because they confuse the reader and sometimes are used without the full word ever being used - and tortuously long sentences. This last often happens when the company lawyers have got hold of the communication and have written with many clauses and sub-clauses. All that's often needed, says Nolan, is for the piece to be cut into more, shorter, sentences.

He has identified a number of villains who mangle English and confuse their clients. The most prevalent, says Nolan, is: 'Mr Grey, whose corporate madness makes him believe his own spin. This is a man who doesn't have a shower every morning. He enters his hydrodecontamination unit with a view to reach key sanitary goals.'

A coherent content strategy

However, now things are developing beyond tone of voice to an all-encompassing MOT of all communications: the new buzzword is content strategy.

Diana Railton, managing director of Bath-based agency DRCC, specialises in helping organisations improve their web content. She says: 'With financial services companies, top-level wording on websites is usually clear and shiny. The Plain English campaign did a lot to improve things, and you seldom see the dreadful gobbledygook that used to be so common. But when you dig deeper into a website or intranet, it's not so tidy.'

And while it is still essential to set a tone of voice, says Railton, that is now coming under the umbrella of content strategy. Essentially, content strategy means taking an audit of all an organisation's communications with its customers and making sure everything - from the Internet to social media to good old fashioned letters - is relevant and reaches its chosen target.

The key to successful content strategy, according to Railton, is to know your audience: without this, how can you hope to get the way you communicate with them right? She adds: 'As writing becomes more informal, human and interactive, many organisations have identity problems and people are uncertain about what's acceptable and unacceptable in writing style.

'This is a cultural problem in itself, so it's particularly important to loosen up and define how that organisation should come across - and how this might differ between communication channels and audiences. Compare, for example, Twitter with an annual report.'

An overall audit of every line of communication means that you can get the all-important tone of voice right - but also vary its tone and pitch depending on the channel. And if the company as a whole understands the ethos and why certain types of communication work for different customers, then the overall image will be clearer. Essentially, it is all about making sure an organisation sings the company song from the same hymn sheet - but with different harmonies producing a fully-rounded sound.

share me: del.icio.us | digg | reddit | Tweet