Are you kind to your customers?

TLDR - clarity is kindness - be clear with your customers.

It started with a letter.

With basic pixelated brown imagery, boring headings, and chunks of text, absolutely nothing jumped off the page.

I stared at it blankly.

It’s from my pension provider*, I realised.

I stared a bit longer, fully gormless by now.

What do they want me to do?

I wasn’t sure.

So I parked it in the spot reserved for letters destined for ‘the man draw’.

Hang about, I thought.

I’m a behavioural economist at Fairer Finance – if I can’t figure this out… then what hope do others have?

I returned with a vengeance (with a coffee).

I read every word.

Then, it hit me.

They don’t want me to do anything.

They’re writing to me because they have to (thank you regulation).

But they’re quite happy with the docile, inert Tim that they’re used to.

Clarity is kindness

‘Clarity is kindness’ has been attributed to different authors (I think I came across it in a Patrick Lencioni book). When clarity is possible, the decision to allow ambiguity is often unkind.**

Being clear with your customers is being kind because:

• Your customers have limited time and brain-space. Most normal people don’t want to spend their free time thinking about insurance, debt, pensions, etc. (shock!) Don’t take up more of their valuable time than you can help. Sharing is caring, but only up to a point. Be clear and succinct. And if you are not, you might not cut through.
• Your customers need to make informed decisions. Poor understanding or low awareness of the important stuff leads to decisions which we later regret. I can’t be the only one who has bought a financial services product thinking it was right for me, only to later realise there was something in the small print that I'd missed. Please be kind to me, and flag things you think I might have missed.

Ironically, the letter I received includes the sentence:

‘We want to help you get a better understanding of your pension and retirement options so you can make the most of your retirement.’

This is a classic example of writing for the regulator, rather than for the customer. I don’t feel like they really want me to get a better understanding.

Clarity is pro-competitive

We also care about clarity in communications because it helps consumers shop-around for the best products and services. And it would be hard for people to learn from their past decisions if they don't get clear communications (When will they learn? | LinkedIn).

More competition is usually good for consumers (accepting that in certain scenarios, regulation is required to mitigate the negative consequences of a highly competitive market).

Clarity is trusted

Even if you didn’t care about your consumers, clarity helps build trust in your brand.

If clarity is lacking, so will loyalty.

Next time I get a letter from my pension provider, I’m going to be damn sure to read it carefully to check they aren’t hiding anything in the small print. I probably wouldn’t have bothered otherwise.

How to make letters clear?

To be fair to my pension provider, that letter isn't the worst I've ever seen. But it does leave a lot of room for improvement.

Here are five ideas...

• What is the letter trying to achieve? Are you trying to spark action, or merely inform? In an ideal world - one message, one letter. Get the point across loud and clear.
• How does the letter help people Engage with their product, Access the right information, Assess the information correctly, or take Action? If it doesn't neatly fit into the E-A-A-A framework (as used by the FCA and CMA), then something needs tweaking.
• Do the headings stand alone? If the customer only read the headings, would they get the key message? The order of the headings should 'narrow the focus', taking the reader from the high-level message to more detailed points.
• Does the design point people towards where they can find support? Snappy sidebars and text boxes can be helpful. High contrast coloured headings can help the key points stand out.
• Does the tone of voice overcome initial feelings of anxiety or low confidence? Emotion is really important for how we process information - and tone of voice is a useful tool in influencing the emotional response to information. For more on the role of emotion: Rationally emotional? | LinkedIn

With the Consumer Duty, it is important to build the evidence that your letters are effective in communicating to customers. In doing so, you may need some Guinea Pigs to test them on.

*Brand name available on request.

**Obviously, this isn't an excuse to treat people without respect.