Why readability is crucial for your business

When we talk about readability, peoples eyes tend to glaze over and think we are going to talk about “school meals operatives” and “vehicle access approval officers” instead of old fashioned “Dinner Ladies” and “traffic wardens”

Wikipedia says that

“Extensive research has shown that easy-reading text improves comprehension, retention,  reading speed, and reading persistence.”

Now this should ring bells for us managers and trainers – getting our message over quicker and with less resistance and scope for misunderstanding.

But how can we incorporate readability as an everyday habit.

Let’s face it – when most of us write, we just start writing. When we have finished, we give it a quick once over, maybe spell check it and send it to where it is going. Very few people will read and re read to check for clarity.

Lets look at a sample survey which you can find on almost any website or catalogue

“The following questionnaire is designed to provide us with information that will help us to improve the site and make it more relevant to your needs.  Please select your answers from the drop down menus and radio buttons below. The questionnaire should only take you 2-3 minutes to complete.”

At the bottom of this form, you can chose to leave your name, address and telephone number. If you leave your name, address and telephone number, you may be contacted in the future to participate in a survey to help us improve the site.

If you have any comments or concerns that require a response,please contact customer services.”

Here are some comments

The following questionnaire is designed to provide us with information that will help us to improve the site and make it more relevant to your needs.

This is just “clearing the throat” type of writing, it makes the writer feel important. Remember – you aren’t writing for you – you are writing for your reader…

“Please select your answers from the drop down menus and radio buttons below.”

Most people know how to fill in a form on a website. You are likely to scare them by using phrases like radio buttons. Most people don’t know what they are.

“The questionnaire should only take you 2-3 minutes to complete.”

I am not yet convinced of WHY I should actually fill this in yet. The word “should” generally means it might actually take much longer. (”Your car should be ready by 5pm” generally means “It won’t be..”)

At the bottom of this form, you can chose to leave your name, address and telephone number. If you leave your name, address and telephone number, you may be contacted in the future to participate in a survey to help us improve the site.

This looks scary and the reader is not sure if they are likely to be pestered again (”you may be contacted in the future”). The writer obviously hasn’t read the text back to themselves. Putting long phrases like your name, address and telephone number back to back makes it hard work to read.

If you have any comments or concerns that require a response,please contact customer services

But it doesn’t actually tell me how to do this…

In the next couple of days – we will re-write the text making it much easier to read.

Related course – Plain english

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A common sense guide to email marketing

In the last few days, I have spent some time clearing unwanted email from my inbox.

This got me thinking about email marketing.

I understand that without marketing you are unlikely to get anywhere in business and we do market via our weekly email update (every Wednesday evening – UK time) from this you can get access to a free training course on management and a whole range of other relevant  FREE information.

We get very few unsubscribes – so we must be doing something right.

But this type of update is generally in the minority.

It seems that every time I request a quote for car insurance, check out home or travel insurance, read or click anywhere – I seem to be added to list of people who are sent “newsletters” – which in reality are catalogues with items for sale. What value do I get from that! so why would I read them?

It’s a known fact that people hate to be sold to. (When was the last time you went to buy something and DIDN’T shy away from the sales person who was “hunting” you down.

It’s not hard to see that from the marketers point of view, as a previous customer, I am more likely to buy from them again. But from my point of view – I don’t have time to spend, looking through a catalogue of irrelevancy that may or may not be what I want.

Then there are the marketing strategists who just; collect, buy or or obtain large amounts of email addresses add them to a list and broadcast them. I am but a number. I know there is a healthy trade in names and email addresses.

(Here’s a tip – Sign up to buy something but call yourself Miss instead of Mrs or deliberately mis-spell your name just to see where your details end up)

With these I do get an option to unsubscribe -

“If you want to unsubscribe just click on the following link:  UNSUBSCRIBE”

But why should I unsubscribe to something that I never subscribed to in the first place?

These always seem to come from some sort of automated email sender with a “noreply” as the sender. So replying isn’t likely to do me any good.

So to anyone considering adding me to your “list”

Firstly, please don’t.

Secondly, However you dress it up (and legal eagles will probably tell you that it isn’t technically spam), you are probably breaching the terms of your internet service provider.

Thirdly,If you really want me to take your newsletters seriously,  I  would strongly advise you start by building up my trust. Show me your expertise. Give me something of value.

This isn’t a marketing blog but please feel free to share it with those people who keep sending you their ‘Offers’

(Oh and for anyone who wants a definition of spam – a good one is here)

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How to deal with complaints

How to deal with complaints – A different “how” to what you might expect…

The thing to remember when dealing complaints is that they are FREE feedback on what your business is doing wrong.

You don’t have to pay a consultant to do any research. You don’t have to pay out a lot of money on “focus groups” and other woolly ideas.

If you just listen to what customers tell you, they will tell you for free what is making them unhappy.

If you want to be really dangerous – you can actually ask them what is troubling them.

The thing is, (and it doesn’t seem to be very well understood) is that, in general terms,

“people actually want the goods and services they request and pay for”

They really would prefer to order a TV and have it delivered when it was supposed to rather than getting into a rally of complaints and phone calls.

Now, you may be thinking that this will just encourage customers to complain all the more and that we are going to start with “the customer is always right” stuff.

No

The customer is not always right. These days, customers are increasing rude, bad mannered, bad tempered and misinformed. But they have the right to be listened to and you need to ignore the hype and deal with the issue at hand.

At least one local authority we have come across has a dedicated “Difficult customer officer”. The council has recognised that some complaints are vexatious and a deliberate attempt to “play off” one officer or council department against another.

In these cases, the council has cut their loses (because the person, however annoying they may be, will still pay council tax and be entitled to local services) and deals with the complaints in one stroke.

(You may wish to revisit our previous post on failure demand).

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Customer Services – Not dead just hard to find

This is a simple story of two large corporations. One is large British corporation which is a household name. The other is a US based company with a large internet based presence.

Recently, we had a similar problem with both of them.

Company 1

Time spent on helpline (speaking to a human) 51 minutes. Followed by 2 follow up calls a week apart to make sure we were OK and to check for any further help they could give. Of course, I would be more likely to buy something from someone who has spent time building my trust & fixing my problems.

Company 2

Don’t actually have a helpline – they rely on email help. After a while, they stopped actually responding to support tickets and I had no alternative to cancel the account. Am I likely to shop there again or refer friends? Of course not…

These type of stories have been doing the rounds for years but it seems even the biggest corporations have a hard time getting it right.

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Is assuming good manners too high starting point?

Getting material together for the “managing the training process course”, a couple of things struck us.

Well first of all, a good manager should know what level to pitch the training and what prior knowledge trainees have or need.

This usually jumps to technical skills or other knowledge required to do the job.

But is that too high a starting point?

Going to an event at our local school recently, something struck me.

This is what happened.

Entering the double doors the other way was a young lady, aged about 14. She had a backpack on her back, a hockey stick in a case in one hand and a musical instrument in a case in the other.

I held the door open for her and she looked up, smiled and said “thank you”.

Now the youth of today often get maligned as rude, slobby layabouts but the funny thing was that this young lady even (despite having both arms full) made sure the door was then open for me – even though I had nothing in my hands…

I told this story to a colleague who reported that she was carrying an arm full of books into the school for an event and two older sixth form type boys held the door for her.

I was interested in this and in passing the time of day with one of the teachers, he said that the school has a strict “politeness policy” with please & thank you’s expected all around.

They assume nothing and each child regardless of background and upbringing is given exactly the same army like induction on joining the school. A sort of please & thank you bootcamp.

The point was that the school assumed no prior knowledge and gave all trainees (pupils) exactly the same training and what was expected of them to meet the required standard.

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How to write a reference

How to write a reference is a question many managers, experienced and novice constantly find themselves asking.

The problem is usually this

Someone who works for you requests a letter of reference for another job. They have been successful in an interview and their entire new career depends on what you say.

The trouble is that the person concerned isn’t a very productive member of staff and you really would prefer to see them working somewhere else (or not see them at all!)

But how to phrase a reference?

Most large employers have a standard form which will ask you trigger questions (often based on facts), such as “how many days have they had off sick in the last year?”

These are easy – the facts don’t lie (just make sure you don’t make any mistakes – 6 days sick in a year is acceptable but 66 (just a typo away) is not)

But if it is a small employer or they don’t provide a form – how do you write a reference then?

Well, the trick is to tell the truth – but weave in some “code” and hope the other person can “read” it

Examples

“Fred took time getting to grips with the machines we use here but once he did, he proved reliable and dependable” means “he is slow”

“Although Debbie had problems with co-workers, she provided valuable input to the team” means “she is awkward and tricky to deal with”

“Paul helped specify the standards for a lot of the procedures for the team” means “he moans and complains a lot”

Is there another way?

Obviously, you would rather not something in writing which you can’t defend or prefer for the individual concerned not to see. So why not phone the party requesting a reference? Quite often, you can still speak “in code” but you will get feedback from the other party and make sure they “get it”

Other tips
Keep a (confidential) copy of everything you send. Make sure it is locked away from prying eyes.
It’s probably best not to discuss the reference with anyone else. Even asking admin assistants for sickness stats can raise the “gossip-ometer” stakes

Related links

Recruitment & selection skills for managers course

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Dealing with difficult people

Dealing with easygoing people is easy but dealing with difficult people is difficult.

We have read that it is unofficial policy at large call centres to simply hang up on a difficult customer.

Why?

It must be very hard to try and explain to someone how to make their appliance work when you can’t see them or the appliance. It would be virtually impossible if they are screaming down the phone at you.

And so that’s it – just hang up and hope when they ring back, they don’t get through to you.

However, the truth is more subtle than that – so subtle that it is almost a secret.

Very few people seem to know, understand or accept this secret.

And it’s this

“Staff will treat customers no better than they are treated themselves”

Why should they? What part of a person is built to believe

“That’s OK, I get treated like a servant, but I must be nice to the customer, after all, they pay my wages”

The truth is something like a stepping stone effect.

However well you treat staff, raises the level of customer service because staff feel increased pride in the job and pass this on almost subconsciously.

If you subscribe to our weekly update, we touch on this in point 1 of our report “The 5 mistakes most employers make”

If you haven’t subscribed, you can do so here.

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When sales gets in the way of the day job

We have just been to a branch of a large financial institution to carry out some business.

The first thing that slightly alarmed us was personal callers to the enquiry desk being put through on the phone to a “back office”. This was odd because there were quite a lot of staff who seemed to be “walking about”

We had rather a long time to think about this because there was quite a long queue for the counter.

As it turns out, the reason for this delay was that the cashiers were asking every customer a sales question and getting into a discussion.

“Do you have a mortgage ?”
“Have you made a will ?”

All designed to engage the customer – nothing wrong with that but at the expense of other customers ?

Training is like this – to be successful, training managers must focus on what matters and training needs must be just that – not training

wants

[tags] sales, customer service, training needs, [/tags]

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Why this price match scheme isn’t worth the VIP card it is printed on

One of us has just been to the travel agents to buy some foreign currency.

The conversation went something like this;
“What rate do you have for (foreign currency) please, I want £100 cash worth ?”

“That’s 2.20 today – have you been quoted any other rates ?”

“No – I just called in off the street”

“Right, well we have a rate match scheme – if you are quoted a cheaper rate, we will match it”

(Thinks) – That’s very good but if I am quoted a cheaper rate somewhere else – why would I come back here to get THE SAME rate ?

[tags] foreign currency, travel agents, holidays, management, customer service [/tags]

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