Good clear instructions

Work
Canadians are sinking deeper and deeper into debt. An unprecedented amount of debt is piling up on credits cards. One would think that people generally know that increasing ongoing debt on a credit card is not the best plan from a financial management perspective.
When the government announced last week that credit card companies have to configure their statements to prominently disclose interest rates and fees in a box on the front page of every statement the following thoughts quickly ran through my head:

1. Excellent, this will mean more redesign business for us with our many credit card customers

2. Don’t people know the interest rates they are paying, is this really necessary?

3. Come to think of it, it makes perfect sense and follows a basic principle of design and communications

When our government ramped up its war on cigarettes, a first move was to force the redesign of cigarette packages to boldly present the health problems associated with this habit.
These moves by our government serve as a good reminder to us as communicators. We assume too much.
While I’d like to be charitable and suggest consumers are intelligent, always thinking and aware, this simply is not the case. Allow me to give two quick examples:

1. We did some consulting for an insurance company who was endeavouring to streamline their communications. One of the things we came across was discovered in the payment processing room as we sat and watched as a small army of people worked at a long table tearing open envelopes and processing remittance slips and cheques (checks). They were remarkably fast at their jobs EXCEPT when the cheque was stapled to the remittance slip. In this case they had to stop what they were doing, pick up a staple remover, fiddle with the staple to remove it, and then resume their work. I asked how frequently this happens and was told that likely 25 – 30% of cheques are stapled or clipped to the remittance slip, they also estimated that the extra time required to manually deal with these stapled cheques added up to two full-time employees. I looked at the slip and there was nothing on it asking customers not to staple their cheques to the slip. I, being the brilliant and insightful consultant that I am, carefully crafted the following profound recommendation: “Ask customers not to staple their cheques to the remittance slip.” After much debate this recommendation was implemented. No one complained. Their occurrence of cheques being stapled to the remittance slip decreased by 90%.

2. When we were working with a credit card company to redesign their statement they told me about a situation that happened several times each month. They said that customers call to complain because even though they keep paying their entire amount due their monthly balance keeps increasing. In every situation the problem is the same. What these customers see as a monthly balance is actually a monthly credit which they pay, and it therefore doubles the next month. We implemented a few design tweaks to eliminate this problem.

We’re all busy, and my experience suggests that many of us are a little dense. When communicating it is therefore vital that we assume nothing, anticipate misinterpretation, and design each piece of critical communication in a way that clearly and intuitively instructs the recipients down the right path. There is little room for subtleties in transactional communication. Bills, statements, policies, and other such documents are relatively ‘blunt’ instruments. We need to focus our efforts on being deliberate, clear, plain and straight forward. Give people the straight goods, tell them what they need to do, and guess what - they’ll do it.
And yeah, I’ve got to confess I am just a little bit excited about all the extra business this government regulation is going to generate for us. :-)


Life
More than any other piece I’ve written on this blog, the one that people most commonly mention to me is the one where I asked if I should have bought my young four-year-old lad a motorcycle. I’ve received an overwhelming amount of parental advice. Because of that interest I thought it was time to provide another update on my dear boy Reuben.
He’s now five, never serious, always entertaining, and he loves anything with a big loud engine.
Last Sunday I had a problem. It was 5:30, I was wrapping up several hours of yard work as big black storm clouds started to roll in. I estimated that I had about 30 minutes before the sky would open up and unleash a furious storm. My work was almost done except I had about 30 piles of yard waste in different places over our acre of lawn. My loader tractor was at the ready but if I had to drive it around, stop at each pile, get off, clean it up, get back on and move to the next I’d never finish the job before the rain.
I needed to be creative to get the job done.
Young Reuben was hamming it up running around the yard. I called him over, picked him up and stood him in front of the steering wheel of the tractor. I gave him a quick set of instructions and told him this was his time to be serious – no playing around.
Standing on the tractor, with his eyes barely high enough to peer over the top of the steering wheel, one foot stretched out to touch the gas pedal, one hand on the wheel and one hand on the hydraulic bucket controls he was off. I walked around the yard with my rake and an eye over my shoulder and he drove around the entire yard following my every step and positioning the bucket for me to pick up each pile of waste. The look on his face was extraordinary, his eyes were focussed and deadly serious, but his mouth was literally smiling from ear-to-ear. After we finished and drove the tractor into the barn (just before the first drops of rain) he grabbed my hand, looked up and said, “Dad, today was the best day of my life.”
Was it my best example of sober good thinking to give him the wheel? Maybe not. Was I proud and glad I did it? In the words of my farmer Grandfather “You betcha.”