Consumer Understanding
One of the founding beliefs of The Wisdom Council was the need for the industry to connect with customers so that they can understand what they are buying. Building best practice in communicating with customers is pivotal to our work and something we are passionate about. Our award-winning approach to consumer understanding is built on over a decade of experience testing and developing communications.
Underpinning our insight process is a team with deep technical understanding of products and services, including the full gamut of investment propositions, advice models and all things sustainability related with extensive experience of SDR and TCFD testing. We are a strategic partner to the Investment Association and work closely with them on communications best practice, including delivering training.
Effective communication is about more than a customer just saying they understand
Can the recipient quickly grasp the purpose of the communication and are they motivated to engage? Does the format, layout and visual appeal of the document make it accessible to all? Does it give the target audience sufficient information without overwhelming? Who even is your target audience? And do they really understand as much as they say they do?
Our award-winning framework has been used to test hundreds of documents covering all aspects of long-term savings and investments. We use a range of methodologies to test communications depending on the length and complexity of the content and the delivery channel.
We work with you to design consumer understanding programmes, test communications and consider how best to embed learning into the business – that might mean establishing principles for how to write for customers, training relevant teams or revisiting governance processes.
We can also help you to identify who your ‘average customer’ is, helping you communicate with your audience in a way that is most likely to lead to good understanding, good engagement and positive outcomes.
Context
Our client has a range of different business divisions covering both manufacturer and distribution roles across multiple product and channels. There was a very decentralised approach to customer communications.
Our approach
We advised on a risk-based approach to testing a selection of 40 documents ensuring good coverage across audience, channel, proposition and product life cycle. We blended methodologies for a cost-effective programme ensuring consistency of approach against our award-winning framework.
Outcome
Board level reporting and prioritisation of areas of potential harm for remediation activity with actionable insight for document owners. A set of principles to embed best practice.
Value to Client
Called out for best practice in Board report. Cost effective ongoing programme with balance between in-house improvements and continued quality assurance on high-risk documents from an independent third party with additional customer input as appropriate.
Having worked extensively with customers over more than 11 years of testing products and communications, we have long been aware of a gap between what customers think they know and the reality.
It is for precisely this reason that TWC’s Consumer Understanding framework includes a ‘sense check’ by technical specialists – ensuring a robust process for feeding back to firms on whether or not customers genuinely understand content.
This ‘illusion of knowledge’ was brought into sharp relief in our Consumer Duty work last year. We decided to delve a bit deeper to see if we could throw more light on the topic by looking at awareness, familiarity, importance (as viewed by customers) and genuine comprehension around key financial concepts. To do this we chose 18 terms that represented important steps along a savings journey – from starting out to drawing on a pension.
The results are a wake up call for the industry.
Context
Our client was seeing an increase in the number of complaints which were being referred to FOS and wanted to improve the quality of their final response letters.
Our approach
We developed and ran a bespoke workshop for the complaints handling team to help them stand in the shoes of a recipient of the final response letter.
Outcome
By the end of the workshop, the team were able to critique their own letters, reducing jargon and improving structure and flow. The team developed a new improved template as an output from the workshop.
Value to Client
Reduced complaints on-referral to FOS and cost to the business.