discussion 5
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done. Thank you! Mona
Reviewing your draft for content often helps you improve it in other ways as well. Mona has added the new information her readers need—the dates of the training sessions—and in the process of thinking it through, she’s also managed to cut down the overall length of the message. Moreover, she has brought the issue of licensing to the very beginning of the message, letting her readers know what’s at stake right away.
Including too much information can be as problematic as including too little. We often include too much because we’re more focused on ourselves than on our reader. A quick review of a draft can help tighten up the communication.
Alec works for a regional bank that’s about to launch a new customer service initiative that will include getting more customers into the Elite Checking program. Currently branch personnel are offering customers Standard Checking as a default. As a result, customers who qualify for the better account are missing out on rewards, and some are paying unnecessary fees. Alec drafts a memo to branch tellers and other personnel introducing the new initiative. Here’s his first draft:
Hello MaxxBank AllStars! I’m writing today to announce an exciting new initiative for MaxxBank: the EliteStar program. As part of the initiative, we have a goal to bring 20 percent more new customers into Elite Checking accounts, and to move 20 percent of existing customers from Standard Checking into Elite.
Based on research throughout the region, we estimate that currently about 30 percent of existing customers in Standard in fact qualify for Elite based on their running daily balances. And about 25 percent of new customers are placed into Standard Checking when they would be better served by Elite Checking. The result is that many of our customers are being underserved and missing out on the benefits that Elite offers. These customers often incur service charges that they would not be subject to if they had Elite status. We are managing a large volume of complaints across the branches as a result. We estimate that by moving qualified customers to Elite status, we can reduce fee-related complaints by as much as 35 percent. And the revenue from the lost fees could be offset through happier customers engaging with the bank in other ways, say, through credit cards, home loans, mortgages, or other products.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out training to make it easier for branch personnel to recognize potential Elite customers and help them have conversations to invite customers into the program. Keep your eyes open for more communication about this exciting initiative!
Alec puts his draft aside and comes back to review it the next day. Reading it over, he realizes that the content in the middle paragraph was on his mind because of a meeting he’d attended that day, but it really isn’t helpful to his readers. It makes the memo too long and tedious to read. In fact, some of that content—the section about making up lost revenue—he would prefer not to share with the branch personnel, because he doesn’t want to risk their passing it on to customers. That’s information for internal consumption only. He does want to provide some explanation for the initiative, though, because people perform better when they understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Here’s Alec’s second draft:
Hello MaxxBank AllStars! I’m writing today to announce an exciting new initiative for MaxxBank: the EliteStar program. As part of the initiative, we have a goal to bring 20 percent more new customers into Elite Checking accounts, and to move 20 percent of existing customers from Standard Checking into Elite.
Research shows that many of our Standard customers qualify for Elite status, and they’re missing out on the great rewards they could be enjoying, including free checks, overdraft protection, and interest on their balance. We want to ensure that these customers get the most from their MaxxBank relationship!
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out the EliteStar training to help you identify potential Elite customers and bring them into the right account for them. Keep your eyes open for more communication about this exciting initiative!
In his revision, Alec removes the figures and some of the detailed rationale from the middle paragraph, and instead writes a middle paragraph with a clear message that will resonate with his readers: we’re launching this initiative to make sure that customers are having the best possible experience with MaxxBank. In this case, less content makes for a more effective communication.
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