Conveying trust with clear design

We get it. Creating communications for customers with all the right information can be a time consuming and difficult challenge. One element, aside from managing data from a variety of sources, that is often overlooked is the need for design consistency across all communications.

Why? Because trust matters – especially when customers are trusting you to deliver sensitive personal information. If customers receive communications that look disorganised and cluttered with logos in different places, different phone numbers and confusing ‘if’ messages then they’re less likely to trust you with their business, even more so when customer experience is so high on everyone’s agenda.

We’ve seen this first hand in the financial services sector where, after working to bring consistency to pension and investment plan communications we’ve seen an uptake in customers depositing further funds – so, it works. It’s not that the way in which plans are managed or corporate culture has changed – the information is the same – but the presentation is different.

Another benefit of taking a consistent approach to design is that customers know who to contact with questions – this brings an opportunity to nudge customers towards particular channels and reduce noise coming back to the business.

So how do you go about ensuring consistency? We always say the first step is to take stock at your whole document landscape. It’s something we’re experts in helping organisations to do and are always on hand to advise.