This week I attended a course on the ‘tone of voice' we should use when communicating with customers. The grumpy old man in me tends to feel that today's younger generation would benefit more from learning grammar and punctuation, but tone of voice refreshers do remind us that we need to write to non-specialists in a way they can understand and relate to.
Our approach is to be like a trusted friend: authoritative but approachable, warm but not over-familiar, conversational but not chatty, and explaining often complex financial matters in a way that is clear, simple and brief. It strikes me that we’ve moved on a long way from the days when insurance companies almost prided themselves on writing in a way most consumers had little hope of understanding. The tone of older communications was “trust me, I’m an actuary”. Unfortunately, these days many people don’t trust actuaries, insurance companies or indeed anyone else involved in financial ser...
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