TSB
Background
T&Cs are boring right? But TSB was on a mission to get their customers to read theirs. Why? Because they were changing. And because they're there to protect customers.
Mandatory communications are often dry, difficult to understand and don't make you feel like a valued customer. And when they are about changes to your terms and conditions they often feel like they are written for lawyers, not customers. Besides you can’t change them anyway.
So, TSB set out to ensure customers not only read their T&Cs but that they understood them.
Solution
TSB wanted customers to feel positive about the changes and the bank. So, they needed to help them understand the hundreds of individual changes - some of which made things genuinely simpler or better for customers, but others that meant customers would need to change how they used their account or were just for information.
While other banks keep their T&Cs unemotional, TSB wanted to make theirs warm and easy to understand. Behavioural economics, guidance from Fairer Finance and customer research, helped to humanise and simplify a dry and confusing subject.
TSB reduced, chunked and focused the copy of this mandatory mailing. They meticulously ensured every word, sentence and paragraph was as easy to read and as informative as it could be, and true to TSB's neighbourly tone, removing jargon and bank speak and clearly explaining the changes and what they meant for the customer. Brand illustrations and icons were used throughout the document to help people easily navigate a normally complicated document.
The mailing and matching emails collected the changes into three sections:
- Things that will make banking better
- Things that will change how you bank
- Other things you need to know about
To ensure that the integrity of the strategy and ensuing creative output fit with both TSB’s mission and the customer mindset, TSB put the initial creative treatments and their intent through consumer research to check it all made sense.
Results
TSB positively shifted brand perception and gained positive feedback and praise from their customers. 82% of customers agreed it was easy to understand the changes.
Proof that they had hit the mark came when TSB received their first thank you letter ever for a T&Cs document.
Source: DMA Entry
Did you know a whopping 99% of Customer Mail is engaged with, 71% say they trust it and 43% leads to a commercial action such as going online or making a purchase? New ground-breaking research written with Accenture gives an in-depth review of CX and multi-channel communications, including Customer Mail. Download the full report here.
