{"id":741,"date":"2013-02-11T09:22:18","date_gmt":"2013-02-10T20:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=741"},"modified":"2013-02-11T09:22:18","modified_gmt":"2013-02-10T20:22:18","slug":"what-will-your-reader-want-to-know-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=741","title":{"rendered":"What will your reader want to know?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=738\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-738\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-738\" alt=\"Quill2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Quill2-300x292.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"292\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Quill2-300x292.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Quill2.jpg 398w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Back in pre-email days, Dean Acheson observed that \u2018most memos are written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>I was reminded of this last month when I received a missive from a service supplier.\u00a0 It was headed \u2018Some changes we need to let you know about\u2019.\u00a0 And the heading was followed by ten paragraphs that seemed to have come straight from the well-worn quill of a Dickensian lawyer who was taking no chances.\u00a0 (The apparent attempt to translate the legalise into Plain English had been far from successful.)<\/p>\n<p>The missive raised several questions but answered none.\u00a0 And the website, at which I could supposedly \u2018find out more about these changes\u2019, was equally unhelpful.<\/p>\n<p>I have no doubt that the missive was composed and sent to meet the requirements of some regulation designed to \u2018protect the consumer\u2019.\u00a0 But far from informing the reader it simply ended up protecting the writer.<\/p>\n<p>When setting out to communicate with their customers, many organisations make the mistake of asking: \u2018What does the customer <i>need<\/i> to know?\u2019\u00a0 But all too few remember to ask: \u2018What will the customer <i>want<\/i> to know?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The Head of Customer Service at one mid-sized organisation told me that whenever her organisation sends out a poorly thought through customer bulletin, it generates around one thousand in-bound phone calls from confused and often angry customers.\u00a0 And what is the cost of dealing with that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in pre-email days, Dean Acheson observed that \u2018most memos are written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer\u2019. I was reminded of this last month when I received a missive from a service supplier.\u00a0 It was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=741\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":742,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions\/742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}