Q: What is an ESOP?
Survey Answer: A Greek who wrote a series of fables.
(Real asnwer: An Employee Stock Ownership Plan)
I am not trying to be either facetious or pretentious here. But these are some actual survey answers given by employees at my former bank when we did some internal testing of bank acronyms and product names to see if we ourselves knew what we were communicating to employees and customers.
The companion survey for customers resulted in an even more dismal response. It became apparent that the chosen few inside the bank had become so comfortable in our banking nomenclature that no one was clear what we were communicating. Even the new, exotic names we had given to some standard products were failing to connect to the customers because they lacked an educational component that was paramount to relating relevance to customer need.
Remember this. The Wall Street Journal is written for an 11th grade education. The New York Times for a 9th grade education. These newspapers never assume that the reader is up on all the acronyms that are used in everyday business and life. Or that the average reader knows what is meant things such as credit default swaps which has garnered much ink during the current financial crisis. They painstakingly educate the reader so that the articles have relevance to the lives of average Americans (who also happen to be your customers).
Others, such as Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, use analogies to make their point. Last week, Cramer described a credit default swap this way: “It’s like taking out an insurance policy on someone that you are going to kill. And it’s all legal.”
We need to take a lesson from these newspapers and insure that all of our communications—direct mail letters, product literature, etc.—contains a modicum of education so that our customers can make an intelligent decision about the relevance of a particular product or service to a specific need.
This is an interesting time and one where Community Banks can gain incredible ground...if we use communications focused on stability, use words that create understanding and messages that create connections.
Cheers!
Nick Vaglio
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