One of the guiding principles of B2Me is to use simple language and familiar terms in order to clearly communicate what you need to say to your customers. Get rid of jargon and marketing speak — Make it a priority!
American insurer Cygna clearly understands the importance of simple and effective communication. The company prides itself on systematically simplifying the language it uses in its marketing communication and more important, in its contact between their employees and customers.
If you’re trying to persuade people to do or buy something, it seems to me you should use the language they use every day. -David Ogilvy
To help achieve this goal, they created a program for first-line staff that dictates what words should be used to describe insurance concepts, products, terms and conditions. The program is called “Let’s be clear”, and is designed to help employees “translate” the obscure language of the insurance industry into plain English.
Here are a few examples: “you” instead of “claimant”, “process your claim for payment” instead of “adjudication” and “start date” instead of “activation”.
The goal is to make customers feel comfortable, to create a climate of trust and allow the customer to feel valued – not diminished by the use of language they don’t understand.
Cigna even created a website that provides a dictionary of common insurance terms and their translation into plain English in order to be clearly understood by a customer.
At the end of the day, it simply a question of respect for “me”, the customer. Do you speak the same language as your customer? Or are you forcing your customers to speak yours?
