The Royal SunAlliance head office in Chatswood, Sydney.
CASE STUDY
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The Royal SunAlliance head office in Chatswood, Sydney. |
In early 1994, Sun Alliance and Royal Insurance (now Royal SunAlliance) decided to overhaul the policy document and application form for its major domestic product -- home insurance.
"The way we communicate to our customers is a vital part of customer service," says Suzanne Maudlen from the company's legal area. "The policy was written in old-style insurance English and needed to be updated. We saw an opportunity to greatly improve the wording so that customers could more easily understand what was covered and what was excluded. Also, the written policy had been changed in an ad hoc way over the years to fix minor problems -- it was time for a major overhaul."
"We also recognised the importance of good design in the communication process," says company designer Michelle Lillington. "We felt the application form could be considerably improved. The line spacing was too tight and the type size needed enlarging. We also needed to allow more space for customers' answers, as well as more definite breaks in the headings and sections to make them easier to follow."
There were also practical problems with the form. "It was DL size to fit into a standard business envelope, but folded out into nine panels -- when it was fully open it took up the whole desk," explains Michelle. The size also made the form difficult to file and fax. "Another issue was that it was printed on glossy paper which meant that customers' answers were sometimes smudged."
Realising that rethinking their documents would be a complex project, Royal SunAlliance set up a plain language committee to cover the issue from all angles. The starting point for the project was a brief that customers are entitled to expect policies that are easy to understand. The committee included staff from the relevant policy areas, Suzanne from the legal area and Michelle from design and marketing, as well as staff with a practical knowledge of the old documents, including their deficiencies -- Anita Craig, Product Manager; Eric Dunbar, Underwriting Manager of Domestic Products in South Australia; Bill Barry, Manager, Domestic Product Claims; and Jeremy Thew, who manages the 24-hour customer enquiry line. With 40 years' experience each in claims and underwriting, Eric and Bill understood where the old forms created problems, while Jeremy had a day-to-day insight into the customers' view.
As
sometimes happens in plain English projects, the rewriting process
highlighted some underlying policy problems. "When we sent out drafts
for comment many staff said, 'That's not what we mean' or 'Is that
really what we mean?' What started as a project to simplify customer
communication also became a policy review exercise," says Suzanne.
The policy document went through many drafts. A consultancy specialising in plain legal language rewrote each draft in clear terms. Each draft was circulated within head office for comment, then sent out to branch offices for their input. The entire process took about one year. The final draft was checked by an external law firm.
When they redrafted the documents, the team ensured they defined important terms clearly. "Some words have a specific legal meaning, but you can't assume customers know them," explains Suzanne. "For example, 'flood' has a particular meaning in insurance, but may mean something different to a lay person. So we put specific terms in bold and included a definition."
The new documents have been very successful. There has been a dramatic increase in the proportion of proposal forms which are accepted immediately. "That's because the new form asks specific questions, whereas the old one asked, 'Is there anything else you need to tell us?', which people never filled in. Now it has very specific questions with 'yes or no' answers. So it's very hard for people to leave gaps."
Explaining the policy in straightforward terms, allowing more room for customers to write answers, and using a clearer design and larger type all mean that the new documents are longer than the old versions. Even though they are much easier to understand and use, the longer length initially created some resistance among insurance brokers who were used to dealing with the old forms.
A larger document may, of course, cost more to print and post. Royal SunAlliance replaced its nine-panel DL form with an A5 booklet (half the size of A4). The booklet has an eight-page A4 application form stapled in the back (for business not taken out over the phone through the company's electronic policy issue system). "Going to A5 doubled our postage costs," says Michelle. "That's a significant issue when you've got a huge customer base. But it's worth it in terms of improved ease of use for customers, as well as the reduced costs of following up on forms which were not completed correctly."
Customer feedback confirms that the new form is much easier to complete. "We've found a two-column format works best," explains Michelle, "because when reading, the eye runs diagonally down the page (from top left to bottom right) rather than across. Before, many people would miss questions on the right-hand side of the page and the form would have to be returned."
"Each section of the policy wording now starts on a new page, whereas before, the different policy sections ran into each other. Now you can use tab references to go straight to the page you want, rather than having to read the whole thing to find the relevant section."
Colour is another important consideration in forms design. "We always use black with another contrasting colour," says Michelle. "We never use two similar colours together, like blue and green for the text."
Since it developed the new home insurance documents, Royal SunAlliance has reworked and redesigned documents for its other insurance products. "That's the one thing I'd do differently," concludes Suzanne. "We started with home insurance, which is our biggest product. We should have started with a smaller product like travel insurance, so we could streamline the process. We started with the hardest -- my advice is to start with the easiest."
And Suzanne's final word of advice? "Before you print your final draft, go back and check it against the original to make sure you haven't left anything out. Literally tick off paragraph by paragraph. My other advice is to expose the draft to as many people as possible along the way -- it doesn't matter how many times you read it, you won't see all the issues."
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Plain English in practiceClick on the image to see "before" and "after" examples (39k GIF) of Royal SunAlliance's policy brochures. Or a 177k pdf file to see more detail. |
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