Cutting through the fog II: Clarity matters beyond just the words we choose

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of communicating clearly, with a focus on the words we choose in our written and verbal presentations. The point being that we need to make it as simple as possible for our audiences to grasp our meaning. When we don’t do this well, not only is our communication less effective, but our credibility and trustworthiness comes into question. Why is he so difficult to understand? Perhaps he has something to hide!?

This concept is not just limited to business presentations. Consider the manufacturer of a line of products, or a retailer. Do they provide the attributes and costs of different products in a way that helps the customer select the best one for his or her needs? If not, the customer must work unnecessarily to compare products. He may become frustrated. And suspicious. Why isn’t this simpler? What do I get for my dollar? Are they hoping I’ll select a higher priced product?

Tying this to a real world example: how would you rate the clarity of your cellular phone bill? Or your cable TV bill? I admit, I rarely look closely at either – they’re simply too complicated. Who designed these?!!

Recently, for no particular reason, I decided to examine my cable TV service. I went to my cable provider’s website and found three service options: Digital Starter ($29.99), Digital Preferred ($39.99) and Digital Premier ($84.99). But when I clicked on “Start Shopping,” I was taken to a new page where I had to indicate whether I was a new or existing customer, and provide my home address. After doing so, I was given a different set of choices, and prices: Basic Cable ($21.99), Digital Starter ($61.95) and Digital Preferred ($78.90). So, the services available to me were different than those I saw originally, and the prices were roughly double!

Why? Was it because I lived in a remote area? No (I don’t). Was it because I was an existing customer? It must have been, because besides my address, this was the only other information I’d provided. The most important point is that the lack of clarity left me wondering. Why the differences? Perhaps it’s universally understood that new customers get better pricing. It wasn’t to me, and I didn’t like it (but that’s a story for another day). Clarity is good; a lack of clarity is bad.

OK, though, given my available options and pricing, which was best for me?

To determine the specific channels contained within each of the three options, I had to click on “View Channel Lineup.” But this only provided me with the lineup one option at a time, each on a separate page, making a direct comparison difficult. Wouldn’t it make more sense to list the base set of channels with its price, and then say “for $X more, you can have these additional 26 channels, and for another $Y, you will also get these 19 channels?” Unless, that is, the higher packages weren’t very compelling offers.

To keep this blog entry to a reasonable length, I’ll conclude by noting that I copied and pasted the channels for each option into Excel to perform the comparison described above, which made it clear I was better off downgrading my package of channels. I had to work to find the information I wanted. And I became more suspicious and mistrusting as I did.

How we present information – from product descriptions, to service packages, to our PowerPoint presentations – matters. It matters a lot! The average customer or audience will only go so far to find our meaning, and they will usually become suspicious and mistrusting before they do.

Clarity. Transparency. Directness. These need to be our goals in all that we do.

This entry was posted in Presentations. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>