The Halifax clear writing case study
How one UK bank is using software to improve the way it writes clearly to it’s customers.
Halifax – a major financial institution uses StyleWriter, a customized house style and the Writing Course to transform the way employees write to customers.
Every few months managers complained at the standard of customer correspondence and internal documents. We were no different from any other company or government agency—we did not write well. All organisations, especially large ones, suffer from a business style that gets in the way of clear communication.
We tried solving this problem in the traditional way—we ran internal courses teaching colleagues how to write clearly. Unfortunately, although colleagues enthusiastically embraced the ideas, they soon fell back into their old writing habits when they returned to their desks.
StyleWriter—The Clear Writing Editor
We turned to Editor Software to find a practical solution to our problem. We had previously asked Editor Software to edit over 800 of our standard letters. Once edited, the new letters met with universal approval from our customers. We had also introduced Editor Software’s StyleWriter software into a few areas of the business.
This software, popular with colleagues, checked letters for thousands of plain English style and usage problems, gave valuable editing advice and encouraged a clear and natural style. Could StyleWriter be the answer we were looking for?
The Software Solution
When discussing our needs with Editor Software, the company’s director, Nick Wright, helped us by offering software solutions. He suggested designing an Electronic Writing Course based on our customer-service letters to teach colleagues everything they needed to know to write in a clear and effective style.
Our site licence to the Course lets us train all colleagues quickly and efficiently at their desks. Once trained, we issue staff with StyleWriter. Each time a colleague drafts a letter, StyleWriter checks, analyses and rates the document. The program highlights the poor business style—long sentences, wordy phrases, clichés, passive verbs and so on.
With a few simple mouse clicks and keystrokes, the writer produces a better letter. StyleWriter is as simple as running a spell-check but the results are far more impressive.
You can read the full Halifax clear writing case study it is on our EditorSotfware site.
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