Clear Survey Communication

Company image is important. In many ways, how you market the company affects satisfaction as much as any actual satisfaction efforts do, because both employees and customers are influenced by how they perceive the company through its marketing campaigns. Companies that market themselves well tend to have their flaws overlooked.

Companies that market themselves poorly tend to wear their perceived flaws on their sleeve. That is why company image is an important part of satisfaction, even if customers and employees are not benefitting in any noticeable way, and studies have shown that there is an often overlooked factor in how the company represents itself – the clarity in its writing.

Any good writer knows that trying to “sound smart” in writing is a fool’s errand. As soon as you try too hard to use big words or write in complicated sentences, the writing itself suffers and immediately reads as though written by someone that is trying too hard. It is the reason that it is always a bad idea to use the thesaurus feature on Microsoft Word to improve your writing – chances are, if you didn’t know how to integrate the word initially into the writing, it isn’t going to fit.

Studies have shown that complicated writing may also affect company image. People don’t like to try to read something from a company that they can’t understand, and get frustrated with the company for writing in terminology that is difficult for the average reader. Some get angry because they simply don’t understand the content.

Others get too bored and fail to benefit from the lack of clarity. While good grammar, spelling, and word choice are vital parts of writing, how understandable the content is may be equally as important.

This research has shown that those that don’t understand the written materials handed to them think poorly of the company that sends out those materials. While the effect is likely minor when compared to other issues, writing in easily understandable format and terminology is also one of the easiest aspects of a company to change. Simply put someone in charge that understands how to speak to the average person, writing any materials you hand out in a way that everyone is going to easily understand, and any damage committed by complex writing will be mitigated. It’s a small change that may have many long term benefits for your company, both for employees and customers.