Just say it: plain language for customers.
Vodafone Corporate Language - Digitalised process for more quality in customer DiALOGDiALOG Award winner 2018
Peter Thomas, Senior Editorial Manager Content Management & Tonality at Vodafone GmbH
Published in: DiALOG - THE MAGAZINE FOR ENTERPRISE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT | MARCH 2019
Summer 2014, a hot day. The room at the Vodafone campus is full. There is a whiteboard in the centre - still completely empty. We are talking about communication: How do we write and talk to our customers? How do we make processes even better? How can we remain understandable and become even more recognisable as the Vodafone brand? At the end of the day, the whiteboard is full. And we see a lot of potential: our communication still has room for improvement. We need to strengthen the recognisability of the brand through language. We need clear approval processes for texts and text quality.
So we had a mission. And a common goal: to write and speak to our customers in a standardised tone of voice - across all channels and contact points. No sooner said than done: together with the Reinsclassen agency and our brand marketing colleagues, we developed a corporate language - the Vodafone Corporate Language.
Alongside the visual and acoustic identity, this is the third pillar of the Vodafone brand. We have established rules and criteria for simple and understandable language. The golden rulebook for everyone: our Corporate Language Guidelines. They are not set in stone: language is alive. If we want to change something, we do so. And provide information. This fits in with the agile strategy at Vodafone. We have set up an Editorial Quality Team. We have introduced an approval process for texts - e.g. for SMS, MMS, e-mail, letters, flyers, posters, TV adverts and videos. Copywriters in the company use the browser-based software JIRA for approval. Submission and approval - everything runs via the JIRA ticket system. We approve all texts within 48 hours - our own service level agreement for colleagues.
Process? So it's running. But there's more: we wanted to make text quality measurable and comparable. We searched. And found it. Together with the University of Hohenheim, the company ComLab has developed a software programme: TextLab makes comprehensibility and text quality measurable. The basis for this is the generally recognised Hohenheim Index (HIX). The scale ranges from 0 (incomprehensible) to 20 (very comprehensible). We wanted to have this tool. Together with ComLab, we optimised the software once again - and tailored it to Vodafone: we integrated corporate language criteria directly.
The spirit of our corporate language also includes sharing and passing it on: We have now given more than 100 workshops and training sessions for our employees. We have rewritten more than 100,000 old texts - with more than 40 million customer contacts per month. We release around 500 new texts every month.
2019. Die Vodafone Corporate Language ist überall drin im Unternehmen. Etabliert und akzeptiert. Wir schleifen und polieren. Und wir machen Mitarbeiter zu Botschaftern – für eine verständliche Markensprache. Für zufriedene Kunden. Und genau das lohnt sich!
Vodafone Germany is one of the leading integrated telecommunications companies and also the largest TV provider in Germany. With its 13,500 employees, the Group provides Internet, mobile telephony, fixed network and television from a single source. As a gigabit company, Vodafone is leading the way in infrastructure expansion in Germany: with ever faster networks, the Düsseldorf-based company is paving the way for Germany to become a gigabit society - whether in the fixed network or in mobile communications. The Düsseldorf-based company offers business customers a broad ICT portfolio: Vodafone networks people and machines, secures company networks and communications and stores data for companies in the German cloud. Around 90% of all DAX companies and 15 out of 16 German states have already opted for Vodafone. With more than 46 million mobile phone cards, 6.6 million fixed broadband customers and numerous digital solutions, Vodafone Germany generated service revenues of over 10 billion euros in the last financial year. Vodafone Germany is the largest national company of the Vodafone Group, one of the largest telecommunications groups in the world. The Group operates its own mobile networks in 25 countries and maintains partner networks in a further 44 nations. The Group operates its own fixed network infrastructures in 18 countries. Vodafone has around 531.9 million mobile and 20.4 million fixed-line customers worldwide.
www.vodafone-deutschland.de
