A Gas Network
This network distributes gas to almost three million homes and businesses. Like other heavily regulated organisations, their writing often sounded overly bureaucratic. It certainly didn’t reflect the dynamic, community-focused business they aspire to be. By creating a brighter tone of voice, we helped them reconnect with their customers.
The challenge
The most likely time customers come into direct contact with the organisation is some kind of disruption. Either the road is being dug up, or the gas has been shut off. Bureaucratic waffle and clumsy messaging weren’t helping people in customer service and connections build bridges with upset or annoyed customers. Even their business documents suffered from an unnecessarily verbose writing style. Given the company’s mission statement included ambitious goals about customer expectations, corporatese language wasn’t going to help deliver that either.
What we did
Tone of Voice
Developed a Tone of Voice that delivered the organisation's goals of creating a more human touch – and their corporate ambitions.
Trained
Trained over 100 customer service and connections team staff in the new. Tone of Voice through 10 workshops in-house.
Guided the team
Created a guide that could be used throughout the business and aligned the Tone of Voice with the corporate mission.
Ran 2 business writing workshops to help teams with report writing – and deliver a better quality performance report for Ofgem.
Trained the team
"I got a huge amount from the day which I will use from next week! I particularly enjoyed the variety of topics, pace and interactive approach and throughout the day."
Mr X, Business Planning
Before
We would like to apologise in advance for any inconvenience that our works may cause and whilst we will do everything we can to minimise disruption, we do appreciate the impact of our works. If you have any questions or concerns with regards to the proposal of works, please do not hesitate to contact us.
The results
All the letters and email templates have been refreshed in the new tone. Teams have adapted their writing to the new style. And we think the feedback speaks for itself!
