How to Do Compliance Messaging

Compliance messaging.  It’s funny how these two little words can make a huge impact on your customers’ telephony experience.

Companies are aware that compliance messages are important.  It’s vital to protect themselves, demonstrate good practice and to promote customer confidence. When it comes to the actual content and deployment though it’s difficult to know where to start. Too wordy or complicated and your caller will lose interest or simply not understand what they’re being told.  Poorly placed, and the message can disrupt the caller’s journey. Getting the balance right can be tricky, but it’s not impossible.

Your legal department or advisers will be important. You’ll need to know your do’s and don’ts and ensure you’re abiding by the legal standards. But your legal team probably aren’t the best at making messaging engaging, so you’ll want a content specialist to review the script.  They’ll look for ways to present the message in plain language and probably try to make it shorter – giving the same information but in a more appealing way.  Your legal team can still sign this off and suggest changes, but the result should be an improvement over a text that all too often is jargon-filled and meant to be written down, rather than heard over the phone.

Even with creative input and some judicious editing, you may still notice that your message is long.  One way around this is to give repeat callers the option to skip.  Not everyone is a first-time caller and telephony systems are increasingly capable of identifying repeat calls. So, where you know a caller has already heard the message, allowing them the chance to skip the message will save them time and can help with their personal journey and experience. 

Also consider where you’d like to place this message.  Is it essential that every caller hears it at the start of the call or is there a way to pop it in without being too obvious?  A great place to slot the compliance message in is just after the caller chooses their option in the IVR.  Before this point they haven’t committed to any action, so compliance messaging is only delaying their ability to move forwards in their journey. This also gives you the ability to tailor compliance messaging to different branches of the IVR. After all, someone calling about a product they’ve already bought maybe doesn’t need to know all the Ts and Cs related to new purchases… they might just need a smaller, more relevant message.

And finally, you can give your caller a choice. This is an approach that has been popular with data protection messaging. In this case, instead of forcing a long and complicated message on the caller, you start the journey with a simple, brief explanation.  Then you give them information on how to find out more. You could give them an option to hear a detailed recording through the IVR or deflect to your website.   

Compliance messaging doesn’t have to be a painful experience.  With a little consideration, you can ensure your callers have access to information, but still make their journey a positive one.