The Business Case for Clear Language

Clear Language at work, works! ... Clear language saves costs across industry categories. Improvements in sales, product safety, employee training & customer service all directly impact your bottom line.

Professional Services - Banking / Insurance
Professional Services - Legal
Consumer Goods
Healthcare
Clear Information = Clear Savings

Professional Services - Banking / Insurance

A 38% sales increase was realized by Royal Insurance of Canada when it used clear language in homeowners' insurance policies (from $59 million to $79 million). (Rapport: News about Plain Language, #19, 1996) In 1994, when the Canadian insurance industry launched a new clear language auto insurance policy, 80% of focus group participants reported understanding the policy as compared to 20% with the old policy. (Office of the Plain Language Advisor, Management Board of Cabinet, 1996) In 1973 Citibank redesigned and rewrote its consumer loan agreement. Citibank spent a lot of time in Small Claims Court, trying to collect on bad loans. It also spent a lot of time training staff to answer consumer questions about its complicated forms and contracts. Since the new form was introduced, Citibank has saved on staff training time and on small claim lawsuits. It also increased its market share and has never had the new form challenged in court. (www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/literacy/CostSavings.html) Capital Financial Corporation used to have 200 administrative forms, 14 of which were applications for individual insurance, investment and annuity products. Plain language experts studied these forms and found 1,560 errors in information. They consolidated rewrote and redesigned the forms. The project cost $100,000 and will save an estimated $400,000 per year. (www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/literacy/CostSavings.html) Since the early 1970's, Bank of Nova Scotia has been redesigning forms and writing contracts in plain legal English. So far, it has never had a court case because of plain language. (www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/literacy/CostSavings.html)

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Professional Services - Legal

By rewriting one legal document, the Australian government in Victoria saved the equivalent of $400,000 a year in staff salaries. (Writing in Plain English, R.D. Eagleson, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1990) An Australian lawyer reports, "With a plain language lease I had over 50% of my shopping centre tenants return their lease before the completion date. This is unprecedented!" (Plain Language in Law: the view from Australia, Judith Bennet, Plain Language Progress Conference Proceedings, 1995) The British Columbia government's Small Claims Court Registrar can now handle 40% more cases with the same staff as a result of using plain language in the new Small Claims Court Act, as well as court forms and brochures. (Office of the Plain Language Advisor, Management Board of Cabinet)

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Consumers Goods

Computer manufacturer Coleco lost $35 million in a single quarter in 1983 - and eventually went out of business - when customers purchased its new Adam line of computers, found the instruction manuals unreadable, and rushed to return their computers. (Total Quality Business Writing, Michael Egan, The Journal for Quality and Participation, October/November 1995, v. 18, n. 6). In 1993, a home electronics consumer survey provided "strong evidence that people who buy products with clear communications are likely to become loyal, repeat customers". 86% believed consumers should receive clear instructions with electronic products and more were willing to pay more for this. (How do consumers feel about home electronics products and the communications that explain them?, Shrier et al., Dynamics in document design: Creating texts for readers, 1994) The Allen-Bradly Corporation (manufacturer of programmable controllers) decreased customer service calls from 50 per day to 2 per month by re-designing its documents using clear language & readable formats. (Plain English on the Plant Floor, Plain Language Principles and Practice, B. Jerb (ed.), Wayne State University Press, 1991)

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Healthcare

A large percentage of the adult population are potential poisoning victims due to their inability to read and comprehend label instructions. (Pittsburgh Poison Centre Study Literacy: a contributing factor to poisoning, Veterinary & Human Toxicology, Mrvos R., Dean B.S., Krenzelok E.P., 35 (5): 466-8) In a study of medical-consent forms, readers of the original form were able to correctly answer 2.36 questions out of 5; on the revised form, they could answer 4.52 questions out of 5, for an improvement of 91%. In addition, the mean response time improved from 2.65 minutes to 1.64 minutes. (Revising Medical Consent Forms: An Empirical Model and Test, David S. Kaufer et al., 11 Law, Med. & Health Care 155, 161 (1983)) Malone and colleagues analyzed the costs and benefits of these and other health-literacy interventions: "in working with patients with diabetes. The authors found that 'For modest labor inputs and a program cost of approximately $37 per patient per month in marginal cost, A1C levels, cardiovascular risks, and satisfaction among patients with diabetes significantly improved during the course of a year.' While acknowledging that these costs add up, Malone also speaks about clinical and business benefits". He says, "All you need to do is prevent one ED visit or hospitalization and you get your money back". (In Other Words . . . Making a Bottom-Line Case for Healthy Literacy, Helen Osborne, On Call Magazine, Sept/Oct 2006) A 2004 Institute of Medicine report, Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion, found that nearly half of all American adults - 90 million people - have difficulty understanding and using basic health information. The impact? Higher rates of hospitalization and use of emergency services. Patients who have difficulty reading and writing are at risk, but they aren't the only ones. Even an otherwise highly literate patient may have low health literacy. (Use Language Your Patients Understand, Helen Osborne, Archie Willard, Private Practice Success, August 2007, vol 5, No.8)

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Clear Information = Clear Savings

In addition to the obvious benefits of enhanced consumer safety & customer satisfaction, clear language  provides a clear cost / benefit...

Fifty airplane passengers fill out a form every year for the Customs and Excise Department to claim lost baggage. The form had an error rate of 55%. Redesigning the form reduced the error rate to 3% saving staff 3,700 hours in processing. It cost the Department about $3,500 to rewrite the form but saved about $45,500 a year in processing costs. (www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/literacy/CostSavings.html) The Department of Health and Social Security introduced plain language application forms for legal aid in 1984. It cost the Department about $50,055 to develop and test the forms, but they saved $2,917,280 in staff time yearly. (www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/literacy/CostSavings.html) The Department of Defense receives 750,000 claims for travel expenses yearly from its civilian employees. By rewriting the forms into plain language, the error rate was cut by 50%, the time needed to fill them out was reduced by 10% and the time needed to process by 15%. Preparing the plain language forms cost $23,265 but it saved about $778,320 per year. (www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/literacy/CostSavings.html) The British Government began reviewing its forms in 1982, saving over $28,000,000 by eliminating 27,000 forms and re-designing 41,000 forms. (Writing in Plain English, R.D. Eagleson, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1990) At Alberta Agriculture, "with 1,034,530 forms processed a year, and savings in staff time of at least 10 minutes per form... the annual saving to the government is an astounding $3,472,014". (Alberta Agriculture saves money with plain language, Christine Mowat, Clarity, 1997) The Motorola Corporate Finance Department reduced the time it takes to close its books from 12 days to 4, saving $20,000,000 by quality improvement changes like clearer directions on internal forms. (Motorola and NEC Going for Glory, L. Therrien, Business Week, 1991) "Badly worded instructions on an emergency box designed to cut power to a subway train's third rail may have contributed to the death of a Toronto man in 1995. Coroner Martin Taylor said changes are needed in the instructions that tell bystanders how to use the switch. 'The boxes could be more clearly worded for people in a panic state,' Taylor said". (Train kills man amid confusion over vital switch, Toronto Star, 1995)

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