Confidence in customer understanding comes from a joined-up approach
Customer Understanding has many elements. One of the most important is the communications firms produce.
The FCA’s expectation is clear.
Customers should be given the information they need, and it should be presented in a way they can understand.
In practice, that means looking at two things:
What you’ve written
How you’ve written it
Both matter. At CUE, we assess and evidence both.
Together, these help firms build the evidence needed to show that customer understanding has been built into their communications.
How you’ve written it
The FCA expects firms to consider where confusion could arise in their communications, to help consumers navigate the information they provide, to explain jargon or technical terms, and use plain and intelligible language that consumers are likely to understand. It also recognises that even small changes can materially improve comprehension.
Our Client Literature Review is designed to do exactly that, helping firms improve how information is described, structured and explained, and providing an audit trail that shows what changed and why.
We assess:
How clearly information is written, structured and explained
Whether language and processing demands are appropriate for the intended audience
Where wording, structure or presentation may create confusion or misunderstanding
This helps firms assess not just what they have written, but how they have written it.
The FCA expects firms to put themselves in their customers’ shoes when considering whether their communications equip customers with the information they need to understand a product or service, and where confusion or misunderstanding could lead to harm.
Our Product Understanding Review is a deeper, more detailed review of the product or service you are communicating, and is designed to do exactly that, by identifying the core concepts that matter and testing whether customers actually understand them.
What you’ve written
We assess:
What customers need to understand about how a product, feature or service works
How those core concepts should be communicated for the intended audience
Whether customers actually understand them when tested
This helps firms assess not just what they have said, but whether customers are likely to form the right understanding of it.
Confidence comes from addressing both
Clear language does not guarantee understanding.
Understanding a concept does not mean it has been explained well.
Our services are designed to work independently or together, depending on your needs and priorities.