Making it personal at EE

The problem

EE’s customer communications weren’t delivering on their brand. The robotic language was formal and inconsistent, with too much tech speak. Most of all, it was missing the personal touch. Their metrics showed the writing was causing confusion, repeat complaints and customers to move elsewhere.

The solution

We used our tried and tested approach to create a personal touch at EE, with their teams involved at every step.

We audited communications and spoke to teams across EE to give us the full picture. We found that while they loved the EE brand, they didn’t know how to put it into their day to day writing. So we created tone of voice guidelines to show them.

We ran an internal campaign to create a buzz and our training gave EE’s teams the practical skills and confidence to write in a more personal way.

The rewrites, guides, templates and tools we created showed them what good looked like. And our collaboration with EE’s in-house brand champions, trainers and managers has made the personal approach stick, in everything from team huddles and coaching to quality assessment and recognition.

The results

Our work has helped EE’s teams feel they are the brand, so they feel inspired to write in a personal way to their customers.

• By the end of the training, 100% of delegates agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I feel comfortable writing in a personal way to customers” compared to 54% before training.

• The trainees rated their understanding of the EE tone of voice as improving by over 40% on average.

• We’re delighted to say our work helped EE win Best Complaints Management Team at the European Contact Centre and Customer Service Awards 2019.

“Working with The First Word has been a breath of fresh air. They have helped us to change they way we write but also changed mindsets of the team.
We’ve seen improvements across the board, but more importantly the feedback from our customers and my people has been amazing.”

Rebecca Harvison
Head of Complaints, EE and BT

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