Building confidence with words

Allianz

“This was fantastically motivating and empowering. It gave our tone of voice experts real responsibility for great writing at Allianz, and it meant they could take full credit for the improvements. Most importantly, we’ve seen a dramatic change in the way our teams write. For the first time, people are thinking about their writing from the customer’s perspective and producing clear, concise communications that put the reader first.”
— Carolyn Rich, Head of Brand Marketing

The problem

A poll of more than 2,000 insurance customers showed over 50% don’t feel insurers provide them with useful communication. They felt they were ‘boring’, ‘irrelevant’, ‘impersonal’ and contained ‘too much jargon’.

Insurance is also a highly commoditised market, with many companies selling the same product in the same way. Allianz wanted to stand out by providing a ‘best in class’ customer experience. How? By launching and embedding our new tone of voice.

The solution

Tone of voice projects often fail because people feel they’re going back to school. It’s also often treated as something so specialist that only brand teams and agencies can do, so there’s an implicit lack of trust.  


We took a different approach. By running tailored training for the Allianz tone of voice experts and tasking them with supporting their colleagues, we gave them ownership of the tone of voice. 


We got their tone of voice experts to work on live communications. We created practical tools (like quality assessments) so their experts could critique their colleagues’ writing quickly, consistently and fairly. We then set up regular follow-up sessions for our tone of voice experts to share ideas, celebrate their successes and solve problems together. Our approach meant that Allianz had budget leftover to commission expert jobs, like rewriting key documents and specialist training. We took a different approach. By running tailored training for the Allianz tone of voice experts and tasking them with supporting their colleagues, we gave them ownership of the tone of voice.  


We are now using this collaborative approach to bring the tone of voice to life for Allianz Trade, with champions around Europe.

The results

  • 100% of delegates said they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I understand how tone of voice applies to my writing”, compared to 36% before the training.

  • 97% of delegates agreed with the statement “I have the skills to write effectively in my role”, compared to 58% before the training

  • The project was also shortlisted for the Training Journal Awards Best Training Programme.