Speaking our customers’ language

IPO

“Working with The First Word has been such a valuable and rewarding experience for us. They helped us to create a communication style that is proving to be very beneficial to our team and to our customers.

We are already seeing positive improvements in the way complaints are handled. When you have a diverse customer base, you want to be able to communicate with them clearly, correctly and with empathy – The First Word have given us the tools and skills we need to do just that.”
— Joanne Trueman, Head of Quality and Complaints

The problem

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is the official UK government body responsible for intellectual property (IP) rights including patents, designs, trademarks and copyright. Their teams are experts in law. But because their customers can be anyone from a solicitor to a member of the public, they sometimes struggled to pitch their language at the right level. This was leading to questions and complaints that could have been answered or avoided first time round.

The solution

In partnership with the IPO’s teams, we created a new approach to communication called ‘Speaking our customers’ language’. This helped them adapt their communication to each individual customer’s level of understanding, while maintaining a consistent structure, format and overall tone. We also delivered practical training workshops and created easy-to-use templates and guidance.

The results

  • 50% reduction in escalated complaints

  • Approx. £22,000 savings on complaint handling

  • 20% fewer customer questions in response to their rewritten template letters

  • Two Compliance Plus awards for Customer Service Excellence (industry gold standard) from the Centre for Assessment

  • Parliamentary praise – the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for AI and Intellectual Property), Viscount Camrose, praised the project for making the communications easy to read 

  • Industry recognition – we’re very proud to say our client Jo Trueman was nominated for a Civil Service Operational Delivery Profession (ODP) award for inclusivity following this work.