Client communication
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When engaged in the tiresome business of one-way client communications, bear a few things in mind.
- Client communications are inevitably a damage limitation exercise: Clients will care even less about your letter than you do. No one sends out mass-mail client comms for the hell of it: usually they will be instigated by your regulator or your compliance department, and in neither case will your client be particularly interested in them. Perhaps they should be interested in them, but they won’t be. Since the tidings these letters convey will be be somewhere between irrelevant and annoying, you should assume your clients, being human, will react to your news in predictable ways: by ignoring it, being confused by it, being irritated by it, or being confused and irritated by it.
- Don’t say “Dear Client”. Ever. Either have confidence in your client static data, and use a name — this shows you care enough about your client to be justified in considering them dear to you — or don’t, accept your clients to you are a passive herd of cattle there only to be milked, and don’t try to be ingratiating while you do it.
- Go easy on the disclaimers. Think first “what will my client think of me if I say that”, rather than “what if I get it wrong and my client sues me?” As the JC’s pithy maxim has it: usually, you only need airbags if you don’t steer straight. Concentrate on defensive driving, not crash mats. If you have to have a disclaimer — and I know, you will have to have one — keep it brief, to the point and put it at the end. If the first thing your client reads is “Please be advised we take no responsibility for this, we are only doing this because someone said we have to, so on your own head be it”, your client is going to think, “gee, what a douche”. Generally, that’s not how you want your client to be thinking now, is it?