I've just opened a letter from HM Revenue and Customs. "There are two important changes occurring that affect our VAT customers. This letter provides important information about both."
In a nutshell, it goes on to say that they have changed their supplier of banking services, and so I "may now need to" spend time and effort reconfiguring the details of the electronic banking instructions I use to make VAT payments. What they actually mean is... "please would I" take the trouble do this in order to make sure they continue to receive my payments smoothly.
Did it not occur to whoever wrote this that they might do rather better by presenting this in terms of some kind of benefit to me? Even a vague, "We're doing this to keep down costs and provide a better, more efficient service", would have done. It would have made me feel I was doing this as part of some greater good.
HMRC are not as guilty, however, as Sagepay. Accounting software brand Sage has now taken over the payment gateway formerly known as Protx. They sent all their newly acquired clients a letter to say that you had to update various templates on their system, via your admin panel, in order to reflect their new branding in your page templates. No 'please would you?' No 'we have made arrangements to do this for you." Just the imposition of a task that a huge number of clients will have to pay a web developer to implement.
You'd have thought they'd be keen to strike up a good relationship during a rebrand, as rebrands from a chosen supplier to a brand which has acquired you on a customer list, are rarely well received by the public.
Bottom line? Dumb people in charge of comms on both projects: people who have no clue about communicating for the best interests of their brands or operations, and to whom it simply doesn't occur that their own self-important, curt and rather shabby writing styles won't be good enough to do the job.
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