Now think about the times when the service you needed to use provided clear, detailed instructions, and you were able to complete your task efficiently and with few to no issues. You probably finished the process feeling satisfied, empowered, and grateful for the positive experience.
This is exactly the response the federal government is trying to create as it continues to prioritize customer experience (CX) across its agencies, and Ad Hoc is committed to supporting our customers in this important effort. They’re making real progress, thanks in part to making their communications clearer by using plain language.
There are many facets to improving the customer’s experience, but using direct, easy-to-understand language is a powerful way agencies can make their services available to everyone. And while the journey to transforming CX associated with public digital services will be an ongoing effort, we’re encouraged to see some of the positive outcomes that are already happening as a result of their continued commitment.
When someone needs to use a government service – whether it’s scheduling a medical appointment with the Department of Veterans Affairs, applying for social security, or filing for unemployment insurance – they should be able to complete the process, get the help they need, and move on. But that is often not the case, and as we described earlier, it can have lasting, negative impacts on how we view and interact with an agency. Even worse, it can potentially cause harm. But this is changing.
Take for example the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Unemployment Insurance (UI) Modernization. Created from the unemployment surge during the COVID pandemic, their team was tasked with transforming the digital services that millions of people across the country use to apply for and manage their unemployment benefits.
In addition to preventing fraud and ensuring benefits were being paid out in a timely manner, their other priority was to promote access for a wide audience. One of the ways they did this was to develop a robust collection of plain language resources that states could turn to as they reworked their digital services to be more user-friendly and attainable for all.
Some of the resources they developed to help promote the importance of using plain language among state offices included:
Providing this level of plain language support and resources clearly demonstrates their belief in the benefits of plain language and their commitment to making sure its use is standard across the government landscape.
Make no mistake – transforming complex, established content into information that is clear and concise can be time-intensive and challenging. But if it means people are able to understand an agency’s directions and can quickly complete a task because the guidance is free of jargon and unnecessary words, then we have to make that commitment.
Ad Hoc applauds the work of the Department of Labor’s Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization to clarify their processes and information – for states, claimants, and employers. We hope other agencies will look to them as an example of the power of plain language and how using it can turn a confusing process into an efficient one using clear, understandable language that lessens the public’s mental load.
