I was up in fives this morning, unable to sleep. I made some tea and checked my email, as you do.
One mail was from my bank, Monzo, about changes to their official terms and conditions. If this email came from almost any other organisation, I’d probably delete it unread, but this was from Monzo and I knew it would be better than most. I wasn’t disappointed.
Just look at this fabulous gem of a paragraph:
We’ll refund you for loss or damage in some cases, but not others. We know that’s vague, sorry. What we are and aren’t responsible for is quite fiddly to explain in this email. It’s all in the terms and conditions if you’re interested.
Isn’t that just gorgeous?
“We know that’s vague, sorry.”
Remember, this is an email about terms and conditions. The one bit of content that pretty much every organisation has to have, that every organisation hates dealing with, and nobody ever wants to read. Communication to users, about terms and conditions, is almost always dry and dull. Nobody expects anything about T&Cs to be interesting or worth reading. But Monzo makes the effort, and makes it all just … delightful. Imagine that: delightful terms and conditions.
This is the human voice. This is an organisation that knows how to communicate like humans do. Public sector teams: you can write like this. If it’s ok for a bank, it’s ok for you too.
The people who do comms / marketing / words at Monzo have always been good at this stuff. This is one of their finest yet. 👏👏👏
Filed under: work
(24 March 2021)