Communicating Clearly and Kindly – An Undersung Part of Service and Experience Design
The other day, I was helping someone set up a new mail-merge newsletter account with the well-known email marketing provider. The specific provider isn’t important, though anyone familiar with email marketing platforms will probably figure out who it is.
After creating their first innocuous newsletter, my friend was startled to find their account had been suspended. As the situation evolved, they received a series of account notifications that left them confused, frustrated and even a feeling of being tarnished. Like they’d done something wrong.
I’d like to unpack their story as an excellent example of how a product, service or experience fails to communicate clearly and kindly. It also paints the email marketing provider, a service I formerly held in some regard, as a potentially unfriendly user experience. But it isn’t all storm-clouds. There’s a silver of hope; how simple words, used correctly, can help create positive experiences.
Let’s start with the product at the centre of this. My friend was selling everyday stationery products, built around a quirky invented personality. By design, the products are accepting and safe. The newsletter, the inaugural edition, included a letter to the still-small mailing list, a few of the key products for the month, a link to a behind-the-scenes story, and a call-to-action. Nothing too controversial there.
As required by anti-spam acts, they had provided a listed address, contact details and a simple method to unsubscribe. The contact details of recipients had all been obtained face-to-face, with signed permission recorded. Nothing that would cause offence, breach any anti-spam act conditions, or risk account suspension.
So, it was with great surprise that, just before they were preparing to send their first missive, my friend noticed their ability to send their newsletter had been blocked. They didn’t take a screenshot, but similar messages appear online…
“Hello UVWXYZ,
Our automated abuse prevention system reviewed your account with the username (UVWXYZ).
It detected content or actions which either conflict with our Acceptable Use Policy, or present a significant risk to our deliverability.
Your account with the username UVWXYZ has been suspended for violating our Standard Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy.
Please review our policies for more information on the types of content we don’t allow.”
Pardon?
Confused and agitated, we both reviewed the terms with a gimlet eye. Considering the everyday nature of the products my friend was selling, each line in the terms and conditions seemed more extreme than the last. To give a flavour of the language, consider a truncated list of terms…
“Illegal goods or services, Emails that violate the CAN-SPAM act or other anti-spam laws, Pornography/sexually explicit content, Campaigns promoting or supporting terrorism, Counterfeit products, Products claiming to prevent, treat, or cure COVID-19 that are not approved or authorized for emergency use by regulatory or public health agencies, Products that are in demand due to COVID-19 with excessive pricing…”
We were stymied.
The account was suspended and there was only one listed call-to-action, a button offering to “Request a Review.”
We clicked the button, which then disabled and showed it was in progress.
No estimated time of delivery.
No further information.
So, we read the terms and conditions again, focusing on the second tier of ‘risky services.’ Again, I’ve truncated some of these lines for brevity, without sacrificing the gist of the message.
“Escort services, mail-order bride, Hookup, swinger, or sexual encounter sites, Pharmaceutical products, Work-at-home scams, Gambling services or products, Multi-level marketing, Credit repair, List brokers, Selling “Likes”…Cryptocurrencies…”
Fascinating, but no, my friend was not selling any of these things.
Not even close.
Not on the same planet.
Then came email two.
“A standard compliance review of your account has identified violations of our Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy. As a result, your account is now closed. You will need to find a new vendor to meet your needs.
You will be able to log in to your account to retrieve historical data for a period of 48 hours, at which point the account will be locked and inaccessible. Please log in to retrieve your data as soon as possible.”
Time to panic.
My friend didn’t have a back-up service provider and had already spent hours setting up their first newsletter.
Their emotions were turning from excitement to fear.
Again, there was no specific feedback about what my friend had done wrong, so no way to fix the issue.
In frustration, we turned to the acceptable use policy for another tranche of terms (again truncated for brevity)…
“Online trading, Daily horoscope reports, Mortgages and loans, Herbal, and vitamin supplements, Adult entertainment/novelty items, Online dating services, Sexually explicit content, Real estate, Products in demand due to COVID-19…”
Still, none of these even come close to applying.
We dug through the website for an escalation path, which so far hadn’t been at all visible. Eventually, we found an email address that we could use to escalate a review. Not in the company’s help materials, but on a completely separate marketing site that described the problem and a potential solution.
While we waited for an answer, we read the final tranche of terms, the methods of use that were considered unacceptable. Again, truncated for brevity…
“You may not: Send Spam, Fail to point to an opt-out form, Include any material that wasn’t created by you, Use any misleading or incorrect names, Host images on our servers for any purpose other than for your use of the Service, Sell or offer to sell any counterfeit products or products…”
Neither of us were wiser having exhausted ourselves with this slog through page after page of legalise. No matter what we checked; every line, picture, piece of metadata or sending addresses, nothing seemed wrong.
Then, a day later, my friend received an email response from the compliance team, which I can only paraphrase here, as my friend no longer has the original.
‘Your account has been reinstated after a manual review … The automated checking system often flags new or upgraded accounts for review. This is normal and I’ve reinstated your account for you.’
What?
So, ignore all those blunt and generic entreaties to check the extensive terms.
The threats that the account was now locked.
The push to find another provider.
All gone?
Just like that?
We’d reached the end of the experience. With a reinstated account, my friend finally sent their newsletter, but that isn’t the moral of the story.
Even if the service is beholden to make content checks and to accord to a deep list of arcane legal rules, their implementation in terse, un-informative and frightening language makes for a disastrous experience.
I’m sure my friend will look for another provider. Even I felt frustrated by the experience, and I was only a helpful bystander.
Along the way, you can probably see the failures of service and experience interaction design.
A failure to provide specific feedback. If the automated checking system flagged an error, then surely providing a sanitised version of its log to point someone in the right direction is a duty of care?
External messages that don’t match internal processes. Though the account was seemingly ‘locked for good,’ according to the automated email, it turned out it was only waiting for a compliance review. But that’s not what the messaging said.
The presumption of guilt. Even if someone has nefarious purposes, as a general rule, surely it can’t hurt to use wording that presumes someone has made an honest mistake? By using confronting and negative framing, the interactions felt negative from the very beginning.
Misleading representation of internal checks and balances. If new accounts often get flagged by the checking system, why wasn’t that mentioned anywhere?
It’s a super disappointing experience in an age where a lot of this basic experience interaction patterns should really be understood. It also shows the power of words in designing experiences. There isn’t anything technologically challenging about providing logs, better messaging and clearer escalation steps.
Consider a tactical re-writing of the key error messages…
First Message – Something might be wrong
Original…
“Hello UVWXYZ,
Our automated abuse prevention system reviewed your account with the username (UVWXYZ).
It detected content or actions which either conflict with our Acceptable Use Policy, or present a significant risk to our deliverability.
Your UVWXYZ account with the username UVWXYZ has been suspended for violating our Standard Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy.
Please review our policies for more information on the types of content we don’t allow.”
Revised…
“Hello UVWXYZ,
To keep the highest quality service, here at [Company], we run an automated checking system, which you can read more about here.
Our system has reviewed your account with the username (UVWXYZ) and found there may be content or actions which either conflict with our Acceptable Use Policy, or present a significant risk to our deliverability.
To protect our community, your account with the username UVWXYZ has been temporarily suspended for potentially violating our Standard Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy.
Please review our policies for more information on the types of content or sending process we don’t allow.
If you think this was a mistake, please Request A Review”
Regards, [Company]”
Second Message—Something is probably wrong, but we’re checking it out
Original…
“A standard compliance review of your account has identified violations of our Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy. As a result, your account is now closed. You will need to find a new vendor to meet your needs.
You will be able to log in to your account to retrieve historical data for a period of 48 hours, at which point the account will be locked and inaccessible. Please log in to retrieve your data as soon as possible.”
Revised…
“Hello UVWXYZ,
Following up on our first email, the automated compliance review of your account is still identified potential violations of our Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy.
As a result, your account is still suspended.
Just to warn you, if we aren’t able to approve your account, you may need to find a new vendor to meet your needs.
However, to make sure this isn’t a mistake with our automated systems, you can request a Formal Review from one of our compliance team members at compliance@company.com.
Please be aware, the team gets a lot of messages, so they may take time to respond. But we won’t do anything to your account until they check your details.
Regards, [Company]”
Third Message–Our mistake, sincere apologies
Original…
‘Your account has been reinstated after a manual review … The automated checking system often flags new or upgraded accounts for review. This is normal and I’ve reinstated your account for you.’
Revised…
“Hello UVWXYZ,
This is ZYXWVU, with the Compliance Team. I’ve checked your account and found it’s totally fine.
Sometimes, our automated checking system flags new or upgraded accounts for review. Our apologies for this.
I’ve manually reinstated your account and you’re good to go now.
Please contact us again if you have any more issues.
Regards and happy sending, [Company]”
Surely these second versions are kinder, more clear, more helpful, more human friendly, and it’s just a bunch of words. This is the power of power of design research, product testing and service design. It helps you dig ‘under the skin' of a service, to understand how it works, from the fresh perspective of real users. This helps provide the insights required to make better experiences. Anything else seems to show a sad lack of initiative and imagination.
