Errors on Business Forms – Time to Think About The Image It Portrays

We fill them out every day but how many times do we really look at the business forms we fill in? It is a sad fact that all too many have spelling or grammatical errors on them and our mind seems just to accept this as a fact of life, yet we should not. I have for a long while counted myself as a self appointed guardian of the English language; yet this writer is mild in criticism compared to a friend.

She talked recently about the errors she found on a form sent to her by a major international insurance company. The first error encountered was on the envelope in addressing her as “Mr LadiesName FamilyName”. This is an error that can be understood where the name is used for both men and women alike e.g. Lesley, but not for a clearly recognised female name, like Jane or Mary. Such errors do also creep in where the name is not European in origin, although name databases should now recognise a wide range of names irrespective of their worldly origin. This problem she was prepared to overlook compared to the catelogue of errors she found on the enclosed documents.

Six spelling errors on the first page alone, what a sad state of affairs! Her point was that we have become numb to the bad use of our language in many aspects of our lives! She almost felt like reaching for the red pen and marking/grading the form (and I doubt it would have received more than a D-).

Taking this insurance form – thousands of people full these out everyday. Forms are vital to the success of many businesses; they are often the first contact point with the prospective customer. This alone means that it is so important that the form is correct in every part of it. We all make mistakes, even the most pedantic of us, occasionally send out the occasional email containing spelling or grammatical errors, it is a part of our humanity to err. Yet this insurance form is vital and may be used by millions of people over its lifetime, so it is essential that it is flawless. The worst aspect here is the fact that if you tell your customer service agent about the error they are simply not interested, when in reality they should be seeking understanding the needs of their customers in order to improve their own business, and if for this customer grammar and spelling are important then this must be considered and listened to.

The beauty of creating documents via a computer is that errors are easily fixed. Of course there are procedures related to creating a form and some of these also include having the wording validated by a lawyer. It is even possible to understand how an important form can be released to the public with errors included on it, but not fixing them, when identified, is another matter. Having once mentioned a grammatical problem to customer services at the company their agent stated “You must be mistaken” as they had been using the same form for over ten years and furthermore no-one had previously made any comment about the form before. When asked to record the comment, the reply was “we have no procedure to do that”. Clearly if they have no process to record errors then they cannot possibly know if there had been any prior complaints. Most likely the majority of callers could not be bothered to mention the mistake.

In today’s business world ‘trust’ is becoming a major factor to trade. To this writer the trust factor is diminished, by a refusal to correct errors when spotted. Would that stop you doing business with that company? Perhaps not, but continue to make errors and the customer cannot help but get a negative impression of the service offered.