Plain English: consumers identify best and worst industry sectors

When it comes to communicating well with customers in plain English, people rate supermarkets and restaurants as the best sectors.

The new elephant communications research asked more than 2,000 adults which industry sectors, from a list of 16, they considered to be best at communicating in plain English - and those that were the worst at baffling them with jargon.

Whilst a number of sectors stood out for communicating well in plain English, 30% of respondents didn’t think any industry sector was good enough at making things simple.

At the opposite end of scale, when it came to baffling them with jargon, people voted banks, utilities and investment companies as among the list of worst offenders.

These preliminary findings are from a new 10-part sector-based research series from elephant communications, running into 2013, which will explore how consumers rate industry sectors on a range of important everyday issues. The study explores how various sectors score on a range of issues and aims to help brands explore best practice from other industry sectors when it comes to external communication.

The elephant team will be running sessions on the first three pieces of research in early December.