It Has Been Telling You for Years
Every day, your organisation speaks to people.
Through your contact centre, through emails, through webchat, through reception desks, through complaints.
Through housing officers, social workers, revenues officers and customer service advisors.
Most of those conversations are treated as service delivery.
Some of them are. Many of them are something else entirely.
They are where communication finally becomes complete.
When Communication Becomes Complete
Imagine a resident receives their Council Tax bill.
The letter explains the amount due, It explains how to pay.
It also explains that if they cannot pay in full, they can contact the council to arrange a payment plan.
The resident reads the letter. They understand what they owe. They understand their options.
They decide they cannot afford to pay in one instalment this month because their wages have been delayed so they telephone the council. That phone call is not evidence of poor communication. It is evidence of successful communication.
The resident understood the information, considered their own circumstances and chose the course of action that was right forthem.
The communication achieved its purpose.
When Communication Is Not Yet Complete
Now imagine another resident receiving exactly the same letter.
They aren’t sure why they owe the amount shown. They don’t know whether the balance is correct. They don’t understand what happens if they cannot pay.
They aren’t confident enough to decide what to do next so they telephone the council.
This conversation serves a completely different purpose.
Before the resident can decide what action is right for them, they first need help understanding the communication itself.
The conversation isn’t delivering the service. It is completing the communication.
Why the Same Contact Can Mean Different Things
That distinction is easy to miss.
Both residents contacted the council. Both conversations appear in the same operational statistics. Both increase call volumes.
Yet they tell completely different stories:
One demonstrates understanding.
The other reveals its absence.
What Contact Volumes Really Tell Us
This is why contact volumes alone tell us very little. What matters is why people are making contact.
Some interactions are invited, some are expected, some are essential.
Others exist because the communication did not create sufficient understanding for someone to act confidently.
Those are clarification interactions.
And they deserve attention.
What Your Operational Data Is Really Showing You
Most organisations already measure demand.
- Call volumes.
- Email volumes.
- Webchat sessions.
- Complaints.
- Repeat contacts.
- Abandoned online forms.
These are valuable operational measures, but they can also be something more.
They can be evidence. Evidence that understanding was created. or evidence that it wasn’t.
The challenge isn’t collecting more information. The challenge is learning to distinguish between the two.
The Questions Your Customers Are Already Answering for You
Think about the questions customer service teams answer every day.
“What does this letter mean?”
“Why have I received this?”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Which option applies to me?”
“Have I done something wrong?”
These aren’t new conversations. They’re the unanswered questions that remained inside the original communication.
The organisation believes the communication ended when the letter was sent. In reality, it ended only when the resident finally understood enough to decide what to do next.
What the Contact Centre Is Really Doing
A thermometer doesn’t create a fever. It reveals one.
Your contact centre doesn’t create the Communication Gap. It reveals it.
Every clarification interaction is a temperature check. A moment where someone says:
“I don’t yet understand enough to decide what I should do.”
Viewed individually, these conversations solve immediate problems. Viewed collectively, they reveal patterns.
Patterns in communication. Patterns in misunderstanding. Patterns in assumptions. Patterns in organisational design.
The Question That Changes Everything
This changes the question leaders should ask. Instead of asking:
“Why are we receiving so many calls?”
Perhaps we should ask:
“How many of these interactions exist because people first needed help understanding our communication before they could decide what to do?”
That question moves the conversation upstream.
It shifts the focus from handling clarification efficiently to creating understanding earlier.
Where Vera Fits
This is where Vera helps. Vera isn’t designed to eliminate conversations.
Many conversations are valuable, some are essential. Its purpose is different.
Vera helps more people understand information well enough to decide the right course of action for their own circumstances, without first needing someone to interpret the communication for them.
That may result in independent action. It may result in asking for support. It may result in arranging a payment plan, challenging a decision or requesting additional help.
Those outcomes are all signs of successful communication if they are based on understanding.
The goal is not fewer conversations.
The goal is fewer conversations whose primary purpose is simply to explain what has already been communicated.
That allows customer service teams to spend more time delivering services and less time completing communications.
Thought to Leave You With
The best organisations don’t measure how many people contact them. They understand why. The difference between those two questions is where the Communication Gap becomes visible.
About the Communication Insights series
This briefing is the fourth in a series exploring The Communication Gap—how organisations can strengthen their communication capability to ensure more people understand, access and benefit from the services available to them.
The insights are based on our work with public sector organisations and the thinking that has shaped the evolution of Ask Vera from an AI-powered Easy Read & Plain English platform towards a broader communication platform designed to help organisations close the Communication Gap.
