ECC Online Forms Rewarded for Promoting Clear Language

Clear language

The Clear Communicator of the Year competition is organised every year by the Institute for the Languages of Finland. The award is granted biennially to a promoter of plain language and biennially to a promoter of good administrative language. In 2022 government and municipal agencies competed for the award. The Finnish Digital and Population Agency won the competition with its online guides on complex situations, such as job loss or divorce. The Social Insurance Institution of Finland was the other finalist alongside ECC Finland.

According to the Institute for the Languages of Finland, the three finalists shared common strengths:

• They work together to strengthen the promotion of good administrative language.
• They obtain and utilise feedback and measure impact.
• They have created permanent systems and structures to streamline texts and workflows.
• The development does not focus on individual texts or model texts. An effort has been made to make it easier to use all services.

Guiding consumers

ECC Finland’s forms were launched in December 2021, as a part of its new website. The forms pay special attention to using understandable language, guiding consumers, streamlining the work of the centre’s legal advisors and accelerating the processing of cases. They are available in Finland’s national languages Finnish and Swedish as well as in English. The linguistic solutions and localisation of the forms to suit Finnish consumers’ needs were made in-house at ECC Finland.

The new complaints form has helped ECC Finland to receive consumer cases that are better prepared. Cases submitted through the online form contain all data ECC advisors need to solve the consumer’s complaint against a trader. The amount of queries that fall outside of the ECC’s focus area has diminished substantially. Based on the information they provide when filling in the form, consumers with questions outside of the ECC’s expertise are directed to other organisations for help.

Team effort

The online forms were built by the Dutch online agency Betawerk and were first developed for ECC Netherlands, followed by other ECCs. In addition to Finland, France, Germany, Ireland and Luxembourg use versions of the same contact and complaints forms. All forms are tailored to national needs and are linked directly to ECC-Net’s central complaint handling system.