“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” – Albert Einstein
Clear, simple communication is the foundation of a great customer experience. People should be able to get the answers they need quickly and clearly, without hitting roadblocks or decoding jargon. When that happens, strong customer relationships naturally follow.
We recently partnered with a leading communications client to dive into the key principles of “understandability”—the ability for customers to easily make sense of products and services.
The project was inspired by insights from a recent J.D. Power study, which flagged one standout challenge: customers often struggle to understand phone representatives. That finding opened the door to a bigger conversation about all the factors that influence understandability—from frontline interactions to the systems and processes that shape the entire customer journey.
What Is Understandability and How Does It Work?
While there are multiple definitions across industries, understandability generally means how easy a product, service, or system is for its intended users to comprehend and use. It involves elements such as the user interface, instructions, and overall experience.
In banking and financial services, understandability means making financial agreements clear—so customers can see both the immediate and long-term impact of their choices without needing expert knowledge.
In media and communications, especially in telco, understandability comes down to simplicity. By reducing complexity in systems, services, and processes, companies can improve customer experiences and run more efficiently. Key factors include a customer-centric focus, streamlined processes, and clear communication.
Depending on how it shapes customer experience, understandability typically shows up in two main areas:
Interaction understandability
Design and product understandability
Interaction understandability is all about how clearly information comes across during customer conversations—whether that’s with an advisor or an AI bot. Making these interactions smoother means using tools to make the conversation more natural, context-aware and easy to follow. It can include things like AI to cut background noise, proper advisor training, and quicker resolution strategies.
Design and product understandability focuses on how clear systems and processes are for customers. That includes intuitive interfaces, straightforward contracts, consistent terminology, and clear explanations that don’t require a dictionary.
When businesses work on both dimensions of understandability, they create a stronger, more seamless customer experience.
How Does It Impact Customers?
When understandability is missing, frustration quickly takes its place. Customers may misinterpret information, feel dissatisfied, or lose trust in a brand altogether. J.D. Power surveys highlight this—difficulty understanding representatives or product offerings is a common complaint among customers.
Understanding the customer’s perspective is vital, and organizations need to streamline communication to ensure positive experiences, and prevent:
- Financial losses from poor UX design.
- Higher demand on support teams, requiring extra staff.
- Brand switching due to poor customer experience.
- Unclear communication across internal teams and processes.
- Legal risks tied to noncompliance with the regulations.
Simply put, clarity pays off—in trust, loyalty, and efficiency.
What Do Businesses Miss by Disregarding Understandability
Companies that don’t focus on understandability often face:
- Increased churn, as customers look elsewhere for clarity.
- Higher operational costs linked to resolving misunderstandings.
- Damage to brand reputation, as complex communications can leave customers feeling alienated.
- Poor experiences caused by poor UX and assumption-based design.
Companies that prioritize understandability tend to see stronger customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Gold Standards for Understandability
Our communications study revealed several practices that set the bar high for understandability. These lessons can be applied across industries:
Product and Offerings
- Billing and payments: Unified platforms that integrate invoicing help streamline how customers understand their monthly bills, while simplifying charges and fees ensure greater clarity and consistency from month to month.
- Product and pricing structure: Simplifying tier and package options, while maintaining consistency across the network, helps reduce confusion around bundled vs. stand-alone services. A smaller, more focused set of products and add-ons also makes it easier for customers to choose, lowering churn caused by complexity.
Systems and Processes
- App usage and functionality: By leveraging GenAI, apps are evolving beyond basic LLM capabilities into more intelligent, self-contained experiences. Seamless integration with back-end systems enables the app to handle more customer needs directly, reducing—and in many cases eliminating—the need to contact support via chat or phone.
- Access to knowledge, self-service, and assistance: Today’s customers prefer not to call for help, but when they do need support, they expect quick and easy access to a knowledgeable advisor through their preferred communication channel. Ensuring seamless, omnichannel experiences that preserve conversation history as customers switch channels is critical to meeting these expectations.
- Consistency across platforms: Using consistent naming conventions across customer- and advisor-facing systems, websites, and apps reduces confusion. Equally important is maintaining accurate, user-friendly knowledgebases and troubleshooting resources available to both customers and advisors. Providing interactive training through multiple modalities—including simulators and effectiveness scoring—empowers everyone involved to resolve issues efficiently and confidently.
- Measurement of understandability and customer experience: Improving understandability starts with measuring it. That means going beyond surveys to pull insights from multiple sources: onboarding patterns, service interactions, behavioral data, and direct customer feedback. Voice of the customer (VOC) studies are especially useful, helping businesses answer questions like:
– What did the customer mean by “difficulty understanding”?
– What’s their background (age, education, job role, etc.)?
– What issue led them to contact the business?
– How did they rate the advisor’s clarity and support?
– How did the experience impact their perception of the business?
– How do they compare the advisor to others they’ve dealt with?
Taking a close, data-driven look helps identify confusing touchpoints, so businesses can simplify the journey and reduce friction.
While understandability is especially visible in communications, it’s just as critical in sectors like BFSI, healthcare, and others. These industries manage complex data and serve diverse audiences, making clarity essential at scale. Learning from different industries can help businesses tackle shared challenges in fresh ways.
Bringing It All Together
Integrating the principles of understandability leads to a more cohesive customer experience. By adopting and adapting to the gold standards identified in our study, you can create experiences that feel clear, consistent, and customer-first—and set your company apart in a crowded, competitive landscape.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is understandability?
Understandability generally means how easy a product, service, or system is for its intended users to comprehend and use. It involves elements such as the user interface, instructions, and overall experience.
How does understandability impact CX?
When understandability is missing, customers may misinterpret information, feel dissatisfied, or lose trust in a brand altogether. This can lead to frustration, increased churn, higher operational costs to resolve misunderstandings, and ultimately, damage to brand reputation.
What are ways to improve understandability?
- Simplify billing and products: Use unified billing platforms, clearer fees, and streamlined product tiers/packages to reduce confusion.
- Smarter apps: Leverage AI to handle more customer needs directly, reducing the need for support calls.
- Better support access: Provide seamless, omnichannel support with preserved history and knowledgeable advisors when needed.
- Consistency across platforms: Align naming, resources, and training across apps, websites, and advisor tools for clarity.
- Measure understandability: Go beyond surveys—analyze onboarding, interactions, behavior, and voice of customer feedback for deeper insights.
