Divide and conquer: How many products can you cover in a single Ts&Cs document?

This big question is how you structure information between documents, not just within them.

Given that your customers are ‘information foragers’, it’s important to make sure that each customer…

• is presented with as few documents as possible, and

• sees minimal irrelevant information to them.

Every firm, product, and target market is different. Our high-level advice should be taken as guidance rather than hard-and-fast rules. That being said, the answer is likely to be one of the four options below.

Option 1: one Ts&Cs document covering all products

If all your products are very similar, or if you can easily describe the differences between them in a single section, then you can use one document to cover everything. Clear signposting is key. You’ll need a clear, intuitive contents page to direct customers to the right information, while design features like colour-coding can make it clear which product is being discussed.

If you choose this option, you’ll have to go above and beyond to be clear which information applies to which product, or this could lead to customer detriment.

The risk of misunderstanding is especially high if you’re using ‘exceptions’ – for example: “You have to do X unless you have Y product, in which case you’ll have to do Z”. Option 2 (below) avoids this problem…

Option 2: separate Ts&Cs documents, each covering one product

If the Ts&Cs for each of your products are materially different in content, then your customers may thank you for creating a separate Ts&Cs document for each product.

Separating information for different products means that customers won’t have to filter contradictory information. So, Option 2 may be optimal for delivering the highest level of consumer understanding.

However, if for some reason Option 2 isn’t feasible, then you could also consider Options 3 and 4…

Option 3: one general Ts&Cs document covering multiple products, with multiple ‘inserts’

If you’re handling products with a lot of similarities, but enough differences to be potentially misleading, you might opt for a General Ts&Cs with inserts.

An insert is a supplementary document with extra information in it. Your general Ts&Cs will give the information common to all the products, while the inserts will give the product specific information.

There are a couple of key risks associated with Option 3.

• First, a customer won’t know in which document to look for the information they need. Customers tend to treat Ts&Cs as a user manual and contents pages help with navigation. However, a contents page is of less use if the customer doesn’t know which document to start with. To combat this, consistency is key. Every product should have its own insert, and a similar approach should be taken to each of them. The webpage hosting the documents can also include clear signposting between the documents.

• Second, information across the separate documents could be contradictory. Sentences saying “where these two documents contradict each other, the document X shall prevail” are not conducive to achieving consumer understanding. There’s a couple of ways round this. You could have a shorter General Ts&Cs that covers only information that is identical in all products. Alternatively, you might go for a longer Ts&Cs that introduces all the major features of the product. It should clearly tell the customer to check their product-specific insert to see if that information applies to them.

Option 4: several Ts&Cs documents, each one covering multiple products

If your products can be grouped, then you could categorise them along those lines. Each group could have its own Ts&Cs document.

This is a compromise sometimes used when a product range is large and varied. Option 4 would enable you to have fewer documents than in Option 2, but wouldn’t create such a long and potentially confusing document as in Option 1.

Conquering the divide

We’ve helped countless providers redo their Ts&Cs. We tend to find that the biggest divide is between how industry insiders think about their Ts&Cs, and how customers approach Ts&Cs.

Do your best to forget everything you know about your products. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. When would you open the Ts&Cs? What information would you need? How would you go about finding that information?

Radical changes can be scary. But it’s also a chance to start again with a blank page.

We find this exciting, and we hope you do too!