Maersk outlaws ‘acronym-speak’

Do you speak Y2R? That sort of question was part of a recent in-house survey within the Maersk Line organisation – primarily intended to ensure that the customer experience is consistent and that all staff speak a common language to customers rather than using in-house jargon that can often be incomprehensible. This survey, said Matthew J Conroy, trade manager for the A.P. Moller Maersk Group, was prompted by internal communications where it was noted that separate divisions within the line were tending to communicate with other divisions and often customers, talking in those jargon terms. The ship’s agency division, for example, was often guilty of using such sentences as: “The shipment was allocated to Y2R on Pier 14, with an ETD of……”. The “ETD” was not the problem – that being the fairly universally known acronym for estimated time of departure. But the Y2R could cause problems, for both internal staff of other divisions, but especially for customers, who were definitely strangers to the in-house lingo. The usage arose from the Maersk ships agency division’s habit of referring to ships not by name, but by a three-digit code – hence the Y2R. Another example was the sentence: “That rate is not in the Mars, therefore we can’t…..”. A sentence which would cause customers to blink, and think whether it meant that it was therefore in the earth or the moon. But it’s actually a much-used in-house reference to the Maersk automated rating system (Mars) – an abbreviation that is not part of the vocabulary of the shipping industry in general. Something similar occurred in internal company reports. Said Conroy: “Here we have an internal code for the various SA trades. S1, for example, is North America-SA, and S4 is Europe-SA. In these reports, people would come up with S1, and we had to teach them to use North America instead so that it would be generally understood by everyone.” And the survey led to answers having to be found. “After we reviewed the survey results our primary aim was to educate the various divisions and customer services that they had to speak to a customer and other staff in their own language,” Conroy told FTW. “We also made each department more aware of when they used the jargon to ensure that using normal English becomes the standard.” And it’s not a problem that only exists in the Maersk group, according to Conroy, it’s something that can be experienced in any corporation. “Big companies,” he added, “have different departments, and therefore different languages. And they would also need programmes to subdue the use of codes and other jargon in communications.” Do you have problems with internal jargon in your company? If so, let us know what the problem is like and just what your company is doing about overcoming this gobbledygook-speak.