Letters After a Name That Clients Cannot Decode

Letters after every name

The team page of an accounting firm, an engineering office or a financial planner often reads like a code. Each name is followed by two or three sets of capital letters.

To colleagues in the same field, the letters say a great deal. To most clients they say nothing, except that the person has some kind of qualification.

A client choosing between two firms cannot tell which letters took years to earn and which took a weekend course.

What the letters stand for

A designation is shorthand for a set of facts: an education, exams passed, supervised experience, a code of conduct, and ongoing training needed to keep it.

Many come with a body that can hear complaints and discipline members. For a client, that may be the most reassuring fact of all, and the letters hide it.

Those facts are exactly what a client wants to know before trusting someone with their accounts, their building or their savings.

What each explanation should say

A short explanation for each designation does what the letters cannot. It needs only a sentence or two, written for someone outside the profession.

• The full name, spelled out the first time the letters appear.
• Who grants it, such as a provincial association or an international institute.
• What it takes to earn, in plain terms: a degree, exams, years of supervised work.
• What it takes to keep, such as yearly training or renewal.
• What it means for the client, including any rules of conduct and how to raise a concern.
• A link to the body, ideally to its public list of members.

Explanations most often skip the fifth item. A client cares less about the exam than about what the person is now bound to do.

Writing the sentences

Write each explanation once, from the granting body's own description, and keep it short. Check the wording with the body if you are unsure, since many describe their designations carefully.

Avoid adjectives such as prestigious or elite. A plain statement of what the person had to do is more convincing than praise for the designation.

Spell out abbreviations inside the explanations too. A sentence saying that members must complete CPD has only swapped one code for another.

If two staff hold the same designation, the same sentence serves both. Consistent wording also stops the page from overstating one person's letters beside another's.

Where the explanations go

The simplest place is a short section at the foot of the team page listing each designation once, with the letters beside each name linking down to it.

Boxes that pop up when the mouse rests on the letters do not work on phones and tablets, where many clients now read. Put the text on the page itself.

For a firm with many designations, a separate page explaining them all, linked from the team page, keeps each biography readable.

Linking to the body that grants it

Most bodies that grant designations publish a directory where anyone can check that a person is a member in good standing.

Linking to it is quick and tells clients you are happy for them to check. It also shows them where to go if they ever need to raise a concern.

Where the designation is a licence, the directory also shows whether it is current and whether any conditions apply.

A worked example

An electric vehicle charging installer in Burnaby fits chargers in homes, condo parkades and workplace lots. Strata councils and building managers make up much of its work.

Its team page listed the owner as P.Eng., a junior engineer as EIT, the project manager as PMP and LEED AP, and the electricians by trade certificate.

A strata council member weighing two quotes asked what any of it meant, and whether the person signing off the parkade design was actually an engineer.

The page now ends with a short section explaining each set of letters. P.Eng. is a licence from the provincial association of engineers, which allows its holder to take professional responsibility for engineering work.

EIT means an engineering graduate gaining the supervised experience that licence requires. Each entry links to the granting body, and the owner's name links to his listing in the association's directory.

The council's question is now answered on the page, and each quote the company sends links to it.

Letters that lapse

Designations must be renewed, and people change roles. A page that still shows letters someone no longer holds misleads clients, and for licensed titles the granting body may treat it as serious.

Members in training should be described as exactly that. Letters for a designation still in progress, written as if earned, mislead clients however good the intention.

Review the team page whenever someone joins or leaves, and once a year against each body's directory.

The rules for letters and logos

Many bodies publish rules on how their letters and logos may be shown: where the letters go, how they are written, and whether a member firm may use the logo at all.

Read them before adding a logo to the page. A designation belongs to the person who earned it, and a body's logo can suggest an endorsement of the whole firm.

The counter-case

Some firms serve only clients in their own field: engineers hired by other engineers, accountants advising accountants. Those readers know the letters, and a glossary would add little.

A sole practitioner whose clients all come by referral may also feel the explanation is unnecessary. The referral brings the client to the page, though, and the explanation is what they read there.

And every firm eventually gains a client from outside its field. A short section at the foot of the page costs little and serves the reader who does not know.

Decoding the team page

1. List every designation on the team page.
2. Spell out each one in full.
3. Explain what it requires to earn and to keep.
4. Say what it means for the client.
5. Link each one to the granting body.
6. Check the rules for letters and logos.
7. Review the page whenever staff change.

Step four turns letters into trust. Clients choose a firm on what its people are bound to do for them, and that is the sentence most team pages leave out.

Client logos on your website without permission covers the same question for customers' logos: what a logo implies, and asking before showing it.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.