Purpose – Complex decision-making is often supported not by single messages but by multichannel communication packages that need to be evaluated in their own right. The purpose of this paper is to present a new analytic approach to this package evaluation task combining textual analysis, functional analysis (FA) and media synchronicity theory. Design/methodology/approach – The authors combine textual analysis, FA and media synchronicity and demonstrate this in a single case analysis of a multichannel communication package offering mortgage information. Findings – When applied to a mortgage communication package for consumers, the evaluation reveals significant problems concerning the contents and timing of mortgage information and the channels chosen to convey it. Research limitations/implications – This paper outlines a new direction for evaluating multichannel consumer information, in that it does not focus on user channel preferences but on channel requirements stemming from the communicative task to be performed. Practical implications – This paper enables designers to optimize the design of multichannel communication packages and its individual components to support customer’s decision-making processes with regards to complex products. Social implications – Improving information to guide complex decision-making processes leads to better informed consumers. Originality/value – Research into effective multichannel communication within marketing is in its infancy. This paper offers a new perspective by focusing on channel requirements stemming from the communicative task rather than consumers’ channel preferences.

Drawing on Dutch mortgage orientation consultations, the present study uncovers how mortgage advisors communicate information packages to laypersons. These information packages are jointly constructed by advisors and customers as a distinct activity within a professional advisory setting. We name this activity ‘explicative telling’. Through a systematic analysis of 57 of such explicative tellings we will demonstrate that this explicative telling activity consists of (1) doing preliminary work; (2) a body in which (a) general, official information about a specific mortgage topic is given and (b) information is applied to the customer’s situation; and (3) (pre-)closing sequences. Essential to the explicative telling activity is the recipient orientation of mortgage information, and also the advisors’ display of accountability for providing eligible information. This is supported by the irreversibility of the preliminary phase and by the presence of news deliverer upshot formulations during the body of the telling.

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