Writing-Skills Workshop
... more emails regarding the questions left unanswered. This wastes company time and the customer’s time. It could frustrate the customers and possibly lose them. 3. Try to anticipate questions in advance. Offer a little more when replying to a customer’s question. If a customer asks whether credit cards are accepted and if so which type of cards, in reply answer both questions and add how the customer may place an order. The thoughtfulness and customer care will be appreciated. 4. Use correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. This is definitely a must. What's worse than trying to acquire a customer through an email full of typos, bad grammar, and even worse punctuation? This type of email message will go straight to the trash bin. Bad punctuation will not only make email hard to read but may also change the meaning of the text. Run a spell checker and reread your message before sending it. 5. Personalize it. Personally address email messages and customize the contents to be as personable as possible. This puts the customer at ease and greatly increases the chance of having an email read more thoroughly and landing the customer. These are only five easy ways to clean up email etiquette. A workshop would equip our managers with all the necessary tools to help land that customer and communicate more clearly. Remember email etiquette does make a difference (O’Conner 2004). Documents Creating written documents reveals much about a company’s business skills. Writing tells our customers about educational background, pride in work, and business expertise. The emergence of the paperless office, e-mail, the Internet, and web pages only increases the power of the written word. Any company with employees who can write clearly and concisely has a competitive edge over others who are still struggling to communicate. Is our correspondence free of any errors? In this day of computers with spell and grammar check, it is easy to let writing-skills lapse. The computer scans the correct spelling of a word, but it is a homonym with the wrong meaning for a sentence. This error shows the customer that either we do not know the difference or we are too lazy to check and edit. Is our writing full of words that people do not understand? Many times, we are so rushed to compose a business document that we use easy methods. The result is that business documents are often filled with buzzwords, cryptic dialogue, and outdated phrases. Customers will not say that they do not understand what we are writing but will note not to use our business services. Managers will learn to keep writing simple and current. Writing styles are like fashion and have indeed changed over the years. With a writing-skills workshop managers will be able to keep up with today’s business practices and expectations but beware of certain crutches such as buzzwords, industry jargon, and clichés. Buzzwords are trendy terms and expressions that sometimes mean nothing but seem impressive. "Like fertilizer, buzzwords are spread generously over documents in hope that brilliant ideas will miraculously take root. Unfortunately, ideas do not grow in manure," describes Will Stockdell (Pincu, 2004 “quote” n.p.), a professional Internet writer. We want to make sure that everyone understands our written ideas (Pincu, 2004). The last thing we want to do is to give the impression that our writing is too formal or outdated. With a writing-skills workshop managers will also learn a more direct way of writing has replaced some standard business phrases. Examples of this are "As per your request" now becomes "As you requested" or "Enclosed please find" now becomes "I am enclosing." Also, the previous impersonal style of business writing that avoided the use of "I" has been changed to use a limited amount of "I" to give directness and warmth. How often have we typed away what we wanted to say, rather than what we needed to write? Slipping into abbreviated dialogue is easy to do instead of expressing complete thoughts in a sentence. Perhaps because we are a telephone-oriented society, the keyboard simply becomes an extension of our phone voice and frequently incomplete phrases dominate a message. Customers may think that this writing also indicates our incomplete logic and business services. Do our managers use correct English? Regarding incorrect punctuation, awkward sentences, and bad grammar we need to examine our ...