News
 Write
Your Way to Better Customer Service
Too often, business owners and their employees fail
to recognize that the written communications they
send can significantly affect how customers feel
about the business. Janis Fisher Chan and Natasha
Terk list tips to help excel in customer
communication—writing style.
E-mail and letters that fail to answer customers'
questions or address their concerns, are hard to
read, are abrupt in tone, or contain errors that
convey the message that you don't place much value
on the customer's business.
Poor writing can also cause frustrating
misunderstandings that waste valuable time and
resources. It's a worthwhile investment of time and
money to make sure that every e-mail and letter your
customers receive is friendly, helpful, and conveys
a positive image of your business.
Here are some suggestions to help you start
improving your customer service writing today.
Establish standards for 'good' writing.
Of course, your standards – the criteria for written
communications to your customers — will reflect your
own business. But to meet the basic standards for
good written communication, do the following:
State the main point clearly, right at the
beginning. People often read only the first few
lines of an e-mail message or a letter before
deciding whether it's worth their time. Get your
most important message out right away, even it's bad
news. Then follow with the details that support
and/or explain that main point.
Respond clearly and directly to the customer's
specific questions and concerns. Customers who have
asked you a question or raised a concern aren't
interested in hearing how much you value their
business; show them that you do by answering their
questions and addressing their concerns. If someone
asks a question, focus on answering it. If someone
has experienced a problem, focus on what you will do
to resolve it, not on why it happened or who was at
fault.
Use the right tone. Most people are careful not to
be rude or abrupt when speaking to customers on the
phone or face-to-face. But the same people sometimes
fail to understand that the tone of their written
communications can either reach out to customers or
push them away. Especially when writing e-mail,
avoid an abrupt or overly casual tone by writing
complete sentences and using ordinary language
instead of pompous language and jargon. Be friendly
and polite. NEVER use all caps – it feels as if
you're shouting. Check the tone by reading what you
have written before you send it.
Keep sentences and paragraphs short and proofread
for errors. Long sentences and paragraphs are
difficult to read, especially on a computer screen.
Errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling make
your message seem less credible and convey a sloppy
image of your business.
Provide training to your staff. Even employees with
an extensive knowledge of your business and
excellent customer service skills often lack the
skills needed to communicate clearly in writing.
That might have been acceptable before e-mail became
such a key part of doing business, but these days,
everyone needs to be able to write.
Here are some ideas for helping employees improve
their writing:
1. Send them to a workshop. If writing to customers
is a significant part of your employees' jobs, it's
probably worth the expense of sending them to a good
writing workshop. Choose a workshop that provides
practical "how-to" techniques, is tailored for the
specific group, and provides opportunities for
job-related practice
2. Give them a self-directed learning program.
Self-directed learning, such as a self-paced
learning workbook or a computer-based learning
program, can be a good alternative to a workshop for
motivated self-starters.
3. Hire a coach. A business writing coach can work
with individuals or small groups to help people
improve their business communications by focusing on
the day-to-day writing that people need to do.
4. Develop flexible templates to replace inflexible
form letters. In any business, people need to write
the same kinds of communications again and again.
Templates save time and increase the chances that
written communications meet your standards. But
using templates successfully requires more than
replacing dates, names, etc. Make sure that you and
your staff know how to know to use a template, are
able to choose the right template, and can make the
necessary changes so that the e-mail or letter
communicates clearly to a specific customer in a
specific situation.
It's a good idea to periodically assess your
customer communications. At least twice a year, take
a close look at the e-mail and letters you send to
customers. Read a representative sample of the
e-mail and letters you have sent as if you were the
customers to whom they were addressed.
Send out a survey asking customers how well your
written communications are meeting their needs –
encourage people to respond by offering a reward,
such as a one-time discount on a product or service.
If necessary, redo your standards, update templates,
and provide staff with additional training to make
sure that all your written communications meet – or
exceed — your standards for excellent customer
service.
---Source:
Janis Fisher Chan and Natasha Terk are partners in
Write It Well, an Oakland, CA company devoted to
helping people in the workplace communicate clearly
and work together effectively. This article was
printed for Direct Magazine on August 29, 2007 (www.directmag.com).
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