Customer Care via Email

Course Overview

The challenge of meeting internal and external customers’ expectations requires the ability to perceive customer requirements and respond appropriately.
When much of the work is done via e-mail, clear concise communication using this media is imperative to give a professional image of the organisation.
When you write an e-mail, you are not only communicating information to another person – you are presenting yourself, in writing. People judge you not only for the accuracy and completeness of your written communications, but also for the ‘way it is put across’.
The course is designed to help participants develop a fluent style of writing, to help overcome common difficulties with e-mail writing, and to inspire confidence in producing professional e-mails.

Establish personal objectives for the course
• Personal assessment of strengths and improvement areas
• What a business e-mail should look like and contain
• Appraisal of sample business e-mails
• Organisational e-mail standards
• Writing in plain language and the Plain English campaign
• The four block structure
• Basic grammar, punctuation and spelling
• Reducing the number of words
• Recognising and reducing business clichés
• Using active sentence construction
• How readers read and the fog index
• Setting the appropriate tone
• Matching language preferences
• E-mail writing practice
• Completion of a personal action plan

DELEGATES WILL LEARN HOW TO
• agree what a professional response to an e-mail should look like and contain
• identify your barriers and strengths when communicating via e-mail
• state the importance of using plain English and the Plain English Campaign
• demonstrate a systematic approach to written communication – using the four block structure
• discuss and review the use of appropriate grammar, punctuation and spelling
• practice avoiding the use of too many words, clichés and jargon
• identify the effectiveness of using positive language and powerful words and phrases
• examine ways of avoiding emotional responses
• establish the customers preferred style and match it using words that will help the customer feel valued from your response
• demonstrate composing a range of correspondence with fluency and style
• critically review your own work and edit it accordingly