Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Business Correspondence Critique

Business letter's etiquette is fundamentally concerned with building relationships founded upon courtesy and politeness between business personnel. Etiquette, and especially business etiquette, is a means of maximising your potential by presenting yourself positively.

The following is a Business Letter of Apology for Bad Service.

Dear Mr. Bates,

Thank you for contacting Mail.com Member Services.

We sincerely apologize for the frustration and inconvenience that you may be experiencing due to our ongoing migration process. Technicians are currently working around the clock to develop a resolution for this issue. E-mail delivery will be back to normal as soon as possible. We will continue working until this issue is totally resolved.

Also, we are performing an upgrade on your mail system to a better infrastructure called outblaze. With this new infrastructure your folders, old mails, and address books will remain intact. You will be gaining new features such as filter to folder, autoreply, and vacation responses. We are confident that you will enjoy your Mail.com account even more with this new infrastructure. You not only will have added features, you will also experience a more reliable service with faster delivery of messages.

Sincerely,

Stephen Daffin
Mail.com

The following is my analysis of this Business Letter by adopting the 7Cs.

1.Courtesy
In the first paragraph,it is good to begin the apology with "Thank you",it will make the tone of this apology letter more polite.
When he appologizes,he adds "sincerely",which will make the reader more feel the sincerity of the apolog.

2.Correctness
Through the whole letter,i think the writer have already done a very good job in eliminating errors in punctuation,word usage,spelling,grammar etc.

3.Conciseness
"We sincerely apologize for the frustration and inconvenience that you may be experiencing due to our ongoing migration process."In just one sentence,the writer articulate the reason of sending this letter by appropriately using the nouns,verbs and conjunction.

4.Clarity
When i read this letter,i feel quite clear about the main idea of the letter,it is to apologize to the reader and also to compensate for the reader.So i think it is quite explicit.

5.Coherence and Cohesion
This letter is divided into three paragraphs.
The first one is the beginning of showing politeness.
The second is to apologize to the reader and also explaine the reason of causing the trouble for the reader.
The third is to make up for the reader by upgrading his/her email account.
So i think this letter is properly coherent.

6.Concreteness
When it refers to upgrade the reader's email account,it lists the exact new features of the the upgraded account.When the writer lays out the specific information about something,it is always easier to make the reader feel that's true.

7.Completeness
I think if the writer can add one more paragraph saying that"If you encounter any problems in the future,please feel free to contact us.We will be grateful for receiving more advice to help us perfect our email system and also provide a more convenient and intact email system for you ",the whole letter will be more complete.
At the end,the writer remembers to write down "Sincerely",which makes the whole letter ends completely and politely.

12 comments:

  1. Hey Vikki,

    I must say that you have analysed the letter pretty well.

    Also, I felt that the recommendations that you gave in the final paragraph were appropriate.

    By placing those words, it shows that Mr. Dallins is open to any further suggestions for improvements given by the customer.

    I think it's the first step in rendering great service!

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  2. Hi Vikki,

    I think that you have done a good and complete analysis on the letter. It is good that the analysis is broken down according to the 7Cs. Thus, it is easier to read and understand.

    Next, I feel that your recommendation about adding the last paragraph is a very good suggestion. This is because it will show the sincerity of the company and the efforts made to improve for their customers.

    Good job Vikki!! :)

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  3. Nadiah:Thank you for your comment and your recognition of my post!I am so happy now haha^_^!

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  4. Qiying:Thank you for your comment and your praise^_^

    What you said really encourages me to work hard on my English haha.Really thank you so much!

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  5. Hey Vikki, thanks for the detailed anaylsis of the letter using the 7Cs.

    Yes, I agree that most of the 7Cs are fulfilled by the writer of the email. However, there are still some areas to improvement.

    There are still some correctness problems with the email if i may point out. Improper usage of words in the email and awkward sentence structure makes reading quite difficult to me.That's all thanks for the analysis

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  6. Thank you, Vikki, for this example and for your highly detailed analysis. You've initiated good feedback from your readers!

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  7. Hi Vikki!

    I think you have done a great job!

    I would like to add that the minor problem with this letter lies in the sentence structure. For example, "We will continue working until this issue is totally resolved." It should be : We will continue to work on this issue until it is completely resolved.

    However, I agree that it has fulfilled the 7Cs of writing as explained in your analysis. I especially agree with the Coherence and Cohesion part of this letter because the topic sentence in each paragraph is clear and well-linked.

    Thanks for the clear example!

    Cheers,
    Jenn

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  8. Keldren:

    Hi,thank you so much for your comment and sorry for the late reply.

    "There are still some correctness problems with the email if i may point out. Improper usage of words in the email and awkward sentence structure makes reading quite difficult to me."I will be very grateful if you can point out some hidden problems that I didn't notice whenever you find them.And It will be much better if you can point them out directly and explicitly.

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. Brad Blackstone:
    Hi,Brad.Thank you,I will take that as a compliment,haha.

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  11. aerputyh:
    Hi,buddy.Thank you for your comment and sorry for the late reply.

    Thank you so much for explicitly pointing out the problem that I didn't notice.Good buddy haha.

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  12. hello vikki,

    Haha sorry for this rather belated comment :P

    I think that you are the only one who analyzed the business letter by evaluating each of the 7Cs. This method is direct yet conprehensive! Very neat analysis and always enjoyed reading your posts!

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