What mistakes do people and robots make in letters?

Every day I write robots and ordinary people. In the topic I will tell you about the stupid mistakes in letters that can be easily avoided. And also about how mail processing is arranged in our company.

It will be about three types of letters:
- Internal from employee to employee.
- External from you to the counterpart of the company.
- External, which writes a specially trained robot.

More paper - cleaner ass

Communication on the project can go meetings, letters and calls. Of these three channels, only letters are fixed: accordingly, you personally should duplicate the other two for the client. For example, after a telephone conversation with a task, a brief summary of the dialogue is sent to the client. This is how the correctness of understanding of the question is checked, plus the next step is established. This is very important to do in B2B and very cool - as a reminder inside the company. By the way, it is ideal to use tablets at meetings for such reminders right in the process.
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Did they eat the pigeon?

It is important to maintain a sense of control over what is happening with the person with whom you correspond. It is expressed like this:

• In the internal - the received letter without an answer is considered accepted for execution. If there is no answer, it means that you understood everything and agreed with everything (it is not obvious, therefore, below details).
• In external - it is necessary to answer as quickly as possible. If you can’t reply within 24 hours, for example, you need to send a confirmation confirmation that the message has been received, but you will reply a little later.
• The robot must send a letter to all important actions of the client. For example, for an order in an online store, it is acceptance, receipt of payment, beginning of formation, transfer to delivery, receipt.

An interesting thing is accepted in large companies: when an employee is not in place, he switches the client to the “not in office” mode, and an answering machine is triggered for each letter, indicating that the letter has arrived, but there is no person yet. By the way, I had a case when a client sent one letter after another every 15 minutes for 3 hours, until he was answered. He was very nervous. The question was urgent. Our time zone was 4am.

What's next?

Each letter should contain the following action, that is, clearly indicate on which side the ball is now and what exactly needs to be done. This is a very important point, which reduces the spread of chaos at times.

For example, for an internal one: “Ok, we do it, give it to the designer”, “Yes, we are interested, I will contact and make an appointment”, “You don’t have enough materials, we passed this and that”. For external: "We meet and discuss tomorrow," "Accepted, go to the next part." For the robot: “Hi, I am a special robot that takes orders. Now I will find a free operator and ask him to call you back to clarify the details. I usually get it in 15 minutes. ”

An example . Recently, I ordered from an online store that I wrote after accepting an order something like “our operator will call you back in half an hour”. The operator did not call back, I ordered the goods elsewhere. It was a Saturday, and the first store was not working. I would love to wait until Monday if I understood what was going on. In fact, the robot deceived me and deprived its creator of profit.

A special case of the first communication with the counterparty is to tell about the standard procedure. Give the person a little more information, describe what will happen next in the future, let me understand and get comfortable - or give a mini-version of the FAQ. After this communication will go many times easier. For example, when wholesalers write to us, we immediately tell about the best-selling products, describe the buying process, give a short insight into the topic “what audience does it choose”.

Took, nakosyachil, hurray!

We have three types of letters for a task:

1. Confirmation of acceptance to work. It must be done immediately, especially for an external counterparty.
2. A letter about the problem. When it suddenly turns out that the task is being carried out abnormally, then any problem that delays the work or interferes with it should be immediately announced. No one will ever know that you have a problem until you tell about it yourself. It is better to say earlier, when the issue can be resolved, rather than later, when it will be too late to rush. No need to save problems for the final of the project: they should be announced immediately.
3. The task is over. The task can be linked to others in the project, and they are waiting for you. If you do and keep silent, the task will be considered unclosed and the project will slow down. When you did something and did not say it - this is bad. For example, at that moment, when calls from St. Petersburg were brought to the Moscow call-center, operators did not yet know that the work was finished, so they were very surprised at how far from MKAD it was necessary to bring the game. You have not yet said that the task is closed, it is listed as “hanging”, often a letter about the end of the task is a “check for implementation” signal.

You are silent - to yourself angry cormorant

When in the course of working on a project you do not respond to the letter with any instructions, it means that you completely agree with it. This is an important rule of internal corporate correspondence: there is no answer after confirming the task - it means everything is OK, and everything is in work, the process is ongoing. For example, POS materials for an event are coordinated with the marketing service, the event department and the designer who knows the requirements of the printing house. If after the letter only one person responds to all three addresses in the spirit of “Ok, we print” - the material is sent to the press in the morning, without waiting for other opinions (yes, we check the mail every 6 hours at least, and often it is picked up automatically every 15 minutes)

RE: [159] Minor edits

Many use their inbox as a book of contacts. This is normal as long as the topic fits in correctly. It is bad when the topic from the previous letter extends to the new dialogue: the level of chaos increases by an order of magnitude.

Hi, how are you there?

Any of your counterparty is likely to have a signature with the name. Do not be lazy to look and write there instead of “We have finished the work” “Alexey, we have finished the work”. At the first contact it is very desirable to use the name, then - somehow, the main thing is not to reach the person by “tapping” the same phrases a la insane sales manager.

Good day!

If you can not determine what time of day it is now, write "Hello!". If you can - write "Good evening", "Good morning" and so on. Writing like a robot is terrible. Even if a person lives in a different time zone, you can always write what he has now at this moment. You not only cease to look like an automaton, but also give one more important thing: a person who received a letter with a delay can understand from the first line when it was sent. Of course, this is not always important, but sometimes it is useful.

The difference between “make” and “read”

If you are in the subject of a letter, a specific reaction is required of you. If you are in a copy - you should be aware, no action is required. Accordingly, when you are in a copy, you should not panic and ask “What do you need from me?”.

Thank you for the customer base

When sending out, you can often get a complete list of store counterparties (or course participants, for example) when the sender indicates everyone in the copy. This is at least a leak of its database, and at a maximum is disclosure of confidential data.

, who wrote this?

If you want something from a person or company, do not forget to include your mail, phone number and name in the signature. For example, our office manager consistently receives 2-3 unsigned letters with mail every day - and after 2-3 transfers within the company, it becomes unclear who exactly sent the letter (or rather, who wrote “Yes, we want to buy it”). At least one deal in my memory so fell through.

Eh? What more money?

A person in the office receives from 30 to 400 letters per day. If there is no correspondence history right below the text of the letter, it will be unrealistic to react to it within a reasonable time. Yes, many mail clients collect letters in chains, but not all do so.

Yaumeyubstrop print!

Approximately 6-7% of the letters of a B2B segment are written by people who, judging by the lack of capital letters, are in a hurry. This is about as bad as writing with errors: communication, it seems, does not interfere, but the opinion about the counterparty is declining.

Don't mean it!

Those who print with two fingers often do this: “We have their limited quantity”, cutting them where they are not needed. It is clear that there is no global problem in this, but, again, the opinion about the counterparty is deteriorating.

Dear passengers, keep calm !! 1

Sometimes I see double and triple exclamation marks in letters. According to the meaning, there could also be caps, bold + underlining + red or other similar selections. In the sender’s head it is usually “pay attention”, and in the reader’s head it is already a hysterical cry. IMHO, in business letters, two exclamation marks in a row are considered panic and should be immediately suppressed.

By the way, sometimes this happens in attachments, for example, in prices.

Ivanov, to the blackboard!

In Russian, when you mention the name and surname, the name should be the first: it is an elementary respect for the person to whom you write. By the way, it’s worth checking your signature too. As suggested in the comments, with foreigners should focus on local features.

My name is James. James iPad.

Different communicators like to insert their signatures into letters. Owners of top-end glands often leave them. It is logical to edit the auto signature to remove the extra ponty. I note that sometimes such signatures are useful, especially when people within the company are traveling frequently.

Yoda Master writes you

Very rarely, but sometimes, letters arrive at the very bottom after the entire multi-screen correspondence history. This is very inconvenient, so try to answer all the same at the very beginning. In my memory, once due to this “iodine-style”, important information about a deal was missed.

Woodpecker, this is a woodpecker, as you hear, I am a woodpecker, welcome.

The signature after the first letter, in theory, is not needed. If it is big - especially. It is good, when it is put in correspondence after the whole story, it is bad - if it hits every letter in the brain.

Here's a note on the well-bred robot

1. Mail is an authorization tool. For many services, where the user account implies one-time rare inputs, it is often very convenient to maintain the mechanics of direct execution of actions. For example, every time you log in incorrectly in FB, you receive a letter with a one-time login link as usual (without intermediate forms and loss of time).
2. If the letter mentions information from the site - there should always be a specific link (and not “you will easily find it ...”). Value user time.
3. Letters must be written humanly. In the sense that positive and simple spoken language are pluses. “You ordered 21 units” - this is bad.
4. Any letter can be answered by a living person. Accordingly, this should not be noreply@myshop.ru, but sales@myshop.ru and so on.
5. Well, if the automatic letter clearly tells who it is, why it came and how to disable it (if it is periodical).

Heated discussion

I always liked simple trackers. In Mosigre we tried such systems several times, but the mail was many times more convenient and understandable. The only problem is the long collective discussion of the problem. When the topic requires a heated discussion, there are a lot of people in the copy and there are chances that the answers will go to those letters that do not contain the latest occurrences of the story, we are switching from the post to the blog inbox with threads like comments here. This is much more convenient, but not always clear for those who participate in such an event for the first time.

Please give me a look at your rake.

I hope you found something useful. Now I ask to share in the comments my own rules of internal etiquette, interesting developments and the jambs seen in other people's letters.