Part 4: Crafting Brief Messages
During the writing segment of this course, some of your students may express an instinctive dislike for
the idea of using “patterns,” feeling that they are somehow imitative or impersonal. You might lessen their
reservations by pointing out that these standardized patterns are intended to be a starting point, not a rigid
formula. There is no one-letter pattern to fit every situation that may arise in business. Each letter, memo,
or email message requires a unique and customized effort.
Part 4 organizes material by message type. Chapter 10 focuses on writing routine and positive messages
more suitable for the direct approach. Chapter 11 focuses on writing negative messages more suitable for
the indirect approach. Chapter 12 focuses on writing persuasive messages.
Chapter 10: Writing Routine and Positive Messages
This chapter focuses on writing routine requests and routine and positive messages, those most suitable
for the direct approach. The first half of the chapter provides a strategy for routine requests and offers
examples of three common types of requests. The second half provides a strategy for routine and positive
messages, with examples of common types of these messages.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Strategy for Routine Requests
Stating Your Request Up Front
Explaining and Justifying Your Request
Requesting Specific Action in a Courteous Close
Common Examples of Routine Requests
Asking for Information and Action
Asking for Recommendations
Making Claims and Requesting Adjustments
Strategy for Routine and Positive Messages
Starting with the Main Idea
Providing Necessary Details and Explanation
Ending with a Courteous Close
Common Examples of Routine and Positive Messages
Answering Requests for Information and Action
Granting Claims and Requests for Adjustment
Providing Recommendations and References
Sharing Routine Information
Announcing Good News
Fostering Goodwill
Sending Congratulations
Sending Messages of Appreciation
Offering Condolences
Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom
intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students
can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more
information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.
LECTURE NOTES
Section 1: Strategy for Routine Requests
Learning Objective 1: Outline an effective strategy for writing routine business requests.
Much of the vital communication between a company and its customers is about routine business matters.
These messages fall into two groups:
Routine requests, asking for information or action
A variety of routine and positive messages
Making requests is a routine part of business. In most cases, the audience will be prepared to comply, as
long as the request is reasonable. By applying a clear strategy and a tailored approach to each situation,
routine requests will be efficient and effective.
Like all other business messages, a routine request has three parts: an opening, a body, and a close. When
using the direct approach:
Open with the main idea, which is a clear statement of the request.
Use the body to give details and justify the request.
Close by requesting specific action.
Stating Your Request Up Front
Begin routine requests by placing your initial request first; up front is where it stands out and gets the
most attention. Of course, getting right to the point should not be interpreted as license to be abrupt or
tactless. Careful presentation includes the following:
Pay attention to tone. Even though you expect a favorable response, the tone of your initial
request is important. Soften your request with words such as please and I would appreciate.
Assume that your audience will comply. You can generally assume that your readers will comply
with your request when the reason for it is clear and they see a benefit for themselves.
Be specific and state the need precisely.
Explaining and Justifying Your Request
The body of the message explains the request, if the circumstances require an explanation:
Make it a smooth and logical explanation, flowing from the opening remarks.
If appropriate, explain how the reader could benefit from taking the requested action.
If you have multiple questions or requests, ask the most important one first.
Ask only relevant questions that are central to the main request.
Requesting Specific Action in a Courteous Close
The close of a routine request should include three important elements:
A specific request
Contact information for possible future communication
If action is requested, a specific date or time for compliance
Conclude messages by sincerely expressing goodwill and appreciation.
Class discussion question: What steps can you make to keep direct requests from coming across as
demanding or inconsiderate? (Think about word choices, media options, timing, and writing quality.)
Section 2: Common Examples of Routine Requests
Learning Objective 2: Describe three common types of routine requests.
Most routine messages fall into a few main categories:
Asking for information and action
Asking for recommendations
Making claims and requesting adjustments
All of these types of requests are similar in structure, approach, and desired result.
Whether asking for knowledge or action, each requires time and effort of the reader and should therefore
be handled professionally and with care.
Asking for Information and Action
When there’s a need for information or for someone to take action, the best course for the sender is to
simply ask. In essence, simple requests say:
What you want to know or what you want the reader to do
Why you’re making the request
Why it may be in the reader’s interest to help you (if applicable)
For simple and routine requests, the direct approach is usually preferred.
Asking for Recommendations
In business, the need to inquire about people arises often.
From circumstances involving credit, contracts, jobs, promotions, or scholarships, companies often
ask applicants to supply recommendations from references.
Recommendations vouch for one’s ability, skills, integrity, character, and fitness for the job.
Before designating someone as a reference, always ask permission to do so beforehand.
Because requests for recommendations and references are routine, the direct approach is appropriate:
Open the message by clearly stating why the recommendation is needed and that a letter is
requested.
If contact has been limited for some time, use the opening to trigger the reader’s memory of the
scope of the relationship.
Use the body of the message to provide details and reasons for the request.
Close the message with an expression of appreciation. When asking for an immediate
recommendation, also mention the deadline.
Making Claims and Requesting Adjustments
Anyone dissatisfied with a product or service has two options for seeking satisfaction:
Make a claim (a formal complaint documenting the writer’s dissatisfaction).
Request an adjustment (a settlement of a claim).
In either case, it’s important to maintain a professional tone in all communications. A rational, clear,
and courteous approach is best for any routine request. Assume that a fair adjustment will be made
and use the direct approach:
In the opening, provide a straightforward statement of the problem.
In the body, give a complete, specific explanation of the details; provide any information an
adjuster would need to verify the complaint.
In the close, politely request specific action or convey a sincere desire to find a solution.
Section 3: Strategy for Routine and Positive Messages
Learning Objective 3: Outline an effective strategy for writing routine replies and positive messages.
When responding to routine requests and sending routine and positive messages, you have several goals:
Communicate the information or the good news.
Answer all questions, to provide required details.
Leave readers with a good impression of you and your firm.
Because readers will generally be interested in a positive message, use the direct approach with a routine
reply or positive message:
Place the main idea (the positive reply or the good news) in the opening.
Use the body to explain all the relevant details.
Close cordially and highlight a benefit to the reader.
Starting with the Main Idea
Open with the main idea or good news so the audience is prepared for the details that follow.
Make the opening clear and concise.
Make sure you have a clear idea of what needs to be said.
Providing Necessary Details and Explanation
Use the body of the message to explain points completely and concisely so the audience won’t be
confused or doubtful about the meaning.
When providing details, maintain the supportive tone established in the opening.
If the routine message may elicit mixed reactions:
Convey mildly disappointing information in as favorable a context as possible.
Use the indirect approach if the negative component of the message is likely to elicit a strong
reaction.
When communicating with customers, you can use the body to subtly remind the reader of the smart
choice it was to buy your products.
Ending with a Courteous Close
A routine or positive message is more likely to succeed if readers are left feeling that their best
interests are being kept in mind:
Highlight a benefit to the reader.
Clarify what action is to be taken, and by whom.
Express appreciation or goodwill.
Section 4: Common Examples of Routine and Positive Messages
Learning Objective 4: Describe six common types of routine replies and positive messages.
Most routine and positive messages fall into six main categories:
Answers to requests for information and action
Grants of claims and requests for adjustment
Recommendations
Routine information
Good-news announcements
Goodwill messages
Answering Requests for Information and Action
Treat all requests with respect; a prompt and gracious response reflects well on you and your
organization.
Occasionally, requests include the opportunity for improving business relations. When answering
requests and a potential sale is involved, there are three main goals:
Respond to the inquiry and answer all questions.
Leave the reader with a good impression.
Encourage a future sale.
Granting Claims and Requests for Adjustment
Mistakes are unfortunate but are a turning point in the relationship between the company and the
customer:
If the situation is handled well, the customer is likely to be even more loyal than before; they
now have reason to believe the company is serious about customer satisfaction.
If the situation is handled poorly, the customer may well leave and complain to friends and
colleagues privately or to the entire world via social media.
Any response to a customer complaint depends on the company’s policies for resolving such issues
and an assessment of whether the company, the customer, or some third party is at fault.
In general, take the following steps:
Acknowledge receipt of the customer’s claim or complaint.
Sympathize with the customer’s inconvenience or frustration.
Take (or assign) personal responsibility for setting matters straight.
Explain precisely how you have resolved, or plan to resolve, the situation.
Take steps to repair the relationship.
Follow up to verify that your response was correct.
Providing Recommendations and References
Recommendation letters typically include:
The candidate’s full name
The opportunity he or she is pursuing
The nature of your relationship
Relevant facts regarding the person’s performance
An overall evaluation
Recommendation letters have become a complex legal matter in recent years so be sure to check
company policies before writing a recommendation.
Some companies (as well as some individual professionals) refuse to provide anything more than
confirmation of dates of employment.
Also, keep in mind that when writing a recommendation, you are putting your own reputation on the
line.
Sharing Routine Information
Many messages involve sharing routine information, such as project updates and order status
notifications.
Most routine communications are neutral, but if the information may generate a negative reaction, use
the body of the message to highlight potential benefits of the news and how it could positively impact
the reader.
Announcing Good News
To develop and maintain good relationships, smart companies recognize that it’s good business to
spread the word about positive developments.
Because good news is generally welcome, use the direct approach.
Good-news announcements about company successes are often communicated in a news release (also
known as a press release):
A specialized document used to share relevant information with the news media
Usually prepared by specially trained writers
Content follows the customary pattern for a positive message: good news followed by details
and a positive close
Traditional news releases aren’t written for the ultimate audience (such as the readers of a
newspaper); they’re trying to interest an editor or a reporter who will then write the material that is
eventually read by the larger audience.
Many companies now view the news release as a general-purpose tool for communicating directly
with customers and other audiences, creating direct-to-consumer news releases.
Many news releases are crafted as social media news releases as well, with built-in media sharing
aspects such as “tweetable” bullet points.
Fostering Goodwill
All business messages should be written with an eye toward fostering goodwill among business
contacts, but some messages are written specifically for that purpose.
These messages can be used to enhance relationships between business contacts.
Effective goodwill messages must be sincere and honest and avoid exaggerated statements. Any
compliments should be backed up with specific points of clarification.
Sending Congratulations
One prime opportunity for sending goodwill messages is to congratulate individuals or companies for
significant business achievements.
Congratulatory messages are typically easy to write and always appreciated.
The nature of the relationship with a recipient determines the range of appropriate subjects.
Sending Messages of Appreciation
Sending messages of appreciation is often an important managerial responsibility and requires the
ability to recognize the contributions of employees, colleagues, suppliers, and other associates:
The small effort required to write a personal note can increase morale.
In today’s digital media environment, a handwritten thank-you note can be a particularly
welcome acknowledgment.
Class discussion question: Is there a danger of goodwill messages becoming self-serving? If so, what
cautions should writers take to avoid crossing over an ethical line?
Offering Condolences
Messages of condolence are brief personal messages written to comfort someone after the death of a
loved one.
These messages can feel intimidating to write, but they don’t need to be. Follow these three
principles: short, simple, and sincere.
Timing and media choice are important considerations with condolence letters:
The sooner your message is received, the more comforting it will be, so don’t delay.
Unless circumstances absolutely leave you no choice, do not use electronic media. A brief,
handwritten note on quality stationery is the way to go.
Open a condolence message with a simple expression of sympathy, such as “I am deeply sorry to hear
of your loss” or “I am sorry for your loss.”
How you continue from there depends on the circumstances and your relationships with the deceased
and the person to whom you are writing. Two examples:
When writing to the family member of an employee who died, you can let the recipient know
that his or her loved one was appreciated in the workplace.
When writing to an employee or colleague who lost a loved one, you can share a personal
memory, if appropriate, to add depth and meaning to your expression of sympathy.
Conclude with a simple statement, such as “My thoughts are with you during this difficult time.”
Offer assistance if appropriate for the situation, but make sure you can really deliver it if asked.
Other points to keep in mind:
Personalize the message as appropriate, but don’t make the message about you and your
emotions.
Don’t offer life advice or repeat trite sayings. Knowing that you care enough to write is the
most important idea the recipient wants to get from your message.
HIGHLIGHT BOX: ETHICS DETECTIVE
Solving the Case of the Imaginary Good News
Your partner’s summary clearly does not accurately present the findings. The fact that 80 percent of
employees believe the economy is too slow to support a productive job search does not mean that only 20
percent of the workforce is even considering other options. Moreover, “we could reasonably expect that
only a fraction of that group will leave anytime soon” is groundless speculation.
The fact that roughly half the employees (48 percent) do not believe they will finish their careers at the
company suggests that many are just biding their time and waiting for the economy to pick up before they
leave. Overall, the 80 percent figure is the only point of the research that is not clearly negative, so giving
the CEO a positive sound bite today is both misleading and a recipe for a very unpleasant meeting
tomorrow when the full results are revealed.
Given the difficulty of communicating complicated information over IM, the best approach would be to
avoid sharing any of the specific numbers—any one of which might trigger a barrage of IM queries
demanding more details. Instead, provide a general sense of the results with a promise to present full
details in the meeting tomorrow. And remember that you’re simply reporting results here; you don’t need
to apologize for the results, present them in any particular light, or offer solutions. Given that the query
came in over IM, the CEO is probably looking for more of a binary answer at this point: do we have a
problem on our hands or not? A short answer such as this would be effective:
The survey uncovered several areas of dissatisfaction and uncertainty. Overall, the results are
more negative than positive.
HIGHLIGHT BOX: THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATION
Communication Bots
Students should encounter lots of interesting questions about the potential of automated bots, from
carrying on routine tasks to carrying on live conversations.
COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES AT PRODUCTIVITY REPORT
Individual Challenge
Students can tackle this challenge by first getting an approximate word count of the article so they know
how much it needs to be compressed. This is easy enough to do by simply highlighting and copying it,
then pasting it into a word processor that can do automated word counts. If an original is 1,000 words, for
instance, you know you need to reduce it by 70–75 percent to get it down to 250–300 words. This is a
helpful ratio to know, because it frames the challenge. If you needed to trim by only 20 or 25 percent, you
might be able to achieve this by revising to make the writing more concise. But a reduction of 70–75
percent is major surgery, so you know you need to find major chunks of material that you can chop out
entirely.
Next, identify the structure of the article—reverse engineer it, essentially, to extract a rough outline. This
is fairly straightforward with a well-organized article that features clear headings and subheadings, but it
can take some work to find the structure in a rambling discourse.
With the article’s skeletal structure exposed in the outline, the next step to figure out how many words
you can devote to each section. For an article with three sections, for example, you might want to budget
50 words for the introduction and 75 words for each of the three sections, for a total of 275.
With these targets in mind, analyze each section to separate the essential points from supporting evidence,
illustrative examples, and personal interjections (all of which you’ll probably need to toss aside).
Assemble a rough draft of just these essential points and see where your word count stands. If you need to
cut still further, look for more concise ways to express the essential points, such as by combining two or
three points into a single sentence. Remember that in an abstract or summary such as this, you don’t need
to deliver all the low-level details and supporting arguments; readers can refer to the original if they want
more information.
Team Challenge
Students are likely to find that summarizing a meaty article in a few compelling tweets can be a tough
task. As with the individual challenge, remember that the tweets don’t need to convey all the material that
supports and enhance the main points—it’s only the main points themselves we’re after here.
Also, remind students that these tweets are meant to be teasers that encourage people to read the full
article, rather than summaries meant to stand on their own.
For example, rather than writing this tweet:
The expectation of rapid responses is one of the ways email has become a major source of
workplace interruptions.
Write it in a way that makes people want to read more:
Are you succumbing to the expectation of rapid responses—one of the ways email has become a
major source of workplace interruptions?