Post archive for November, 2009

November 5, 2009

Give Us Your Feedback and Get a Free Copy of Our New Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail Workbook

We need your help! We’re revising Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents. We need your real-world input. Give us your suggestions for what to include in our revision, and we’ll give you a complimentary copy of the new workbook.

Workbook Users
If you’ve used our Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail Workbook and/or E-Mail Writing Skills Competency Exam, we’d welcome your feedback:

• Which chapters or activities did you find most helpful?
• What new subjects or topics would you like to see included in a revised workbook? (We’re planning to include new chapters on formatting e-mails and writing useful subject lines, plus exercises specifically for help desk support staff.)

Contact Center and Help Desk Managers
If you haven’t used our workbook, but you are a seasoned customer service or help desk manager, we’d welcome your input:

• What writing problems or issues do your agents struggle with? 
• Download the workbook Table of Contents. What’s missing? What other topics would you like to see covered in a writing workbook for customer service agents?

And Finally, Customers! 
We’d like your input too:

• What writing problems do you find most prevalent (most annoying!) in the customer service e-mails you receive?
• What suggestions do you have to improve the writing of customer service agents?

Give us your suggestions as comments on this post, send us an e-mail, or give us a call. We’d love to chat with you about customer service e-mail writing. Thanks for your comments and suggestions!

November 5, 2009

Unsubscribe Me! An Indispensible E-mail Management Tool

My e-mail inbox was so cluttered with newsletters, white papers, and marketing fluff that e-mail management—separating the real e-mail from the chaff—was an onerous, time-consuming chore. Last night, in a flash of brilliance, I realized I could streamline my e-mail management by simply unsubscribing from unwanted mailing lists. I attacked my inbox like Sherman through Georgia.

In most instances, unsubscribing only required me to click on an unsubscribe link. But sometimes I had to look long and hard to find that link. It was always at the bottom of the message. Sometimes it was below and even smaller than the small-print disclaimers and legal gibberish. But a few organizations made unsubscribing confusing, complicated, and time consuming.

Thank You for What?
Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I’d successfully unsubscribed. For example, at TMCnet, after clicking “Remove me from all of the eNewsletter and third party e-mails,” I got this message: “Thank you for subscribing to the freshest communications and technology Industry eNews.”

Unending Circuit City
Among the most annoying unsubscribes was Circuit City. The instructions on the unsubscribe page were unclear. At the top of the page, I was asked to “enter the email address you’d like to update.” I didn’t want to update it; I wanted to delete it. I was then offered the option of getting fewer e-mails ("only receive 1-2 e-mails per week"). Only after scrolling down to the bottom of the page, did I get to the “unsubscribe” button.  

Circuit City was relentless. After clicking "unsubscribe," I got a screen confirming my unsubscribe and offering me the opportunity to get its marketing materials via RSS! ("Don't want the email but still want the deal?")

 

Turning that offer down did not lessen Circuit City’s ardor. It sent an e-mail confirmation that once again offered me a chance to sign up for its RSS feed. But the last straw was a P.S. asking me to complete a short survey about why I was unsubscribing!  (Circuit City do not darken my e-mail box again!)

 

UnDemocratic Unsubscribe
It was complicated and time-consuming to unsubscribe from The Democratic Party's e-mail updates. The unsubscribe page also had a large “Contribute” button and “Get Updates” field, which would re-subscribe me. (What part of opting out didn’t they get?) Even worse, after I entered my e-mail address to unsubscribe, a screen message asked me to enter a four-digit confirmation code that would be e-mailed to me in a few minutes. They don’t make it easy for you to become an unDemocrat!

Winnowing down my e-mails by unsubscribing was incredibly satisfying—like finally cleaning out the junk drawer. And the efforts bore fruit—a lean inbox this morning. I appreciate the ease with which most organizations let me unsubscribe. No hard feelings, and I’m open to doing business with you in the future. As for those that made unsubscribing difficult, there’s a lingering bad taste that will make it harder for me to reengage.

While I unsubscribed to lots of lists, I was also surprised by the number of newsletters and e-mails I wanted to continue receiving. Many organizations, I realized, provide useful and timely information that I welcome.

-- Marilynne Rudick (guest blogger)

November 2, 2009

"Plain language is a civil right..."

And with those stirring words, Annetta Cheek, chair of the Center for Plain Language, kicked off last week's 2009 Plain Language Symposium.  And the stirring words about the need for clarity in writing continued throughout the event. Here are some of my favorite quotable quotes from the Symposium:

• "Don't make readers wander through the crap in your mind," advised Karl Gude (currently an instructor at Michigan State's University School of Journalism, formerly Newsweek's graphics director) during his talk "Understanding through visualization."
• "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough," said Albert Einstein who wasn't actually at the Symposium but was quoted several times by presenters.
• The absence of plain language "...keeps citizens from getting the government benefits and services they're entitled to," said Congressman Bruce Braley (D. Iowa), sponsor of The Plain Language Act of 2009. Braley cited the hot-off-the-press Washington Post article, "Time for a plain language revolution," which leads with a pretty good line of its own: "Sometimes Uncle Sam sounds like he has marbles in his mouth."
• "Some people think clear and conspicuous is just a pair of desperate modifiers in search of a noun," said Karen Schriver of KSA Communication Design & Research during her talk "Clear and conspicuous: Designing content visually."

From Ginny Redish of Redish & Associates, a wonderful download instead of a quotable quote. Ginny's excellent Symposium presentation, "Plain language makes a difference when people vote," summarized the results of the usability research she's done for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) related to the 2002 Help America Vote Act. You can download the report she prepared for NIST: "Review of the gap between instructions for voting and best practice in providing instructions." "But I don't need to know how to write instructions for voting," you might argue. Download Ginny's research report anyway:

• it's loaded with common sense, research-tested advice about how to write usable instructions
• it's illustrated with examples of how the instructions should be written
• you can use it as a model document which demonstrates how to write about research in clear, engaging, plain language

I attended the Center for Plain Language's Symposium last year and provided links to some of the 2008 presentations. As soon as this year's presentations are available, I'll let you know.

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