- •1)The definition and purposes of business letters
- •2) Strategies used in business correspondence
- •3) Why is it important to analyze the audience you are writing to?
- •4) The main types of business letters and their description.
- •5) Business letter components and their characteristics
- •6) What are the formats of business letters? What are the differences between them?
- •7) What are the main rules for successful business letter writing? Characterize each of them.
- •8) What are seven c’s that you should follow?
- •9) What is memo? What differs a memo from a business letter?
- •10) The format guidelines for memos and the types of memos?
- •11) The sales letter and its job?
- •16) The resume and two basic resume designs
- •17) The sections of a resume and their characteristics
- •18) Why do we need letters of recommendation?
- •19) What’s the role of a cover letter? What are the principles for writing a successful Cover letter?
- •20) What are the sections in a successful cover letter?
- •21) What shouldn’t you say explaining why you left the left the previous positions? How to explain why you are applying for the position?
- •22) Letters of inquiry and their types
- •24) Replies to inquiry and their contents
- •25) What should be mentioned in quotations?
- •26) Types of discounts
- •27) Main incoterms describe them
- •28) Offers, their types and parts
- •29) Counter-proposals. What terms might you not agree to?
- •30) Orders and their types and contents
- •31) What is an order usually accompanied by?
- •32) The reason for refusing an order
- •33) What is a complaint, its objective and scope?
- •34) The rules for writing complaints
- •35) What may complaints arise from?
- •36) What are the parts of complaints? Characterize them.
- •37) Adjustment letters and the rules for writing adjustments
- •38) The parts of adjustment
- •39) Reasons for rejecting complaints
37) Adjustment letters and the rules for writing adjustments
The objective of adjustment is to inform a customer of a corrective measure that will resolve an unsatisfactory situation. It also serves as a legal document notifying the recipient that the complaint has been received and is being properly handled.
Rules:
First he must find out whether the complaint is justified or not. If that cannot be ascertained within a few days, he should write the customer immediately that he is investigating and will send a full reply soon. He should, however, avoid making rash promises.
Replies must always be courteous; even if the sellers think that the complaint is bottomless they should not say so until they have reliable grounds on which to repudiate the claim. If the complaint is justified, the sellers should at once apologize to the buyers and offer a suitable compensation or indemnification or suggest a solution.
When the sellers are the first to discover that a mistake has been made they should not wait for a complaint, but should write, cable or telephone at once to let the buyers know, and either put the matter right or offer some compensation.
If on making a claim the buyers have offered to keep the goods, the sellers will probably agree to this and to a price reduction. Yet, if the value of goods in question is high, it might be advantageous to have them returned, though in this case, the added risk of damage in reverse transport should be taken into account.
38) The parts of adjustment
-Opening: Begin with a reference to the date of the original letter of complaint and to the purpose of your letter. Acknowledge that you have received the complaint, express your concern over the writer's troubles and your appreciation that he has written you.
-Explaining the mistake
If the complaint is justified, explain how the mistake occurred but do not blame your staff; you employed them, so you are responsible for their actions.
-Getting time to investigate the complaint
Sometimes you cannot deal with a complaint immediately, as the matter needs to be looked into. Do not leave your customer waiting, but tell him what you are doing straight away.
-Solving the problem
Having acknowledged your responsibility and explained what went wrong, you must, of course, put matters right as soon as possible and tell your customer that you are doing so.
Rejecting a complaint
- If you think the complaint is unjustified, you can be firm but polite in your answer.
- Closing
It is useful when closing your letter to mention that this mistake, error, or fault is an exception, and it either rarely or never happens, and of course you should apologize for the inconvenience your customer experienced.
39) Reasons for rejecting complaints
If you think the complaint is unjustified, you can be firm but polite in your answer. But even if you deny responsibility, you should always try to give an explanation of the problem.
We have closely compared the articles you returned with our samples and can see no difference between them, and in this case we are not willing to either substitute the articles or offer a credit.
Our engineer has examined the machine you complained about and in his report tells us that the machine has not been maintained properly. If you look at the instruction booklet on maintenance that we sent you, you will see that it is essential to take care of...
Our factory has now inspected the stereo unit you returned last week, and they inform us that it has been used with the wrong speakers and this had overloaded the circuits. We can repair the machine, but you will have to pay for the repairs as misuse of the unit is not included under our guarantee.