'I' Before 'You'...Except After 'Me'
Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.
The purpose of communication in business is to pose a win/win exchange. Both the writer and reader have an opportunity to gain something…and conversely lose something.
When a writer employs insight into an audience’s perspective, they are attempting to focus content so that it provides benefit to the reader and accommodates their point of view. Taking this stance means creating a voice where the reader feels less threatened and more engaged--as if the composer understands their needs. Creating this bond and making successful communications through letters, e-mails, phone calls and so forth is essential to cementing a business relationship so that both parties identify that the most important person in exchanges is clearly the reader (you) and not the writer (me).
There are so many people relying on us and what we have to tell them. In communicating with customers, we strive to make them content since happy customers tell five friends of their experience but unhappy customers tell 10. Unfortunately, approximately 90 percent of unhappy customers also don’t come back once they have left us.
Letters To “Who”
To help define the “who” of what needs to be addressed in communications, the following considerations need to be incorporated:
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The material needs to clearly provide benefit to the …
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