Client communication: Difference between revisions

It ought to go without saying, but the modern professional seems unable to grasp the idea: ''keep it short''. Do not use two words when one will do. Do not use one word when ''none'' will do. Writing to customers is like flying on the cheapest budget airline in the world, your words are your luggage.  

Your message should be a ''mullet'': business up front; party at the back. Presume that if a customer starts reading at all, she will stop reading your prose far more quickly than you would. If your client must do something, state it ''clearly'' and ''early'' in the communication.

====Sub-rule: don’t track regulatory language====

It is fashionable among [[Legal eagle|legal eagles]] to “track the language of the legislation” in client communications. This ensures utmost fidelity with the rules: one cannot be blamed for getting anything wrong if one copies out the text verbatim. ''DO NOT WRITE TO AVOID BLAME FOR GETTING THINGS WRONG''. Write to ''get things right''. ''Own'' your expertise. ''Own'' your language. ''Be brave''. Tracking legislation is ''lazy''. It is ''timid''. It ''rejects responsibility'' and puts it on the customer. It converts ''your'' regulatory problem  into your customer’s.  

Your job is to to make your customer’s life easier, not harder. You are meant to internalise the ugliness of your regulatory environment, not to lay it on your client. It is not your client’s problem. It most likely meant to be for your client’s benefit. So: speak only in terms of consequences, and action. Where this points back to regulation, summarise. Extract. Contextualise. Put this in a format the customer can understand and relate to. ''Think'' like a professional writer, because you ''are'' a goddamn professional writer.

To the extent following rules 1 and 2 don’t get you there, remember you are writing with the idea of not just discharging some regulatory obligation to your customer — that’s a second order objective — but to make your customer think well of you. Frame your letter to appeal to your correspondents, so they are more likely to read it.

Yes, it is a mass mailshot to every customer in the book. But we are in 2021, friends. It is not beyond the wit of technology, anymore to ''use a freaking mail merge''.<ref>You thought I was going to say “use [[neural network]]<nowiki/>s to guess customer names” didn’t you?</ref> What’s stopping you? Oh, crappy client static data? ''Fix your damn client static data''. If your salespeople aren’t keeping it up to date, ''they’re not doing their jobs''. Either have good client static data, and use it to demonstrate you care enough about your customer to be justified in calling them “dear” — or don’t, accept your customers to you are a passive herd of cattle there only to be milked, and don’t try to be ingratiating while you do it.

Think first “what will my customer think of ''me'' if I say that”, rather than “what if I get it wrong and my customer sues me?” You are a professional. You are good at what you do. Trust yourself not to get it wrong. Disclaimers are like [[airbags]]. [[You only need airbags if you don’t steer straight]]. Concentrate on defensive driving, not crash mats. If you ''have'' to have a disclaimer — and I know, you ''will'' have to have one — keep it brief, to the point and put it at the end. If the first thing your customer reads is “[[Please be advised]] we take no responsibility for this, we are only doing this because someone said we have to, so on your own head be it”, your customer is going to think, “gee, what a douche”. Generally, that’s not how you want your customer to be thinking now, is it?