I came across another example of errors in details being an issue.
Our daughter’s school sent out an email including ‘(1 of 2)’ in the subject. The attached pdf explained they were testing the communications system for parents so we should expect two emails – if only one arrives, contact the school.
Testing communications seems like a good plan and the test seemed simple enough.
Then I got a second email which referred to being the first email of two and had the same attachment. Was it an error to get this email twice or did they accidentally send it twice? Should I reply to say I got it twice, possibly like hundreds of other parents, or give them a chance to explain the duplication first?
Responding to a mistake can lead to a flurry of emails – avoiding that is one good reason to check details before hitting send!
Then, I got a third email asking me to log into the school’s site to read a letter. The letter was the same attachment as in the original email (which clearly states ‘this is the first email and please contact us if you don’t get a second one’).
Which detail is wrong – the letter stating a second letter was coming or the sending of the same letter twice?
On one hand, I got both types of email so the systems are working and my contact details are correct.
Do they have my email address in the system twice so I will get two versions of every group email they send?
Was it human error to get the same attachment in the second email type or is that a failure of the system?
I can not reply as I got both emails or I can reply and explain I got three emails and the same attachment.
Which do you think will help their testing process more? What would you do?
Are you a details person?
Many people are bored by details (probably all of us really – we just like details in some things, not all things) and that includes details of grammar and good writing.
I received a letter a few days ago.
A nicely presented letter has little value if the details in the letter are wrong.
I like getting letters, and it doesn’t happen as often now we have so many electronic options available to us. So it’s disappointing when the letter turns out to be spam or a scam rather than something interesting.
This particular letter I recognised as spam straight away as I’ve received rubbish from this group before (and so have clients who luckily ask me if it is legitimate before acting).
However, standing in the sun was nice so I actually read their letter and found numerous reasons to not act as they wished.
Get the details right and people are not distracted by the mistakes – meaning they can focus on your call to action or message.
[Tweet “Get the details right and people are not distracted by mistakes”]
Get the details wrong and people doubt your professionalism and worry whether you pay attention to details when they are paying you. That is, if you throw together a letter instead of putting effort into every word of it, will you also rush through fixing my car, cutting my hair, building my house, designing my website and so on?
It’s nice to think people will ignore errors because we’re nice people with good intentions.
But first impressions count and if those incorrect details are the first thing a potential customer sees, it can be enough to give your competitor the job.
So how does your business avoid errors in the details?
How does your business react to potential suppliers if they get details wrong?
I have been on the receiving end of poor business service recently – and it really is not pleasant.
Losing my business should be unpleasant for that supplier, too, as it means I no longer refer clients there.
Not delivering as promised has had a huge impact on my client – that put the supplier in a bad light, of course. And needing to make multiple requests to find a revised delivery date became very annoying very quickly.
But what has really made me turn my back on that supplier is how they handled these delays.
In life, sometimes things go wrong and promises aren’t kept.
Do you want your customer to be this angry? It could cost you a lot more than coins in a piggy bank if you don’t try to resolve their concerns.
When your business can’t deliver, though, you have two basic options. Be honest and apologise to the customer, or ignore it and pretend there is no problem.
Guess which option the above supplier chose…
I was given an excuse the first time I complained. The second time I was told ‘I can’t see any record of you calling on Monday’. And it still took a week for the sales person to respond to those messages. And more days before she gave me a revised date.
Every contact from the sales person had a little ‘sorry for the delay :(‘ message and ‘I look forward to hearing back from you again’ but generally ignored most of what I wrote in my formal complaint. I did not feel she was taking my concerns seriously nor that she was particularly interested in helping me get my order fulfilled.
The end result being that I am working with my bank to get a full refund and I will not use this supplier again.
To learn from my ex-supplier’s example, here are things they could have done to improve the situation – even if the delivery was delayed by more than two weeks.
Have you ever thought about how you respond to complaints from customers?
It can be confronting to admit you’ve done something wrong (or less than ideal anyway) and may be tempting to hide from it, but you can turn things around if you deal with a complaint well. Or at least minimise the damage.
Preparing an attitude and perhaps a procedure ahead of time may help your business do better with complaints than my ex-supplier. I hope you do a lot better, in fact!
* Image courtesy of KozziAs always, I help Love Santa write and edit some special letters each December.
A 19th century engraving of a Hansom Cab in motion. Hansom cabs were designed to be faster and more agile than older horse drawn carriages.
As I edit, I check the supplied information works in the letters, fix up capital letters and adjust any spelling errors.
In one letter I edited a few weeks ago, I came across a misspelling I’ve never seen before so it has inspired today’s Monday meanings 🙂
handsome [adjective]: attractive, good looking; significant
You are such a handsome boy!
He received a handsome package when he retired.
hansom [noun]: a horse drawn two-wheeled carriage with a covered area which the driver sat behind and above. The hansom cab (named for its design) was the forerunner of the term taxicab and cab that we now associated with hired vehicles.)
Sherlock Holmes jumped aboard the hansom cab and was off!
A hansom cab was designed to be sleek and fast so it has fewer letters than the significant handsome.
Alternatively, you may find it easier to think of a handsome person having a hand which a hansom cab certainly does not!
There are a number of sayings/clichés around with the same basic message of doing things too fast can lead to errors and actually take more time.
Slow and steady wins the race
A stitch in time saves nine
Haste makes waste (or more haste, less speed)
For fast acting relief, slow down (Lily Tomlin)
And like all clichés, there is a lot of truth there – we’ve all faced the hassle of going back and redoing something we rushed the first time (or paid another price for rushing).
Did you know that the maximum time an average worker gets to focus uninterrupted on tasks is 11 minutes? That’s according to a University of California study, anyway.
11 minutes is nothing! It says a lot about the fast paced world we’re living in. And says a lot for behaviours like only checking emails at certain times of the day to avoid constant distractions (add in the same rule for checking social media, answering phone calls, listening to office conversations and so forth).
Even on the go, checking messages means we get no break from disruptions
The study also stated that after 20 minutes of interrupted work, people are more stressed, frustrated and feel they have a heavier workload.
Interestingly, in a follow on study run Carnegie Mellon, tests showed that after the first interruption, people do adapt a little and can cope better with subsequent interruptions. But interruptions and the threat of interruptions does reduce the effectiveness of the brain.
Are you working in a highly distracting environment? Are you aware of it stressing you?
Working from my own office, rather than in a corporate office with many people around me, probably means I tilt such averages well past 11 minutes. I do enjoy the fact that I don’t hear colleagues chatting around me, nor their phones ringing and am not distracted by people walking past my office all day.
Of course, I do have young children who are quite capable of interrupting me, too! However, between other people keeping them entertained and choosing my working hours, I minimise that issue.
I set myself work sessions where I only check emails if I need to reference something and let the answering machine manage my phone calls (and enjoy it when marketing calls are filtered!) So I do get periods of focus – and I usually get a lot achieved in those sessions, too.
I think it’s worth slowing down, not just to be more productive and feel less stressed (both worthwhile aims), but also to give your mind more time and freedom to be creative and develop ideas.
Doug Keene, Vice-Director of an air-logistics complex trying to reduce employee distractions, said multi-tasking isn’t necessarily a good thing. “When you are focused on just a few things, you tend to solve problems faster. You can’t disguise the problem by looking like you’re really busy.”
At a recent conference, Andrew May ( a performance coach), discussed these results and how stressful they are on people. He gave the following ideas and suggestions {paraphrased and added to by me!}:
What can you do (or do you do) to help recover from stressful working conditions?
Do you find your productivity is clearly matched to times you do and don’t take recovery time?
So you have decided to have an annual report and a couple of inclusions that will be sent out with the annual report.
An annual report and any inclusions all form one annual mailing project.
Does this equate to three separate projects, or three parts to one project?
It is a good question, and I can see a temptation to treat them as two or there projects. Maybe you outsource the big project (the annual report) but figure you can manage the smaller ones yourself. or maybe you want to outsource to different people so the inclusions don’t distract from the annual report and vice versa.
However, I consider them to be aspects of one project and like the idea of them being managed as such. I usually mange the inclusions along with annual reports for clients, even if it is just a review and feedback on an existing document.
Treating the annual report and any inclusions as one project works because
Have you ever separated the annual report preparation from the inclusions preparation? I’d love to hear your reasons and the results of your effort, so please add your experiences in the comments below!
Even the negative ones.
If a customer has a question, they want you to answer it – and preferably as soon as possible so they can move on to the next step.
Answer potential customer questions to get more customers
Look at your website, brochures, social media profiles and other written messages – do you answer customer questions?
Smaller documents can only answer a few questions, obviously, but make them important questions (like how to contact you for further answers!)
Some businesses are scared of people asking a certain question – or act that way anyway.
Why not stand out by being the brave business? It is honest and gives customers fewer things to worry about because you have answered their questions.
And it gives you a chance to make things more positive, too.
So a dentist website can include “will it hurt? Well, yes it might but we’ll warn you and do whatever we can to minimise it.”
Here are some more industry specific examples…
Do you answer any potentially negative questions in your materials? How have clients responded to those answers?
If you want some ideas on what questions customers may silently being asking – and how to answer them nicely – then contact me soon so we can help your customers find what they need.
There may be a number of inclusions in a package with an annual report. And there are good reasons for them to be, too.
On one hand, you may wonder why not just put all the information into the annual report itself and just send that. It’s a fair question, and certainly should be asked about each individual item you are considering adding to the package, but it doesn’t exclude everything.
Saving money, ability to add forms and marketing are just some reasons to have annual report inclusions.
Some reasons to add other items include:
Of course, it is very important to not overdo it, too. Nobody wants to open an envelope and have sheafs of paper fall out at them!
Any more than three or four inclusions would set off alarm bells for me and I could carefully reassess the value of each inclusion before sending so many items. Too many items in the package distracts, too, so the impact of each would be diminished.
How many inclusions would you find too many as the recipient of an annual report? Have you ever received a ridiculous number of items in a package from a business?
Annual reports can look very different to each other…
Any time you receive an annual report, is it alone in the envelope (or email these days) or is there something else with it?
More often than not, I bet there is something else with it, even if it is just a covering letter.
Certainly when I prepare and manage annual reports I also prepare additional items to be sent out at the same time.
Pretty much anything could be added to an annual report, but the most common examples of annual report inclusions are:
For today’s Monday Meanings, I thought I’d follow on from Friday’s post and my personal recent history by defining death and dearth.
Apart from an obvious similarity in spelling with one letter difference, death and dearth do have a certain similarity in meaning too. neither is a cheerful word and both are about a lack or loss. To me, both give the impression of barrenness, isolation and gloom.
Do you find these words similar or just words that happen to be spelt in a similar way?
Death (noun): the end of life, a cessation of being alive.
Liz was completely alone at the lighthouse after Jack’s death.
Dearth (noun): a scarcity or lack of something
There was a dearth of vegetation and colour in all directions.
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