Engagement - Selecting An Effective Message Type

Whether you're writing a 50-page proposal or a five-line e-mail, your business writing will typically fall into one of three categories.

o write effective and appropriate business messages, you need to identify the purpose of your writing. For example, do you need to inform customers about a new policy, or convince a client your sales offer is the best?

Taking a few minutes to define your purpose can dramatically improve your writing.

It will help keep you focused on the point of your message and the reaction you want it to inspire.

There are two questions you can ask yourself to help identify your purpose in writing a business document:

"Why am I writing this document?"

"What do I want my reader to do and know after reading the message?"

Often your reason for writing and the response you want are similar.

If you write to invite an important client to a company event, for instance, you want the client to be inspired to attend.

Or there may be a more subtle link. For instance, you might regularly inform customers of new company developments because you want them to think of your company first when they need a particular service.

Whether you're writing a 50-page proposal or a five-line e-mail, your business writing will typically fall into one of three categories. Depending on your main purpose, it will be informative, responsive, or persuasive.

Check out the following message types for an explanation.

INFORMATIVE

Informative writing conveys information to the reader. It may introduce, report, instruct, propose, summarize, or classify.
An example of this type of writing is a memo or e-mail telling employees about a new benefits structure.

RESPONSIVE

Responsive writing provides a reply to some prior communication. It may confirm, acknowledge, follow up with, thank, sympathize with, remit, refer, refuse, apologize, or congratulate the reader.
A response to a customer's inquiry or complaint is an example of responsive writing.

PERSUASIVE

Persuasive writing attempts to convince the reader.
A product brochure, for example, is written to persuade the recipient to buy a product.

It's important to remember that there's often some overlap in the message types.

For example, you may find that in responding to customers' complaints, you need to inform them of your company's policy and persuade them that it's valid.

The responsive text states:

"In response to your query."

The informative text states:

"we have a new policy for processing transactions."

The persuasive text states:

"The reason we made these changes is for you! We reworked the fields so that processing transactions would be faster for customers."

It's helpful to know the message type you're writing.

This is because the format and approach you use should differ depending on whether you need to inform, respond to, or persuade your readers.

QUESTION

What are the appropriate message types to use in the following situations. More than one scenario may match to a type.

1. You need to write training notes for a new employee
2. You have to acknowledge receipt of a complaint
3. You must apologize that you won't be able to attend a meeting
4. You want to motivate your team to work more efficiently
5. You must request support for an important project from another department

Training notes are an example of informative writing because their purpose is to transfer information to the reader.

Acknowledging a complaint and apologizing for not being able to attend a meeting are examples of responsive writing. Their purpose is to respond to previous communications.

Motivating team members and requesting support from another department both require persuasive writing. The aim in both cases is to convince readers to take particular action.

I have been teaching and training agents, team leaders, supervisors, managers and admins of call centers and other businesses in BPO related fields. This series, comes as a result of that experience. I have more than 4,000 modules that I plan on sharing here. This is # 004-04

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