The following is a reminder letter my parent received from a telecommunication company.
Dear Customer
Thank you for using our services.
You may have overlooked this payment and your account is now overdue.
Please pay the full amount due immediately to avoid any late payment fee. A fee of SGD5.35 (GST inclusive) or SGD21.40 (GST inclusive) is applicable to residential customers and business customers respectively for late payments.
Please ignore this letter if payment has already been made.
Thank you for your prompt attention.
Critique:
The letter is well structured and has no grammatical error. It has a letter head that provides contact details of the company. This is useful if there are any doubts on the payment. The letter is also dated and has proper salutation.
The letter is also quite concise as there is no lengthy expression. Relevant information like amount due and late payment fee are stated. The tone of the letter is polite and there is a buffer paragraph at the beginning of the letter. The negative news is stated positively (i.e. persuade the customer to pay the amount due to avoid late payment fee).
However, there is still room for improvement. The letter is not signed off and there is no complementary close. Instead of a simple “Reminder”, a more detailed subject line can be used. The letter also lacks of concreteness as essential details like mode of payment and deadline before late payment fee is charged are missing. In the closing section, the company can suggest actions to be taken by the customer once again. It can be phrased like the following: “We hope to receive the overdue payment soon so that we can continue to provide services to our valued customer.” Lastly, rather than addressing the customer as “Dear customer”, it is better to address as “Dear Madam Boey” to add a sense of personal touch. It is an easy task by using the mail-merge function in Microsoft word.
Thank you for using our services.
You may have overlooked this payment and your account is now overdue.
Please pay the full amount due immediately to avoid any late payment fee. A fee of SGD5.35 (GST inclusive) or SGD21.40 (GST inclusive) is applicable to residential customers and business customers respectively for late payments.
Please ignore this letter if payment has already been made.
Thank you for your prompt attention.
Critique:
The letter is well structured and has no grammatical error. It has a letter head that provides contact details of the company. This is useful if there are any doubts on the payment. The letter is also dated and has proper salutation.
The letter is also quite concise as there is no lengthy expression. Relevant information like amount due and late payment fee are stated. The tone of the letter is polite and there is a buffer paragraph at the beginning of the letter. The negative news is stated positively (i.e. persuade the customer to pay the amount due to avoid late payment fee).
However, there is still room for improvement. The letter is not signed off and there is no complementary close. Instead of a simple “Reminder”, a more detailed subject line can be used. The letter also lacks of concreteness as essential details like mode of payment and deadline before late payment fee is charged are missing. In the closing section, the company can suggest actions to be taken by the customer once again. It can be phrased like the following: “We hope to receive the overdue payment soon so that we can continue to provide services to our valued customer.” Lastly, rather than addressing the customer as “Dear customer”, it is better to address as “Dear Madam Boey” to add a sense of personal touch. It is an easy task by using the mail-merge function in Microsoft word.
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Hi Min Lim
ReplyDeleteIt is a very detail analysis. I agree with you that the details are well provided and it look short and clear. However, there is some suggestion from me to improve this letter. Firstly, the salutation can be "Dear Valued Customer" which sound better. Secondly, there should have an authority signature for it. Lastly, I think the tone is not that good because this is bad new to customer. I hope SingTel could adopt your suggestions to improve their letter witting.
Cheers
Kent
Hi Chin Min! =)
ReplyDeleteI have received such letters before. I know how it feels to be in such a position. But I like to commend Singtel for the way the letter had been crafted: it is polite yet able to achieve what the letter was sent for i.e. to remind. This makes the letter clear and concrete. The details i.e. the amount overdue are shown clearly and the other relevant details to back their case.
Although I may not agree with the use of bolded, red words i.e. REMINDER, I feel that it has been appropriately used in this case. As a matter of fact, the word ‘REMINDER’ is not offensive at all: it is not loud. Indeed it does serve its purpose: the moment I see the word, I will feel obliged to get my bills paid. What’s good is I don’t feel threatened to pay up.
And most importantly, it’s concise. The sentences are direct and the message could be conveyed easily.
As for the critique, great job done on analysing the letter. I will have to agree with you for most parts except for the ‘Reminder’ bit. But nevertheless, suggestions and improvements given make the critique more valuable to readers, especially to the person who wrote this letter. =)
Thank you Siti and Kent for your comments. I forgot to mention that this reminder letter costs 50cents which will be included in the next bill. There is no mention of such a cost in this letter most probably because it may bring about more unhappiness. However, I still feel that there is a need to relay this piece of relevant information to the customer in a polite manner.
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