RE: Writing Corrective Actions for customers Summary of Responses and DETAILED Explanation

[Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Thanks for the explanation. And I'm glad to hear it
isn't what I was afraid it was. 

As far as having to take whatever job you could, that
needs no explanation. That I understand perfectly. I
live in an area where the demand for technical writers
was never very great to begin with, and with ongoing
layoffs it gets thinner every day.

So you're creating a document template and a
standardized procedure for sending out customer
letters. An entirely different type of thing than what
I got from your first message. Good.

I won't bother to offer any advice on that subject -
sounds like you've already received a pretty good bit.
Please keep us posted on how it goes.  


--- "Hemstreet, Deborah" <DHemstreet -at- kaydon -dot- com>
wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> I would firstly like to thank Geoff Hart, Gene
> Kim-Eng, and Michael West
> for providing me with the most relevant information
> I could use to
> proceed.
> 
> Since they posted to the entire groups, I do not
> need to summarize their
> responses, but I want to publicly thank them for
> their helpful input.
> 
> Since the other responders were also to the entire
> list, and since those
> responses could reflect negatively on the company
> that I am working
> with, I would like to clarify.
> 
> Firstly, I have been a technical communicator for
> 20+ years. My primary
> experience has been in the medical device hi-tech
> industry - but a move
> from overseas to the US, to a State badly impacted
> by the economy, meant
> I had to take a job wherever I could. I consider
> myself fortunate to
> have found a job with a manufacturing company that
> values my experience
> with the hope of improving all of their internal
> customer service
> processes and procedures, as well as their external
> communications to
> their customers. I am certainly not a glorified
> secretary.
> 
> My job is to write documents that communicate. As
> part of my analysis of
> the documentation needs for this company, we
> uncovered inconsistent
> communications to customers from different sources.
> However, my
> background is medical devices - not manufacturing.
> Immediate patient
> death is not going to be the result of a device
> failure. Ergo - we don't
> need to stop the assembly line and call a halt to
> all we do until this
> complaint is dealt with.
> 
> What do we need to communicate? How should it best
> be communicated in a
> consistent and professional manner?
> 
> Since I've never worked on a communication of this
> type before, I wanted
> to know more about how such customer communications
> are handled.
> Ideally, the industry standard for these type of
> letters (which I did
> not ask the group, as this is a Tech Com group, not
> an industry group).
> 
> The goal? For our CS dept. to begin issuing
> professional letters to
> customers that provide information that is wanted
> and needed, without a
> lot of fluff, but with  consistent branding, and a
> sense that the
> customer's issue has been related to.
> 
> Obviously there are different kinds of complaints,
> but at the end of the
> day - what does the customer really NEED?
> 
> Following my letter to you, I continued my research.
> Finally I found
> part of what I was looking for in a QA research
> magazine.
> 
> Basically, we need to make sure the Customer knows
> that their issue has
> been related to, how it was solved, and most
> importantly (here I found
> the thing I'd been missing) the service dept. needs
> to express
> appreciation for the customer conveying the
> complaint as it helps us
> improve our service to them....
> 
> So now, with helpful suggestions from my colleagues,
> I plan on working
> on a template that will pull out the critical
> information from our
> system and put it into a letter that the customer
> support people will
> review, tweak (if necessary), and sign.
> 
> Thanks again to all who responded. I am sure it has
> and will result in
> thought provoking discussion.
> 
> Deborah
> 
> 
> 
> 



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