9.3 Positive and Neutral Messages

You will find yourself writing many emails and letters in your career. Most will be positive or neutral in approach. Positive messages convey good news or work to establish good will, such as when announcing a new hire or confirming an agreement. Neutral messages are highly routine messages that carry little if any emotional content, such as when conveying updates to directives or procedures for processing manual account updates.  These messages drive the day-to-day work of organizations, enabling new relationships to form, reinforcing existing ones, exchanging ideas and information, and responding to need and opportunity. Examples of these such messages include the following:

Positive messages examples: claim acceptances and adjustments, invitations, invitation confirmations, appreciation messages, good news announcements, recommendation letters

Neutral message examples: routine requests, directives or instructions (see the chapter on Instructions), policy or procedure updates, arrangement confirmations or follow ups, claims, general informational messages

Using the Direct Approach to Organize Ideas

How you organize information in your messages will be determined by the context and the receiver. As such, it is important to complete a thorough audience and context analysis so that you can adapt the content to achieve your communication goal.  When you expect the reader to respond to your message with a positive or neutral attitude, you can organize your message using the direct approach.

The direct approach is created by placing the key idea in the opening paragraph, thus revealing to the reader almost immediately the purpose of the communication. As such, the message would be structured in the following way:

Positive and Neutral Message Structure

Keep in mind that when the background information is so brief as it does not warrant a separate paragraph, you may include the background information in the opening paragraph.

This chapter will discuss a few positive and neutral message types that are frequently put to use in business contexts, highlighting key idea placement and message structure, along with a variety of formats: email, memo, and letter.

Sample Neutral Messages

Claims and Complaints

As the video, Bad Customer Service Montage (n.d.) suggests, business doesn’t always go smoothly. In all such cases,  customers or clients are likely to make your company aware of what went wrong and what they want to be done about it. A claim explains what went wrong and requests compensation from the offending party; whereas, a complaint explains what went wrong and merely requests correction or apology. For example, if you placed an order for MS Office software and received Norton Antivirus software instead, you would have reason to make a claim for full reimbursement or an exchange of products. The message you send to rectify the situation would be considered a claim message. Minor complaints are best communicated in person, on the phone, or by email (if it’s important to have them in writing), so they can be dealt with quickly. More serious complaints or claims are delivered as formal letters to lay down a paper trail in case they need to be used as evidence in a lawsuit.

Though some believe that a strongly worded complaint or claim is an effective way of getting what they want, it is better to be polite and neutral or objective when communicating your problem. If you are nice about communicating your problem regarding a situation or business transaction, the customer service representative (CSR) or manager dealing with it is more likely to give you what you want. Just because some customers have found success in bullying people who are only trying to do their jobs, not all such attempts will likewise succeed, nor is it right from a moral standpoint, especially when the abused CSR had nothing to do with the issue.

Ineffective complaints or claims often merely vent frustrations, issue threats, don’t say what they want or only vaguely imply it, or demand completely unreasonable compensation. Such messages are usually aggressive (or passive-aggressive) in tone and therefore rude and offensive. The recipient may respond aggressively in turn, give the complainant much less than what they asked for (e.g., a mere apology rather than compensation or replacement), or ignore the complaint altogether. Often the reader of such messages is not the one at fault, so a hostile message would be especially ineffective and possibly even actionable in extreme cases—i.e., liable to cause damages that the recipient could pursue compensation for in court.

To contrast, effective complaints or claims are politely worded and motivated by a desire to right wrongs and save the business relationship. They’re best if they remind the business that you’ve been a loyal customer (if that’s true) and really want to keep coming back, but you need them to prove that they value your business after whatever setback prompted the complaint. If writers of such messages maintain equilibrium, they can end up getting more than they originally bargained for.

Claims used to be sent using a letter format; however, now claims are submitted by going to company websites and using the Contact Us form to submit the message, or you can call the customer service line. If you have created a relationship with a supplier or other partner, however, you may submit your claim via email to your contact. Either way is just fine.

A claims message is a type of routine request that consists of these basic components:

1. An opening that offers some background information and clearly states the request or claim as your key idea

2. An explanation of the claim in which you describe the circumstances leading to the claim, including specifics

3. An action close that reiterates the request.

Watch the following video, Writing a Claim Letter to Customer Support (2014) for step-by-step instructions on writing a claim letter.

Now, see the example below for an illustration of this structure.

Figure 9.3.1 Sample email claim

Routine Request

Routine requests are frequently used to address any number of routine requirements that arise in the day-to-day operations of an organization. Requests can be as simple and brief as a request for a meeting with your manager or more developed such as a request for nominations for excellence awards (see the example below). Whatever the circumstance, the request must include enough information for the reader to understand the situation and follow through with what is needed. If the request does not include specific information, then the request may not be fulfilled in the manner that you would need it to be.

Like claims messages, routine requests can be organized using the direct method, as follows:

1. An opening that makes a clear request.

2. Background information that explains the context or situation.

3. An explanation of the subject matter so the reader understands what is required.

4. An action close that reiterates the request.

See the example below for an illustration of this structure.

Figure 9.3.2 Sample routine request in memo format (Cruthers, 2020).

Sample Positive Message

Positive messages are routinely used to build relationships, announce good news, express gratitude, and the like.  As you can imagine, such messages can vary widely in terms of content depending on the type of organization and the situations that arise. Generally speaking, examples of positive messages include anything that transmits good news such as acceptances, confirmations, invitations, announcements, and gratitude among other types.

Positive messages can be organized using the direct method, as follows:

1. An opening that includes the key idea or an announcement.

2. Background information that explains the context or situation.

3. An explanation of the subject matter so the reader understands what is required.

4. A courteous close and/or an action statement.

Below in Figure 9.3.3 is a sample positive message.

Letter of Acceptance

Figure 9.3.3  Sample good news message adapted from a letter created by student Natalia Sarabia (Chang, 2015).

Whether you’re writing thank-you notes, congratulatory messages, or expressions of sympathy, follow the “5 S” principles of effective goodwill messages illustrated in Figure 7.3.4.

References

Chang, C., ed. (2015). Letters. Business writing for success. University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. https://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/cmchang/chapter/9-5-letters/

Cruthers, A. (2020). Writing memos. Business writing for everyone. https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/businesswriting/chapter/writing-memos/

LinkedIn Learning. (2014). Productivity tutorial: Writing a claim letter – lynda.com [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGOJLtrsxuE&list=RDCMUCikzJG7RbnNZhKLqqaXRM6A&start_radio=1&t=38&t=38

Williams, V. (2020). Complaints and persuasive messages. Fundamentals of business communication. OER. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/businesswritingessentials/chapter/ch-8-persuading-your-reader/ 

tmuka. (n.d.). Bad customer service montage [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTbHwnxCGaI