How to Organize Letters with Negative Messages to Your Clients and Customers

It may not be possible to make your client or customer happy with the news you have to convey, but you may be able to structure your message to create a positive feeling and maintain goodwill. The following 3 points can help with this:

1. Appeal to your customer’s ability to reason. When you have a reason that readers will understand and accept, provide that reason before giving the negative information.

2. Remember that one of your goals when conveying negative messages is to reduce future correspondence on the same subject; therefore it’s wise to insure that you clearly present the negative information just once.

3. If a compromise or alternative is available go ahead and present it then end on a positive note, with a forward-looking statement.

3 Reasons for Communicating Negative Messages to Customers

Most very small business owners, entrepreneurs and solo-professionals cringe at the thought of approaching clients or customers with negative information. Invariably we know that regardless of how much we try to cushion the negative information between positive messages, our clients or customers are going to be disappointed or angry.

We may need to convey negative messages for the following reasons:

(i) Announcement of policy changes that may not be to the benefit of the client or customer.
(ii) Give notice of a product or service price increase.
(iii) Since in many cases we do not make the product we sell, it may become necessary to advise of a product recall.

A bonus reason is delivering any information that the client or customer may perceive as being intrusive or even insulting.

What methods can be used to convey these negative messages? We’ll consider those in my next post.

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