Seminar: Business letter and email writing in English
Writing effective emails and letters in English, replying to complaints respectfully.
Contemporary business letters and emails in English are clear yet personal. In this intensive seminar, participants are provided with simple and effective tools for wording letters and emails in a professional, customer-oriented style. The key to a professional style lies in precise and succinct messages presented in a well-structured format.
Expectations of letters and emails have changed. Anyone writing in the „old style“ today conveys a poor image of their company to customers and other communication associates.
Contemporary letters and emails are clearly structured and precisely worded. They are recipient-focused, easy to understand and free of obsolete phrases or „officialese“.
Seminar objectives: Participants find out how to write in a contemporary style with a range of practical tips and suggestions. They learn how to work out a basic structure for daily letters and emails, enabling them to create texts more quickly, more confidently and with a clear target in mind.
Duration: 1–2 days, e.g. 9 am. to 5 pm.
Preparation
- Participants submit customer letters and emails and the relevant replies for prior analysis and formulate their questions and expectations of the seminar.
Content
- The eight basic principles to follow for a contemporary letter and email style in English
- What no longer works: obsolete, wrong, superfluous or clumsy expressions are replaced with flawless, appropriate and contemporary ones
- Clear, targeted and precise phrasing: drafting letters that are correctly and comprehensibly structured
- Sensible structuring and the best possible line of argument
- Primary and secondary purpose of the customer letter: choose positive, respectful wording which is not patronising
- If necessary: create templates for commonly used texts
- Write with formal precision: be familiar with and apply the guidelines and norms for correspondence
- Optimise letters and emails written by participants
Handbook, quick reference cards and seminar service
- Detailed seminar handbook and handouts with exercises
- DIN A5 quick reference cards as a brief summary
- Supplementary material and photographic minutes by email
- Support after the seminar: simply by email or using the Knowledge Blog – participants are welcome to ask questions and request tips after the seminar
Your communications skills trainer:
Uwe Freund: Communication trainer, coach, text optimiser. Uwe Freund has been supporting companies since 1989 as a communication trainer, speaker, coach and consultant for business writing skills and complaint management by letter, email, chat and social media as well as time management, telephone dialogue and presentation.
He advises companies in German-speaking countries on the redesign of written and verbal communication as well as the concrete implementation through text optimisation of templates, building blocks and templates. His industry expertise focuses on financial services, insurance, law firms and law firms, automotive, IT and software, clothing/fashion. Uwe Freund lives in Munich.
- Studies: Politics, German Studies and Psychology in Frankfurt am Main and Munich - Degree: M. A. (Magister/Master)
- Qualifications: Certified coach based on transactional analysis; further training: Gestalt, NLP, TCI, conflict management, group dynamics, physiology and sports training methodology, energetic psychology (MPC), INSIGHTS MDI (accredited counsellor), Lumina Spark (accredited counsellor)
- Seminar languages: German, English
- Seminar topics: Written communication and business writing such as letters and emails, live chat, professional formulation and copywriting, telephone dialogue, customer service and complaint management, time management and productivity, pyramid style presentations, presentation, facilitation
- Memberships: BJV Bayerischer Journalistenverband / German Journalists' Association, DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung e. V. / German Standardisation Organisation (member of the working committee "Text and information processing for office applications")