In order to provide excellent customer service, you need to be able to communicate effectively with your customers. One of the greatest barriers to communication is poor spelling and grammar.
Poor spelling and grammar make even the simplest communications:
- Hard to read – when you need to try to decipher the meaning of a word, a sentence or a paragraph it makes the communication difficult to read and comprehension, almost impossible.
- Distracting – even when it’s clear what misspellings or grammar failures are supposed to be, the errors distract from the message you’re trying to get across.
- Unclear – in the worst case scenario, a misspelling can change the meaning of a sentence
Poor spelling and grammar can harm your corporate image and make it seem as if you have a:
- Lack of respect – why bother doing a simple spell check on something that’s just going out to your customers? It’s not like they’re important. Right?
- Lack of attention paid – it’s just easier to send it out quick and easy, nobody will notice if it’s not done right.
- Poor corporate image – things get forwarded, particularly things that have a funny or horrific error. You might have just sent it to a customer, but that customer can easily push it to a massive audience.
Poor spelling and grammar make the writer appear:
- Lazy – because there are so many ways and places to check spelling and grammar,
- Computer illiterate – your computer helps check spelling and grammar automatically, if you don’t know how to use it, or you chose not to, there really is no excuse.
- Uneducated – it’s not nice, but if you send out communications littered with spelling errors, you appear uneducated and illiterate. So just don’t do it.
Poor spelling and grammar can be checked easily:
- Dictionary.com or similar for spelling – just because spell check picks it up, doesn’t mean you know how it should be spelt. Free online dictionaries are the perfect place to check spelling if you don’t have a hardcopy or dictionary program installed on your computer.
- Grammar Girl or similar for grammar – do a search for “grammar hints” or “grammar and style” or look into purchasing a style manual, either in print or PDF.
- At the very least: Double check anything that spell-check queries. Then, read your communication out loud. If it sounds strange, the grammar probably needs work. If it reads like you’d say it, it’s probably OK.
There’s really no excuse for poor grammar and misspelt words, however mostly people are forgiving of the occasional mistake. But any official communication is surely worth taking the extra time to get it right. If you have a big problem with getting it right for any reason – you should definitely consider hiring a proof reader or a virtual assistant to handle your correspondence.
