Verbal Communication Skills

Letters and Memos and the Telephone

Business Letters

• Why would you write one at your age?????

1. To complain about a defective product and request repair or replacement.

2. To tell a company what a great job one of their employees did when handling your problem.

3. To request an interview for a job.

4. To ask for something.

5. To tell someone your opinion about something

Why are you learning this?

• Like it or not, how well you write will determine whether or not your audience thinks you are an intelligent person

• If you write unclearly, with bad grammar and spelling, it is possible that anything you want done will be ignored

• After all, there are plenty of other well-written letters from people who know how to write one, these will get service first

See WORD slide

Memo

• Different from a letter

• Less formal

• You would not send a memo to President Obama or any business for that matter

• If you did do this, you would not be taken seriously

When do you send a memo?

• Within the company you are working for – to your fellow employees

• In this school, if I need something done I send a memo to another teacher

Memo Format

To:

From:

Subject:

Date:

Write memo here.

Sign your name:

To:From:Date:Subject:

Write memo here

Sign your name

Telephone etiquette

If you have a job answering phones for a company or an office, you need to know how to do so correctly.

If you are rude, unclear, or distracted the caller will become angry and take his anger out on the company.

So, what do you do??????????

Dialogue for phone

• Answer promptly – say “Hello.”

• State your name and the company name

• Say, “what can I assist you with?”

• Do not eat, drink, or chew gum

• Take a correct phone message

• Get the message to the right person

What to record when you take a message

• Date• Time• Caller name• Name of person who the message is for• Desired action• Contact number of the caller

• Then – read the message back to the caller!

Practice – phone etiquette• You will do this with the partner who you did the ‘sandwich

technique” with• The objective is that each of you will write down a phone message

exactly as it is given by the caller.• The other objective is that you will answer the phone correctly• You will grade each other• The caller is calling to speak to Dr. Sullivan, they are the parent of

Tim Smith, they want a meeting to discuss his absences from school. They can only meet in the mornings.

• The phone answerer’s name is Mrs. De Shields at Heide Trask High School

• Each of you will be the caller and the answerer and each of you will record the message.

Practice - letter

• You will write a correctly formatted business letter complaining about a product or an action that someone has taken that displeases you. Follow the format of the letter examples. Your letter must state what the problem is, why it’s a problem to you, and what you want to company to do about it.

• Follow all letter formatting rules

Practice - memo

• Write a memo to fellow student telling him/her about an upcoming event that you would like them to attend with you.

• Follow all memo formatting rules