A friend emailed me a follow-up message a sales representative had sent her. I have typed it below. What is your impression of the writer?
thank you for the rapid response I am grateful for the follow up. as far as information, I sending you an up coming schedule of class’s we are offering but let me tell you this, I would like to purpose a special offer of 15% off for all your employee’s, plus multi enrollment discounts and periodic specials like buy 2 get one free on select class’s. thank you for your time should you need more information please let me know. I look forward to doing some business with you.
My friend is very gracious and has responded cordially to the sales rep. However, she told me she would like to have responded this way:
Thank you for your kind though grammatically abysmal offer. If your attention to detail is as poor as your punctuation and spelling, I think we would be taking quite a risk to do business with you. Please take your solicitation to someone who doesn’t notice sloppy writing. How did you ever graduate from high school?
Ouch! It is painful to imagine that any of our readers would be thinking that way about our work–especially potential customers upon whom we rely for future income.
The rep’s message contains 17 errors, not counting the absence of paragraph breaks. If you can’t find all 17, read this error-free version I have posted in a PDF on my website. Don’t rely on your grammar and spelling checker to find the gaffes. My Microsoft software flagged only the lowercase word thank at the beginning of two sentences.
One error is understandable and forgivable. With the high volume of work we produce, we will make an error or two in an occasional message. But 17 mistakes in one email?
Would you do business with the sales rep who sent that message? Please share your view.