Printers' Ink, December 7, 1911 (Vol. 77, No. 10): Handling of Inquiries from Women
The December 7, 1911 issue of Printers' Ink, filed for "Handling of Inquiries from Women", an extract from an address to the Detroit Adcraft Club by Charles R. Wiers, chief correspondent of the Larkin Co. mail-order house in Buffalo.
What it is
The December 7, 1911 issue of Printers' Ink, filed for "Handling of Inquiries from Women", an extract from an address to the Detroit Adcraft Club by Charles R. Wiers, chief correspondent of the Larkin Co. mail-order house in Buffalo. Wiers argues that most customer letters fail because the clerk answers from stock phrases and ignores what was asked; his example is a reply that skipped a direct question about a Chicago factory. His rules: answer each letter in the customer's own kind of language, take every complaint seriously, exchange goods without demanding reasons, and keep explaining until every point is covered. One poor explanation cost Larkin about $600 in business. The issue opens with W. K. Kellogg defending a manufacturer's right to fix resale prices, and also carries Harry Tipper on vague ad vocabulary, Charles W. Hurd on the Macbeth glass campaign, and Waldo P. Warren on word of mouth.
Why read it now
Set aside the 1911 view of women first. It rests on stereotypes (women as whimsical, ruled by ultimatums, "not commercially constituted") that no evidence supports and that would put off any reader today. What remains is a sound service method. Answer the question the customer asked, in their words: modern service research finds that customers reward low effort and a direct answer more than a warm script (Dixon, Freeman and Toman, "Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers", Harvard Business Review, 2010). Exchanging goods without an argument and writing a personal letter to win back a lapsed buyer are the kind of service recovery that research links to retained customers. The $600 lost to one bad reply is the sort of figure that still justifies paying for good correspondents. Tipper's piece in the same issue, which refuses to call advertising an investment unless its return can be shown, is a useful counterweight to the soft talk around it. To use it: pull twenty recent WhatsApp or email replies, mark every customer question left unanswered, and rewrite the templates so each reply opens by answering the exact question asked.
Passages worth keeping
If you want to get a mastery of the language that should be used in addressing not only women but men also, you will have to study each of your customers and then resolve to address them as they address you.
لإتقان لغة الرد على العملاء، ادرس كل عميل على حدة وخاطبه بالأسلوب نفسه الذي كتب به إليك.
The hardest thing to do in any business office is to find a person who really appreciates the importance of a letter from a customer or the absolute necessity of answering it correctly.
أصعب ما في أي مكتب أن تجد موظفًا يقدّر قيمة رسالة العميل ويدرك أن الرد الصحيح عليها ضرورة لا ترف.
In this one case, as a result of a poor explanation, we lost about $600 worth of business.
شرح ضعيف واحد أفقد الشركة عميلة أربع سنوات وطلبات بنحو 600 دولار، فجودة الرد لها ثمن يمكن حسابه.
The interest that one shows in a woman’s troubles may often seem like time foolishly expended, but in the long run it will return a dividend of greater loyalty and more business.
الإصغاء إلى شكوى العميل قد يبدو وقتًا ضائعًا، لكنه يعود مع الوقت ولاءً أكبر وطلبات أكثر.
I am unable to see where advertising is in any way an investment any further than the salary and expense of salesmen are investments.
يرى تيبر أن الإعلان مصروف بيع مثل رواتب مندوبي المبيعات، ولا يصح تسميته استثمارًا للهروب من قياس نتائجه.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
Read the original archive.org
If this library is useful, leave an email
We send new patterns, ads, and notes when we add them. Name and phone are optional.
You are on the list
We will write when we add more library material.