Business Writing Strategies - 3 Correspondences and a Cover Memo

Scenario Overview

For this project, you will write four documents: three correspondence messages in response to the following scenarios and a cover memo to your instructor in which you outline the business writing strategies you employed as you composed your messages.

A scenario overview and four options are provided below.  Select any three of the options you prefer. The choices are:

1.a complaint letter from a customer to a construction firm;

2.an email from a customer service representative to his or her manager;

3.a memo from that manager to all employees within the firm explaining the specifics of company policy;

4.a letter from customer service responding to the customer’s complaints.

Denison Construction and Renovations is a thriving construction firm with offices in New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. The company specializes in high end projects and therefore employs master craftspeople to build custom cabinets, bathrooms, kitchens, and other projects to the precise specifications of very demanding clients. All Denison craftspeople have a minimum of five years of industry experience and come highly recommended from either previous clients or employers (or both).

In recent months, a team of workers from Denison has been building a 2,000 square foot indoor/outdoor addition (including an indoor sun room and an attached, outdoor patio) at the home of Mr. Kenneth and Mrs. Karen Hatcher, 353 Park Avenue, Kingland, Arizona. While the Hatchers are quite pleased with the work that the Denison team has been provided (both in terms of its quality and the rapid pace of its advancement), the family is less than fully pleased with the decorum of Denison workers. In particular, Mr. Hatcher is upset that the craftspeople tend not to wear shirts while completing many of their outdoor tasks.

Given that the Hatchers live in an exclusive, gated community, they are concerned that the immodesty of Denison workers may be reflecting negatively upon them. Given that the weather in Arizona is extremely hot, the Hatchers understand why the workers may choose such apparel, but they would strongly prefer that the craftspeople choose more suitable attire (either sleeveless t-shirts or tank-tops would be fine with you). The Hatchers also understand that some construction workers (as do many adults) use obscene language, but they have overheard a troubling amount of this language. Though they are hardly prudish, the Hatchers are worried that these obscenities can be heard by the children who play outside on their quiet, residential street.

The Cover Memo

In this memo to your instructor, explicitly note which three of the correspondence options you have chosen to write. Explain the strategic choices that you made while composing your messages—which details did you decide to include, which did you decide not to include, and so forth—and describe the rationale for these decisions (i.e., explain why you did these things). Also note any challenges that you faced while writing, or explain why any of your strategic decisions were particularly difficult to reach.

Option 1: Write a complaint letter from Kenneth or Karen Hatcher (whichever persona you prefer) to Delilah Flores, a customer service representative at Denison.

Option 2: Write an email from Delilah Flores to Patrick Gordon, Manager of Customer Service at the Denison site in Kingland.

Option 3: Compose an inter-office memo from Patrick Gordon to all construction site managers who are employed at the Denison branch in Kingland.

Option 4: Compose a letter of apology from Delilah Flores to Kenneth and Karen Hatcher.