What are the Business Correspondence Skills?

The business correspondence skills that you need in ecommerce are similar to those you'll have to develop in any field. The difference is that in the world of commerce, there are no coworkers — just customers. That means your job is to get people to do what you want them to do, often by making it easier for them.

If you want someone to buy something from your website, send a personal email that's friendly and nonthreatening. If you want someone's account balance to be moved from one credit card to another, create a simple form that makes the process easy for her.

You need to be firm but friendly in the face of an angry customer who doesn't understand why she can't use her credit card on your site. You need to be firm and friendly when a customer has a problem with a product, even if they're complaining about a minor issue (like having the wrong size). And when it comes time to close out an account or transfer money between accounts, you need to be firm and friendly, but also make things as simple as possible for the customer.

What are the Business Correspondence Skills?

Correspondence is essentially a form of modern-day networking, but it's most often done through the written word. To be effective at correspondence, you need to have some basic business communication skills. Some of these include:

1. Being able to communicate clearly, concisely and concisely.
2. Being able to listen effectively, so that you can take notes and respond in a timely manner.
3. Being able to ask questions and listen carefully to the answers, so that you're not just blindly accepting hearsay.

The one thing you can't do without is the ability to effectively communicate with other people. While some people are naturally gifted at this, most of us have to work on the skills.

I've been in a lot of meetings over my career and seen a lot of flaky people who won't take "no" for an answer. I've also seen some people who were stymied by an uncooperative colleague, but got past their problems because of their good communication skills.

A key skill for business communicators is listening. When you're talking to someone, your main goal should be to understand what they're saying and how they feel about it. If you can't empathize with the person you're speaking to, your efforts will be wasted.

Another important skill is the ability to summarize or articulate things that have been said. This capability comes in handy when there's a large amount of information being passed around and everyone needs a quick summary before moving on to their next task.