writing – Page 33 – Gavin Cameron

How to Write an Effective Complaint

Last week, I had cause to complain to my gym about the provision of a class. I found this relatively easy to compose because in my ‘day job’, I’m accustomed to handling complaints on behalf of a large organisation.

Using my experience of being on the receiving end, I’ve put together three general principles of effective complaining.

Regardless of how you feel, stick to the facts as much as possible

It is tempting to spell out exactly how angry or upset you feel, but an experienced complaint handler will look past any emotional language and find the facts of the case. If you consider that you must tell the organisation how you feel, keep it brief.

Here’s an example with too much emotion:

Your online system took three charges of £15 which meant I had to e-mail customer services and they put a stop on the order, so now my 86-year-old grandma will have to wait for her birthday present and I don’t know how long I’ll be waiting. It’s no good because now I can’t go and see her for another fortnight because I’m on holiday.

Now let’s focus on the facts:

I paid £15 for the item on 24 June, but I discovered your online system had taken this three times at 2:54pm, 2:56pm and 2:57pm. I e-mailed customer services. They put a stop on the order and advised me I would need to wait, but I don’t know how long. I need to find out because the item was supposed to be a birthday present. I’m disappointed because I regularly order from your company.

This version is more effective because we now know when the order was placed and that the customer is still waiting for the item.

No machine-readable author provided. Adam the atom assumed (based on copyright claims). [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons — No machine-readable author provided. Adam the atom assumed (based on copyright claims). [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Ask questions of the organisation; don’t answer them yourself

If you want to find out information in your complaint, make sure you flag up your questions as clearly as possible. Consider this example:

Why do you charge as much for a cup of boiling water as you do for a coffee? I don’t know any other company that does this and I feel it’s down to greed.

The question in this version sounds rhetorical because it’s immediately followed by the customer’s own answer. It would be much stronger as:

Why do you charge as much for a cup of boiling water as you do for a coffee?

Or if you feel you need to add extra information, place the question at the end of the sentence:

I don’t know any other company that charges for a cup of boiling water, let alone as much as for a cup of coffee. Why does your company do this?

The two versions above send a strong signal to the complaint handler that this is a question to be answered.

If something is good, say so

Organisations like to hear positive reinforcement. If there is something great in an otherwise negative situation, it doesn’t weaken your complaint to point it out.

I always pop into your shop at lunchtime. It’s always busy, but only two out of the three checkouts are ever on. The staff are always helpful and friendly, but the lack of a third cashier causes long queues.

In this instance, the handler knows that the customer has nothing against the behaviour of the staff, only that there aren’t enough at lunchtime.

When you receive a reply, have a look at the wording, especially if the response is not the one you wanted. It will probably follow this structure:

Thank you for your e-mail. We’re glad to hear you enjoy shopping with us.

We would like to be able to put on all three checkouts. Unfortunately, due to staff illness, this isn’t currently possible.

However, we understand your frustration at the queues. As such, you might be interested to know that we intend to install self-service checkouts in the next few months in addition to the staffed ones we already have.

We have here a positive statement, followed by a negative one, capped off with something else positive. This structure acknowledges there is a problem but delivers the news in such a way that the customer shouldn’t feel too let down.

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Busy Bee

Last week, I learnt that the venue we use for Hotchpotch – the spoken-word open-mike night – will be closed for refurbishment until the end of August or the beginning of September.

You might remember three weeks ago, I spoke about the importance of keeping a kind of Cabinet office when there are difficult decisions to be made. The system definitely worked in this instance, with regular members making good suggestions about what to do next.

Within 24 hours, we’d managed to secure another bar in the city centre for this month, and potentially next. We even had an offer from another venue that we can investigate if we need to. The next Hotchpotch will now take place in the Westport Bar in Dundee on Monday 16 July at 7pm.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on my Make / Share presentation on the subject of impostor syndrome, as touched upon in last week’s entry. If you’re local to Dundee, this happens tomorrow at The Beer Kitchen from 7pm.

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Derailed

I mentioned last week I would be spending a lot of time on trains, thus giving me time to read.

File:Fraud.jpg — By Nick Youngson – http://www.nyphotographic.com/ Alpha Stock Images – http://alphastockimages.com/ – CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) – via Wikimedia Commons

When travelling by rail, it’s always prudent to expect delays. In this case, another train broke down near Penrith station and the passengers on mine were allowed onto the platform while the obstruction was cleared. This gave me time to finish one of my books, but I also needed to work on a presentation.

Every month, Creative Dundee holds an event called Make / Share. This is a night where people such as designers, artists, computer programmers, or anyone who creates something, are invited to speak about their work. The next event is on Tuesday 10 July and I’ve been asked to speak on the theme of impostor syndrome.

I’m not a lifelong fiction writer and certainly not a lifelong poet, and I’ve always been upfront about this. Even so, it’s difficult not to feel an outsider when you’re among people who’ve been creating fictional universes since they were in primary school. I’ll be telling the audience about five times I felt I didn’t belong on the writing scene.

I also mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, when I appeared on The Beans Podcast. This is a weekly show compèred by my friends Valerie Mullen, Erin Farley and Sam Gonçalves. Like Make / Share, which Sam hosts, the podcast also invites creative people to give their story; indeed, it’s also worth listening to their previous episode about learning to like poetry.

But until the real writers figure out I’m one massive fraud, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing.

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Keeping a Cabinet

When you lead a group, it’s tempting to give orders and expect others to fall in line. There are situations where this is appropriate, particularly in the military.

But in a writing group, a dictatorial attitude only stirs resentments and makes people want to leave. On the other hand, discussing the matter with everyone in the group often leads to a jumble of individual opinions with no consensus. So what is a good way to make a decision on behalf of a group?

In many democracies, only a small percentage of politicians comprise the Cabinet and make most of the decisions. It’s not a perfect system, but it does reduce the number of opinions to a manageable figure, and that’s why I like keeping a group of representatives for advice.

For example, I lead the Dundee & Angus region of National Novel Writing Month. This a challenge to write a 50,000-word novel in November, and we also meet up unofficially all year round. There are 520 members who have our region as their home region, but only 1% to 2% come regularly to meetings.

Most day-to-day issues can be solved by speaking to my co-lead, yet the input of the members is particularly valuable in the months leading up to the November challenge.

In those 30 days, we’re required to arrange a launch party, a ‘Thank Goodness It’s Over’ party, and to encourage members to donate money and/or buy merchandise. On our own initiative, we arrange two meetings per week instead of the usual one, we make sure we’re contactable online and by phone, and we tell members how to protect their physical and mental health during the challenge. And on top of that, we’re all trying to reach the 50,000-word goal.

Thanks to this level of involvement with the co-lead and the active members, it’s been a joy to manage this region each year.

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When to Stop; When to Start

In April, I began to redraft a novel that I originally wrote in 2011. In the intervening years, I’ve learnt a lot more about the principles of structure and how to raise the stakes in a narrative, so I was pleased with the way the redraft was turning out.

However, there came a point where I’d pushed the main character through as many hoops as I could conceive until he’d achieved his goal. At that point, there wasn’t much to keep him from doing anything he wanted without resistance, so the narrative began to stall. At around the same time, I began to pull together a spoken-word show. I therefore made the decision to leave aside the novel, so for the last month, I’ve been concentrating on the show.

When I stop thinking about a work in progress, I find that’s the time to leave it. The novel is currently handwritten, so I’ll start typing that up once I’m finished with the show, then see where we can take the main character from there.

Other highlights this week include performing at Inky Fingers in Edinburgh on Tuesday and listening to some cracking poets, including the featured Rachel Plummer.

And on Thursday, I heard Caroline Bird performing from In These Days of Prohibition. This is the second time I’ve heard her on stage, and it was again a wonderfully absurdist experience.

Performing to an Audience

Passing the Microphone

I feel as though I’m giving you a cop-out entry this week because it exists only to link to other posts.

This is partly because I haven’t had much time; I’ve spent a lot of it on a new long-form piece. And it’s partly because another poet has put together some excellent advice that I’d like to share.

A microphone. It seemed like the best picture to illustrate this entry. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of weeks ago, Andrew Blair asked his friends what advice they wish they’d known before taking part in their first open-mike night. The advice he received – including mine – appear in his entry So…you want to do an open mic night.

Additionally, this seems a prime opportunity to dust off my own advice for speaking in front of an audience from earlier this year.

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In With the Old

Over the last week, I’ve been revising two pieces of prose.

The first piece was a 1500-word short story about a female soldier returning home after conscription into an unnamed war. I first wrote this in 2013, but I’ve periodically returned to it, most recently to submit it to a publisher who might appreciate the sentiment.

The second is an overhaul of the piece I wrote for my Masters dissertation in 2016. I subsequently turned it into a one-woman play, but the last revision didn’t reach the 60-minute mark. Over the weekend, I’ve been lengthening the script by unpacking and exploring some of the plot points that the original doesn’t address. In two weeks’ time, I have the opportunity to have an extract read by an actor at a new playwriting evening.

When I read back over those two pieces, there were no major problems, but I could find a number of minor ones. Perhaps I’d used a clause too many in the sentence; perhaps a vital piece of information could be shown rather than told.

Whatever the problem, I’ve enjoyed fixing them. I feel the two pieces are better overall now. I keep all my drafts, so I was able to look back at previous versions and I can see that my writing has improved over the years. It’s entirely possible that I’ll revisit these pieces in the future with more experience and be able to improve them in ways I can’t imagine right now.

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And Yet the Pencil Moves

Four weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d been rewriting a novel I started in 2011. I’m pleased to report that I’ve had enough momentum to keep going until now.

I’m following a chapter-by-chapter breakdown with the key points and word counts. In my experience, planning is never a waste of time, even if the plan is eventually amended or abandoned. Indeed, I don’t know of any major novelist who doesn’t plan to some degree.

In this case, the plot has been amended substantially, but I believe it’s for the better. In the first few drafts, the main character achieved his goals too easily, whereas now there are a number of obstacles in his way. My favourite tight corner so far is where he catches a taxi to pick up millions of pounds, but doesn’t have enough immediate cash to pay the fare.

Like many of my drafts, this one is written in pencil into a notebook; even my plan is written on the back of scrap paper. I find this method more satisfying than typing it. When it is finally entered into Scrivener, I’ll edit it, so that becomes the next draft.

Writing a novel is a time-consuming process, and even more so are the rewrites to produce a tighter story, but it can be a rewarding endeavour.

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Making a Move

Every month, I organise an open-mike night called Hotchpotch for writers to read their work in front of an audience.

For the last couple of years, we’ve been using a bar called the Tinsmith, who took us in when a previous venue closed. We’re indebted to them for allowing our group to keep going, and we made it clear that the move was on good terms.

They have a snug area that offers some degree of separation from the other customers. Over the last few months, however, our audience has grown beyond this area. As a result, it’s become difficult for everyone to hear, even with a PA system.

With help from another member, we scouted out a few locations, bearing in mind that any venue needs to benefit from our presence. Some didn’t have the privacy or the space we need, while others charged amounts that we wouldn’t be able to sustain in the long run. We found the Mayfly, who take a reasonable approach to space versus cost.

Of all the impending changes ahead, the format of Hotchpotch remains the same: for writers to read out their fiction or poetry with no judgement and no criticism. The next meeting is on Monday 14 May.

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