How to Use a Buffer in a Letter to Deliver Bad News

We would like to live in a perfect world where everything flowed smoothly. There would be no bumps in our roads that cause us to get off course. As most things in our lives do go as planned, sometimes, life can get awkward and we must deal with it. We can usually figure out how to work through our problems, but sometimes we search on the internet, ask friends, or lean on our judgment to work through problems. We look for solutions that would help get us back on track.

In a school project for our on-line business course, our teacher has asked us to create a website where we can help others with ideas on how to solve problems in the work world. After graduation, we will be employees and will most likely face some of these challenges in our jobs. Our first assignment is to think of a work situation, where, as managers, we might need to counsel an employee who may not be measuring up to work standards.

In this example, our employee, Ruth, a customer service representative, works for our telecommunications company which sells products globally to large internet service providers. Before Ruth was hired full-time, after graduating from college, she completed a three-month internship with us. Her internship training included helping customers configure part numbers using our product matrixes, expediting customer orders with manufacturing, and prepping orders for order entry. Our customer orders can be thousands, even millions of dollars, and are shipped around the world. Part number accuracy and outstanding customer service are critical in our business.

During her internship, Ruth provided outstanding service to our customers, and many of our customers would ask to be transferred to her if she didn’t answer the phone. We couldn’t wait to hire her after graduation and made her an outstanding offer to confirm her employment before she completed her internship with us. Now employed for three years, Ruth handles our largest European customers who have requested her to visit their offices. In her second year of employment, she was awarded a customer service bonus of $5,000 for her outstanding customer service.

During the past two months, Ruth’s commitment to her job has changed. She has been late for work many times, and one time she missed two days of work without calling us. Her customers have been contacting their outside sales people that Ruth helps to let them know Ruth is not reacting promptly to their emails and phone calls. Just before Ruth’s work ethics began to slide, she had taken a two-week vacation to Hawaii. After her vacation, she didn’t seem to want to talk about her time away. Gradually, she seemed to lose interest in her work.

Because Ruth has been an outstanding employee, we want her to become the confident person she used to be. We need her to be at work and do her job to win back her customers’ trust. Since her customers have noticed a difference in how she handles her accounts, we need her to get Ruth back on track quickly, or we will need to replace her.

Using a letter-writing technique we learned in English, we will prepare a letter and use a buffer in the first paragraph to ease into the letter. Then we will get to the point in the second paragraph and close with a "goodwill" message.

Below is the letter we will email to Ruth. We hope our story and example will help you when you need to talk with employees about their work progress.

Dear Ruth:

You have been an outstanding employee at our company. Your customers look forward to working with you on their accounts. Your impeccable work ethics set the bar high for our employees.

During the past two months, your attention to your job and your customers has caused a concern among our work team. We would like to set up a meeting in my office at 9 a.m. on Monday, September 18, 2017, to discuss your work load and to determine if any changes need to be made.

Ruth, you are invaluable employee at our company. We look forward to meeting with you. Please email or call me to let me know if you are available at this time. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Mary Bunge

Customer Service Manager