Correspondence

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Writing to clients

A few guidelines to help you write consistent client emails and letters.

Contacting

  • Various words and phrases are used to ask consumers to contact us, but we should use “please contact us…” or “contact us”
  • While “get in touch” is acceptable, because it infers establishing a relationship with us in a softer tone of voice, ‘contact’ is a clear, action-orientated word, and is preferable
  • We should avoid using “please call us” unless we specifically need a person to phone us; after all, clients can also email us or use webchat

Dear or Hi

  • Our standard practice is now to use ‘Hi’ in most cases, rather than ‘Dear’. Dear should only be used where a degree of formality is required because of client circumstances. Generally, clients should be addressed in post, email and SMS communications as ‘Hi Firstname’
  • There should always be a comma after ‘Hi Firstname,’
  • If you’re writing to an organisation such as a creditor and not a named individual then use ‘To whom it may concern’
  • If you’re writing to a named individual use ‘Hi Firstname’ to avoid causing offence by potentially using the incorrect gender in the greeting
  • If we don’t have their first name use 'Dear client,' again with a comma following

Margins

  • Left 2.54cm. The left margin should never be smaller than 1.6 as this is a requirement of Prime Document.
  • Right 2.54cm
  • Top – No common approach
  • Bottom – No common approach

Headings

  • Should be bold and not underlined
  • One line space after each heading

Signing off letters and emails

  • We now sign off all consumer letters, emails and SMS with ‘Best wishes’
  • There should always be a comma after ‘Best wishes,’
  • Generally, we now sign off with ‘StepChange’ rather than a named department head
  • If you’re writing to an organisation such as a creditor and not a named individual, sign off with ‘Yours faithfully,’.

Spacing

  • Eleven return carriage spaces between address and date
  • Two return carriage space between date and salutation
  • One return carriage space between date and client identification
  • One return carriage space between client identification and first paragraph
  • One return carriage space between each paragraph
  • One return carriage space between last paragraph and ‘Yours sincerely’
  • Five return carriage space between ‘Yours sincerely’ and the name of the signatory