Are you being served?A genre analysis of American and Dutch company replies to customer inquiries

Abstract

Abstract More and more companies now rely on the benefits of e-mail communication as a means of ensuring customer service. To date, very few publications have explored the role of this medium in the establishment of an interpersonal relationship between customer and company. In a descriptive study, the e-mail replies of producers were investigated with respect to the proliferation of rhetorical and interpersonal strategies in their answers. In an inductive process, the nature of the genre, its discourse structure and textual realizations are established. In the same process, it is considered whether questions regarding the typicality of electronic communication and generic transcendence of cultural boundaries can be solved. To this end, the replies of Old and New, and Dutch and American producers were compared. It appears that American companies were in general relatively careless in their response policy: only 60% of all companies approached bothered to reply to the Dutch inquiry. American customer service via e-mail differs from Dutch customer service via e-mail, in that American producers more often express gratitude and Dutch producers are more often sorry to decline a request. Old producers differ from New producers with regard to the invitation to stay in contact with the company.