Why was I told off for saying 'To whom it may concern' in an email to client's customer?

[autisticconsultant]

Just joined this year

I basically cc'd a customer into an email chain where a bunch of client employees were discussing how to best help the customer

Then some lady from the client complained to my manager and said I shouldn't have

She also said me emailing a pair of managers 'To whom it may concern' sounded frosty and unprofessional (?)

I used 'to whom it may concern' bc my email was addressing a bunch of people in senior positions and I thought it was more professional than going 'Dear X, Dear Y, Dear Z, Dear A' or 'Hi all'

My manager told me that essentially the lady felt annoyed that I gave this client problem without trying to sum up the problem myself and present her with some action points and her complaints re the To whom it may concern email were to do being put off by the massive problem I gave her re the client

The points theemmadilemma made are pretty basic etiquette, no one on here can really know if it was autism or laziness

Your best move would be to apologise to your colleagues

In my experience management or clients want you to go to them with solutions, not problems.

It does stink.

IME ND juniors in consulting are as motivated and keen to learn as their NT peers. Equally they are no more likely to be lazy arseholes with piss poor client skills than their NT peers.

Large consultancies usually operate forced distribution in regular performance reviews. Juniors with poor attitude and who cause client relationship issues tend to find themselves in the bottom cohort and managed out.

You're getting a hard time here, everyone needs to learn.
Never forward an email trail to a customer. Instead, create a new email answering the query with the all the information you have.
If emailing a number of people, use 'good morning' 'good afternoon'
You are not a moron.

If you work for a large consultancy then presumably they are aware of your neurodiversity and are making reasonable adjustments to accommodate it. With that in mind, why don’t you seek support from HR or other management to understand these issues? That will be much more useful than asking Mumsnet.

The only person I can see having referred to OP as a moron was the OP.

There is plenty of good advice, but the OP is ignoring that and just keeps asking if they are lazy or an idiot - which doesn't feel that helpful.

If OP is capable (as they have stated) of using clear English within work environment, I'm not sure why they are choosing to use confusing messages here.

There are a number of kind, considered posts offering support and encouragement. The OP doesn't seem to want those though....

I do sometimes.

You only use that when you have no idea who the recipient is. It was ignorant rather than rude.

That's not on.

OP is autistic and has fallen into an expectation trap.

You do. Words have meanings and people can't assist you if you don't use words clearly and according to their established meanings.

Agreed- Op’s attitude and general written style isn’t very professional.
Someone blundering about upsetting clients has nothing to do with being autistic.

"To Whom It May Concern" if I didn't have a clue who I was emailing.

"Dear All" if it's a load of people and no one in particular.

Forwarding on an internal discussion to a client…! You’d be lucky to keep your job for that where I work, absolutely massive blunder.

If your friends were discussing an issue with a fourth friend, would you forward on the discussion to them? No, it embarrasses everyone.

Do you understand why that would be an issue?

It sounds like you have made a lot of mistakes in your job OP I think you need to be asking these questions to your line manager on how to improve. Maybe this role isn't for you and you would be best suited to something else.

I opened this to find out what a “client’s customer” might involve. But I’m a bit lost altogether now.

Suffice to say “to whom it may concern” sounds embarrassingly clunky these days. Hi all, xxxx, would be better. Or better still, just don’t forward entire email chains to people outside your own organisation.

this was an unusual engagement... the majority of my job involves analysing data and advising clients on how to implement what I found in that data

A combination of expectation traps and failure to think about how the external customer might feel and behave.

I'll deal with the second first. There are two issues with CCing people into chains:

1. People stop reading after a while and miss something important. I often get CCed into long email chains with discussions flying backwards and forwards between other people. As a result, I stop reading the emails after a while.
2. You can inadvertently expose an earlier comment that someone should not see. I was CCed into a discussion about the purchase of blinds for the office to stop me from being blinded by the sun and getting migraines. One of the previous messages was someone from Estates saying "I am struggling to justify this spend to benefit one person" and asking for written reports from Occy Health. Think about how angry that made me, and how devalued it made me feel that in this man's view my health and the risk to my job from repeated sickness absence wasn't worth a few hundred quid to resolve unless OH forced his hand. Had someone applied some pruning to the email chain before adding me, that idiot's ignorance would have been between him and OH.

The expectation trap: "To Whom It May Concern" is used by doctors writing medical letters, lawyers writing to The Occupant of a property, and similar cases where the recipient is completely unknown to the sender. When you used it, the message that you inadvertently conveyed was "I'm going to treat you like total strangers even though I know most of you". It was the written equivalent of pretending that you don't know someone when bumping into them at the supermarket.

I'm currently going through the process of getting help through a Govt scheme called Access For Work. You can apply for this help too. One of the things available is workplace coaching to help you learn to deal with these situations more effectively.

There's also a board on here "Neurodiverse Mumsnetters" for people like us.

ETA: an immediate measure that you can take, right now, is to check with a colleague before pressing Forward or adding someone to a CC list, because those are higher risk email actions than writing a new email or replying to a single sender are.

It sounds like you have made a lot of mistakes in your job OP I think you need to be asking these questions to your line manager on how to improve. Maybe this role isn't for you and you would be best suited to something else.
Wow, but of an assumption on the basis of one thread!!! Op we’re taught To whom it may concern, but yes it’s generally ‘I don’t know who’s going to get this so I need to cover the bases!’ Hope tomorrow’s an easier day!

I think TWIMC is considered quite dated. Like something the fabled Mr Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells might have used in a letter of complaint in 1958.

Most workplaces now expect staff to build relationships in their communication, whether it's by email, phone, teams or in person. This can actually be really tricky to navigate, even for people who are NT and people who are good at communication. So I can imagine that the nuances and dancing goalposts can be very difficult for someone with Austism.

My top tip would be to remember the relationship stuff in every greeting and every sign off, even if you personally think it's nonsense and if you can remember to ask about events people have mentioned.

For example
Hi Susan, hope you enjoyed your holiday
Good morning Team, hope everyone had a good weekend.

Yes thirty widgets and 2 knats farts please. The Gold plated ones.

Thanks everyone.
Have a good evening/enjoy your training day tomorrow.

Best wishes/regards

@stayathomer , OP has started several threads.

Please don't add extra noise to emails like this. It's hard for me to filter it out and it's a killer for the dyslexic people I've worked with.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia , I don't like it either.

If I reply to a question, i write something like
'Hi Vito,
Thanks for your e-mail. The amount of address labels I ordered is 2500. The order ID is KBAL000123.
Kirsten

Please don't add extra noise to emails like this. It's hard for me to filter it out and it's a killer for the dyslexic people I've worked with.

Except that it isn't just noise. It's about building relationships and keeping things moving forward. I'm not saying it's necessarily authentic, but some people get huffy about receiving direct orders by email without any softening of the edges.

KirstenBlest shows the right amount of softening without filling the email with noise. If people's job is to take an order, they should be able to do so without needing to have their feelings massaged.

If your communication at work, is anything like your communication style on this thread, I think we can all see the issue.
No, you don't have to use formal grammar and most people on here aren't bothered about a spelling mistake, but you do need to be clear what you are trying to explain to people.
Also, when you are asking for help / advice, you have to be willing to take it on board. From this thread, it seems that is something you are not happy to do.

Lots of people have tried to decipher your posts, and explain to you the two things that seemed to be wrong, but you don't seem to want to hear that.