Feedback letters are an effective way to share your thoughts, opinions, or experiences with a person, company, or product. This makes them excellent tools, whether you are providing your thoughts on a product or helping a friend with their passion project. However, those who make them tend to be biased whether that’s being too positive or negative. That is why they rely on your feedback to understand what their work is like. That is why our guide is here to provide insights on how to craft helpful feedback letters.
1, Keep Things Professional
When creating a feedback letter, the most important thing to remember is to go in with the right mindset. You are not here to compliment a friend. You are expected to be objective. While it can be hard to criticize someone, especially for something they made, it has to be done for them to improve and they don’t want anything less. So in your feedback letter, don’t be afraid to mention if something isn’t working.
2, Provide Positive Feedback
That being said, while you should be critical, you shouldn’t just tear down their work. If you only talk about negatives then they will not be encouraged to keep working. If they do something right, you should be willing to tell them. Let them know what is working for you as well as what isn’t. This helps your criticism feel more well-rounded.
3, Be Constructive In Your Feedback Letter
There is a difference between being negative to providing real criticism. When you provide feedback either professionally or personally, you should be constructive. This means not just letting your personal feelings get involved or being necessarily rude, it means providing actual information that they can use. So if something isn’t right, let them know and explain how that can be a problem for them. This
4, Provide Tangible Points of Improvement
Building off the last point, a big part of that is providing a tangible point of improvement in your feedback letter. Let them know what they did wrong, but also explain how it can be fixed and how they can improve on it. This is how a feedback letter can feel professional. The same is true if something is going right as you can have them see why this is working and adapt that into other aspects.
5, Encourage Them to Keep Working
Last of all, whether the product is good or bad, you should try to end it with some encouragement in your feedback letter. This is how you create a positive work culture and get people to improve. Even if it is still rough, you should make them feel like their work is appreciated or not make them think that their efforts are wasted. Instead of saying they are bad, just say that it need more work.
At times, you might be asked to not just provide feedback on a product, but a person such as with reference letters as you can see here.
If you do want to go the extra mile, one way you can make your messages more interesting is by using our vintage letter service. You can create vintage letters that make your messages appear more exciting. To try it out, you can find our website here.
