Customer Relations
Skill #6: Develop new ideas that solve customer problems.
Skill #7: Cultivate your customers and their employees on every level of the organization.
Dwight knows that building relationships with customers is important but EC is global now and that personal connection seems to be shrinking. One customer, in particular, is on his mind. The Sunny Dale Heath Center. One of EC’s first clients, Sunny Dale Health Center came to Dwight and Ike to try to create a wheelchair that would fit the small hallways of the old Victorian Home they used for their center. It was a great project and the two owners really enjoyed getting to know them all even the orderlies that pushed the patients. In fact, they were really helpful because they explained some of the major problems, they had with manual wheelchairs. Ideas that led to the unique design of EC’s manual chairs. To this day Dwight and Ike stop by the center once a month on their way to work to see how everything is going. Moreover, it is part of the mission of the company to put their customer’s needs first. How can they do that if they do not see them? So, the problem is how can we create this same approach with our global and national clients who do not live next door? Dwight also knows that this issue goes hand in glove with customer service. In fact, he recently read in an article from Byteagain, a major e-commerce consulting firm, that e-commerce is one of the biggest believers in the idea that customer service is paramount to developing and keeping customers. These two facts amazed him: over 50% of American consumers say they’ve scrapped a planned purchase or transaction due to bad service and 80% of businesses believe that they’re providing “superior” customer service, only 8% of consumers feel the same. There’s obviously a disconnect here.
Dwight realizing that Inge is going to need a new manager for customer service has decided that he would like to see how you would tackle creating a plan to cultivate EC’s long-distance customers so that EC can better evaluate their problems. Dwight also would like to see techniques for identifying and solving their problems as well. Using the articles in this week’s course material and research create a report complete with an executive summary that addresses the following:
Directions:
By SATURDAY, complete the following:
Create a page long executive summary that reports major findings to Dwight that you have discovered.
What does EC want from its customer relationships?
How can EC make the most of its US long-distance customers?
How will it differ from cultivating international customers? (Hint: be sure to address language and culture)
Look specifically at Japan and South Korea what kinds of considerations do you think influence EC’s relationship with these customers? You may want to look back at the earlier assignments to help in answering this part.
Select 5 techniques that are the best ways to build long-distance customer relationships and justify your reasons for selecting them.
Identifies the steps you would take to help long-distance customers to solve their problems.
You must use course material to support your responses and APA in-text citations with a reference list.How to write an executive summary.
Executive summaries should include the following components:
An explanation of why the research was performed.
The results that the research yielded.
Proposed suggestions for how management or leadership should best alter strategies based on the findings of research.
They should be concise and detailed statements of the major points to be made by reading the report.
THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, complete the following:
Respond to your classmates three or more days throughout the week. Remember you are trying to develop the best answers to the questions as possible. Your classmates are doing the same so read the posts carefully looking for the best ideas being presented. The goal is that by the end of the week the class will come to some consensus as to the best answers giving you the chance to submit the best ideas in the final post.
You must use course material to support your responses but you do not need to use APA in the brainstorming discussion with the exception of Saturday’s initial first impression post.
Participation must be reflected in the final post so grades will be affected by the content portion of the post if participation is not shown. Therefore, it is important to get in the class often and with the idea of improving your initial post with the discussion so that the final grade will be the best you can deliver.
BY TUESDAY, complete the following:
Attach your final post in the classroom by Tuesday at 11:59 PM ET.
The final post must reflect the brainstorming activities and should be different than the Saturday initial post.
The final post must include a variety of sources from the class material as well as the use of scenario or case study facts where appropriate.
It must USE APA in-text citations and reference list.
Additional Requirements and How to Prepare the Weekly Attachment Submission
Follow the instructions carefully if the assignment asks for a memo, email, plan, report, etc. be sure to follow the format templates provided.
Submissions should be in proper business writing form.
APA formatting with in-text citations and a reference list is required.
Review the grading rubric for the assignment.
Carefully read all of the instructions to make sure all elements of the assignment have been covered.
Third-person writing is required. Third-person means that there are no words such as “I, me, my, we, or us” (first-person writing), nor is there use of “you or your” (second-person writing). If uncertain how to write in the third person, view this link.
Contractions are not used in business writing, so the expectation is that students do not use contractions in assignments.
Paraphrase and do not use direct quotes. This means you do not use more than four consecutive words from a source document; put a passage from a source document into your own words and attribute the passage to the source document. Provide the page or paragraph number. Note that a reference within a reference list cannot exist without an associated in-text citation and vice versa.
Do not use books as source material.
Use a variety as well as multiple course readings and research to support ideas, reasoning, and conclusions.
Submit the final project into the appropriate assignment submission folder. Once submitted, the project is eligible for grading and students will not be permitted to make changes or make another submission.
NOTE: All submitted work is to be your original work. You may not use any work from another student, the Internet or an online clearinghouse. You are expected to understand the Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism Policy and know that it is your responsibility to learn about instructor and general academic expectations with regard to proper citation of sources as specified in the APA Publication Manual, 7th Ed. (Students are held accountable for in-text citations and an associated reference list only).
