ASSIGNMENT
As a business manager, you may encounter situations that require a wide variety of communication responses. For this assessment, you will be creating a portfolio of communication documents. Appropriately format each communication for the message type.
SCENARIO
Scenario 1
You are a manager of a company that has recently purchased and merged with a smaller company. The purchased company has an existing product, which will now be part of your product offering. The product is a weight-loss supplement called Kamelon. The product has been very successful for the previous owner, but the company had a limited ability to adjust its manufacturing system to accommodate growth, as well as a limited potential sales audience. Your role is to oversee and coordinate all aspects of launching the product from the newly acquired company. You have a far greater manufacturing capacity and more potential customers readily available because you already sell several weight loss-related products to a large base of customers.
Kamelon has been proven successful by a limited research study. The study consisted of 100 participants, 90% of whom lost at least 15 pounds over a reasonable time period. To date, the study participants who lost at least 15 pounds have successfully maintained their weight loss by continuing to use the product, and 80% were able to maintain their weight loss with continued use of Kamelon. The 10% of study participants who lost less than 15 pounds may have been unsuccessful because they did not follow the program’s protocol. An inherent risk of a weight-loss product is the inability to determine whether the product has produced results or if the user has not followed directions. Dissatisfied customers present a challenge as a result.
Your success relies on your external business partner Synesthor, who continues to manufacture the pill casing for Kamelon. There is a need for 10 million pills to be manufactured in the next three months to meet the demands of your customers. Synesthor is a manufacturing company located in South America, and you will need to work closely with this partner to ensure their manufacturing operation is able to meet the demand as needed in a just-in-time environment. Your contact’s name at Synesthor is Fatima Sousa.
You have received a customer complaint via the company’s social media page. The customer is extremely dissatisfied, and the complaint has negatively impacted the company’s image. The customer’s complaint is as follows: “Kamelon does not work! I’ve been using this for a week, and I haven’t lost anything! I’m going on vacation in a couple of weeks, and I was hoping to shed a couple of pounds before I left for my trip. Unfortunately, I do not foresee this happening. No one should buy this product! As a faithful member of several weight-loss groups, I will not recommend this product to anyone in my groups.”
Scenario 2
You are a manager in a small pharmaceutical distributor. Your company has been awarded an exclusive contract to distribute a new medication.
Nasaquil is an over-the-counter medication that has been approved to treat influenza. Nasaquil will compete directly with prescription antiviral medications.
Your company, through your sales and customer service representatives, already has extensive relationships with medical providers. There is great anticipation within the market about the potential efficacy of this new medication. According to estimates by a government agency, from 2010 to 2020, there were approximately 9 to 41 million flu illnesses with an estimated 12,000 to 52,000 flu-related deaths in the United States.
Initial clinical trials indicate that Nasaquil may help to lower influenza’s severity and duration; however, clinical trials only demonstrate a new medication’s efficacy in a small group of patients over a limited amount of time. Long-term product efficacy rates have not yet been established. As with all new medication launches, your company anticipates patient dissatisfaction if desired results are not achieved. In those cases, the company will work directly with the patients.
The success of Nasaquil relies on an external business partner located in Europe, Pruhart Tech, that manufactures the refrigerated casing designed specifically for this product. The product is required to be shipped overnight in a temperature-controlled package. Unfortunately, Pruhart Tech has limited refrigerated shipping containers, and the availability is restricted to weekend deliveries only. You will need to work closely with this partner to ensure that their manufacturing operation is able to increase as needed in a just-in-time environment to meet sales demands. Your contact’s name at Pruhart Tech is Diego Garcia.
You have received a customer complaint via the company’s social media page. The customer is extremely dissatisfied, and the complaint has negatively impacted the company’s image. The customer’s complaint is as follows: “Nasaquil does not work! My wife started Nasaquil and got very ill! I don’t understand how big pharma companies get away with rolling out unsafe drugs that can hurt people! Dealing with all of the medical appointments and issues is bad enough, but this sickness . . . I cannot wait for the patient support meeting tomorrow to share this medication’s reaction. Maybe this drug shouldn’t be approved yet.”
Scenario 3
You are a manager of a research company. Your research team has developed a transition package that allows a gas-powered engine to transition to run on biofuels. The availability and low cost of biofuels make the transition package a potential game changer in the automobile market. You have named the product Sparkit.
In addition to tests completed by your staff, you have partnered with a large automobile manufacturer to ensure that the transition package works with many different types of vehicles. The large automobile manufacturer remains a partner in the product as a result of their involvement, and you anticipate that future vehicles from the producer may use the technology when initially built. With the manufacturer’s assistance, you anticipate that 50% of cars currently on the road can potentially be retrofitted with your product. The automobile manufacturer has created a guide for your sales force to ensure that Sparkit is not sold to customers whose cars are not compatible with the product.
This is the first big product developed by your company. Your sales and service teams do not have current relationships with potential buyers. One potential risk is that purchasers may choose to install the transition package on their own rather than choose a knowledgeable automotive professional to install it. You anticipate that there may be issues with installation as a result.
The success of Sparkit relies on an external partner in Asia, Autojor, that manufactures a filter critical to the proper operation of the transition package. As the result of a natural disaster, Autojor recently lost a manufacturing plant that was responsible for producing 25% of your inventory. You will need to work closely with this partner to ensure that their manufacturing operation is able to continue supporting the just-in-time environment to meet sales demands. Your contact’s name at Autojor is Mateo Kalani.
You have received a customer complaint via the company’s social media page. The customer is extremely dissatisfied, and the complaint has negatively impacted the company’s image. The customer’s complaint is as follows: “I bought and installed Sparkit. It doesn’t work! The instructions do not match my engine’s layout, and now my car doesn’t work at all. This was supposed to save me money, but now my car won’t run. I’ll have to put more money into getting it fixed. This is ridiculous. I have told all my friends, and now I am telling the world—do not buy this product! If you do, you will regret it.”
REQUIREMENTS
Create a portfolio of communication documents based on one of the scenarios by doing the following:
A. Compose an email to internal staff by doing the following:
1. Discuss two advantages of the product.
2. Discuss two disadvantages of the product.
a. Explain how to mitigate the disadvantages of the product discussed in part A2.
B. Compose an informational email to external stakeholders (e.g., investors, shareholders) that discusses two distinct organizational and/or financial impacts the product will create.
C. Compose a consumer-facing blog post by doing the following:
1. Highlight three distinct benefits of the product.
2. Explain what sets this product and/or business apart from others in the industry.
D. Compose a persuasive letter to the business partner by doing the following:
1. Discuss one challenge in meeting production needs.
2. Describe your solution to mitigate the challenge discussed in D1.
3. Explain how the business partner will benefit from using the approach described in D2 to meet production needs.
E. Compose responses to the customer complaint about the product by doing the following:
1. Develop a public response for publication on the company’s social media page that acknowledges the customer complaint and improves the company image.
2. Develop a direct private message with a proposed remedy to the customer.
F. Explain how to overcome two potential biases (e.g., prejudice, discrimination) using culturally competent strategies that will help improve stakeholder communication.
G. Explain how to mitigate two potential intercultural differences (e.g., ethnocentrism, stereotyping) found in stakeholder communication.
