INTRODUCTION
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. Please appropriately format each communication for the message type.
SCENARIO
Scenario 1:
You are a manager of a company that has recently purchased 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 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 have successfully maintained their weight loss by continuing to use the product. Of the users, 80% were able to maintain their weight loss with continued use of Kamelon. The 10% of study participants who were not successful may have been unsuccessful because they did not follow the programs protocol. An inherent risk in 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 upon your external business partner, Synesthor Inc., who manufactures the pill casing for Kamelon. There is a need for 10,000 pills to be manufactured in the next three months to meet the demands of your customers. Synesthor Inc. is a manufacturing company located in a different country, and you will need to work closely with this partner to ensure their manufacturing operation is able to increase as needed in a just-in-time environment to meet sales demands. Your contacts name at Synesthor Inc. is Fatima Sousa.
You have received a customer complaint via the companys social media page. The customer is extremely dissatisfied, and the complaint has negatively impacted the companys image. The customers complaint is as follows: Kamelon does not work! Ive been using this for a week, and I havent lost anything! Im 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 the 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 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from October 1, 2018, to February 16, 2019, there were approximately 19 million flu illnesses in the United States with about 89 million flu-related medical visits (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). Initial clinical trials indicate this new Nasaquil medication may help to lower influenzas severity and duration; however, clinical trials only demonstrate a new medications 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 patient.
The success of Nasaquil relies upon an external business partner, Pruhart Tech, who 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 their manufacturing operation is able to increase as needed in a just-in-time environment to meet sales demands. Your contacts name at Pruhart Tech is Diego Garcia.
You have received a customer complaint via the companys social media page. The customer is extremely dissatisfied, and the complaint has negatively impacted the companys image. The customers complaint is as follows: @Nasaquil does not work! My wife started Nasaquil and got very ill! I dont 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 medications reaction. Maybe this drug shouldnt 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 running 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 producer to ensure the transition package works with many different types of vehicles. The large automobile producer 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 producer’s assistance, you anticipate 50% of cars currently on the road can potentially be retrofitted with your product. The producer 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 there may be issues with installation as a result.
The success of Sparkit relies upon an external partner, Autojor, who 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 their manufacturing operation is able to continue supporting the just-in-time environment to meet sales demands. Your contacts name at Autojor is Mateo Kalani.
You have received a customer complaint via the companys social media page. The customer is extremely dissatisfied, and the complaint has negatively impacted the companys image. The customers complaint is as follows: I bought and installed Sparkit. It doesnt work! The instructions do not match my engines layout, and now my car doesnt work at all. This was supposed to save me money, but now my car wont run. Ill have to put more money into getting it fixed. This is ridiculous. I have told all my friends, and now I am telling the worlddo not buy this product! If you do, you will regret it.
REQUIREMENTS
Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. An originality report is provided when you submit your task that can be used as a guide.
You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.
Create a portfolio of communication documents based on one of the scenarios by doing the following:
A. Compose a motivational email to internal staff that discusses two advantages and two disadvantages of the product and explain how to mitigate the disadvantages should they occur.
B. Compose an informational email to external stakeholders (i.e., investors, shareholders) that discusses two distinct organizational and/or financial impacts the product will create.
C. Compose a consumer-facing blog post that highlights three distinct benefits of the product and informs the consumers what sets this product and/or business apart from others in the industry.
D. Compose a persuasive letter to the business partner to discuss their challenges in meeting your production needs.
E. Compose responses to the customer complaint about the product that was posted on the companys social media page by doing the following:
1. Develop a public response that acknowledges the customer complaint and improves the company image within the social media page.
2. Develop a direct private message with a proposed adjustment (resolution) for the customer.
F. Evaluate the communication strategies and methods (i.e., email, letter, blog, and social media) used in items AE by doing the following:
Explain how the communication strategies support or do not support the desired outcomes and provide examples to support your conclusion.
Explain how the four communication methods effectively or ineffectively serve the target audience and provide examples to support your conclusion.
G. Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.
H. Demonstrate professional communication in the content and presentation of your submission.
