Reference no: EM132796446

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 createa 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 createthis 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 createan executive summary (of a virtual report) that addresses the following:

Directions: 

• Create a 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.

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