Business comm: communication productivity analysis assignment - Essay Example

The Analysis of Communication Productivity at Royal Philips Electronics Introduction This present essay revolves around business communication and its main area of focus is communication productivity analysis. The main objectives of the study are to apply the principles of productive information management and identify ways of increasing communication effectiveness in the case study. This study will apply the use of a case study for the analysis purpose. The case study that will be used arises from an interview carried out with a customer care representative of Royal Philips Electronics who works at the company’s distribution department.

The tasks of the customer care representative who was interviewed, involves handling customers’ queries regarding their order process and delivery status, assisting field distributors in case they meet encounter hurdles in making correct deliveries, and connecting filed distributors with the logistics manager. Using this case study, I will analyze how the customer care representative controls incoming information flow and how she manages communication events. 2. Controlling of incoming information flow The customer care representative mainly deals with three different parties who include the customers, field distributors, and the logistics manger.

For customers and field distributors they are the ones who usually make the first contact through telephone conversation whereby they ask the customer care representative different queries. For example, customers usually call the customer care representative to ask when they are likely to receive the goods they ordered from the company or the status of their order processing. Filed distributors usually call to ask for clarification in case the delivery instructions do not match correctly. The customer care representative usually controls incoming information flow by answering one call at time regardless of whether it is the customers or the field distributors.

This therefore, means that she is only able to help one person at a time while the next caller on the line waits. The technique of controlling incoming information flow has great deficiencies in that the customer care representative can at times not be useful during emergencies especially with field distributors, since she only handles one call at a time. Secondly, the technique offers a poor quality of service because of poor response time from the customer care representative who is unable to answer more than one call.

According to (D’Aprix, 4), in order for communication to be more productive in the distribution department, the customer care representative has to establish priorities and in this regard, the queries from field distributor should be given more priority than customers’ queries. Therefore, phone call conversations should only be reserved for field distributors while customers should send their queries through e-mails. This recommendation conforms to the writings by (D’Aprix, 17) whereby it is suggested that the number of low value interactions or communications should be reduced, and customers’ communication are low value when compared to field distributor’s communication.

Secondly,(D’Aprix, 5), stated that it is beneficial to keep a regular schedule for productive communication, and in this regard, the customer care representative should create a schedule that allows her to respond to customers’ e-mails after every three hours whilst keeping the rest of the schedule free to answer phone calls from field operators. 3. Managing communication event The customer care representative usually manages the communication event by checking on the order process or delivery status from the company’s system and then relaying the information to the customer.

As for field distributor, they also check for delivery instructions from the system and then clarify to them while they are on the field. However, when it is hard to clarify from the system, the customer care representative usually connect the field distributor with the logistics manager who can offer further assistance. This technique has deficiency in the part of managing communication events with the customers because the information they usually require is easily obtainable from the system and hence it is not necessary for customers to jam up the telephone lines.

In regards to this deficiency, (D’Aprix, 20) stated that productive communication can be achieved by appropriate use of technology, by enabling customers to get their response directly from the company’s system or database. This can be achieved by setting customers’ e-mail query and format in a manner that is able to pick order status and delivery information for their goods directly from the company’s database without having to go through the customer care representative. 4. Conclusion This essay has established that presently the techniques used by the customer care representative of Royal Philips Electronics in controlling incoming information flow and managing communication events have certain deficiencies that lower the quality of service within the logistics department.

However, to make communication productive within the department the writings by (D’Aprix, 1-30), suggest that the customer care representative should prioritize conversations, maintain a regular schedule for handling communication, and set automatic replies for the common customers’ queries. Work Cited D’Aprix, Rogers. Communication for Productivity. New York: Harper & Row. 1982 Print