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 an executive summary (of a virtual report) that addresses the following: