For the third time in less than a week, Wanda has received a phone call from a customer who is upset that when her order arrived, it was incorrect. Wanda refunded money to all three customers in order to keep them happy. She is not sure what’s causing these errors, but she knows it has to be remedied or she will lose customers. When you meet for coffee, Wanda mentions these problems and wonders aloud what the issue is. Is the customer service staff not writing things down correctly, or is production not reading the orders correctly? Alternatively, the mistake could be in shipping with the young man who comes in after school to package and prepare orders for shipment. Salty Pawz can’t afford an automated system yet, so everyone must rely on person-to-person communication to get order details right. For Discussion Explain to Wanda common reasons why organizational communications can become ineffective and break down. Suggest specific things to watch for in her organization that can indicate poor communication skills. Make at least one specific recommendation that Wanda can implement to improve communication among Salty Pawz departments and individual employees. Now that you have improved communication at Salty Pawz, think about a time when you were on the receiving end of poor communication, such as when the message was not clear or the wrong information was conveyed. What was the consequence of this poor communication? How did you or would you keep this from happening again in the future?

Answer:

Wanda should watch out for the following things in her organization which can indicate towards poor communication:

1. Communication skills/language issues in the customer service department

2. Are there any written records maintained for each order the customer is placing in the customer service department?

3. Mode of communication adopted by all the departments (if the customer service is sending written requests for customer orders or informing them over the call)

4. Is the production department making a record of the customer order?

5. if the shipping man is rechecking the package and the details on it with the customer order details before delivery?

I would suggest Wanda to ensure that each department is maintaining a proper record of the details communicated to them at any point of time so that when a case of wrong order is highlighted, Wanda is able to find where the problem was .Also,only one person from a specific department should communicate the details to the concerned department in order to avoid errors due to multiple communications on a single order.The customer service executive should repeat the order details and recheck with the customer before sharing the same with the production team in order to save time and effort wasted on wrong orders.

I came through an incident of a wrong order being delivered to the customer when i was working as technical support executive. The customer had an issue with the power supply and wanted a man who could help with the repairing. I raised a request on his behalf and a technician reached the site within 4 hours. However, I got a call back from customer saying that he is looking for replacement as well because repairing could take a lot of time. The case got completed as he blamed us for not giving him the right product. We had to send him the replacement with fast track delivery free of cost to ensure good customer service but it was a loss for the organization.

After that case, I always tried to ensure that the customer provides the details over the mail and if not, there are proper notes on my system summarizing the customer call.