1047: 1800 words

slkdgha

firstpartexamplecommunicationplan.docx

Home >English homework help >1047: 1800 words

Intro

In this portion you can write a few sentences about the overall situation Helix is facing.

Situation Analysis

Internal Communication Weaknesses

Detail in either bullet points or paragraph form 1-2 weaknesses, or challenges facing Helix internally.

External Communication Weaknesses

Detail in either bullet points or paragraph form 1-2 weaknesses, or challenges facing Helix externally.

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholders

Attributes

What we know:

What we need to find out:

Concerns/Expectations

(What’s on their minds?)

Communication preferences

Desire impact on:

Attitudes, knowledge, behaviors

Detail your external or internal stakeholder here. Remember, if you are including a stakeholder or audience in your communication plan you should include them in this matrix as well.

What we know:

· Include anything you know from the case about the stakeholder.

What we need to find out:

· Include any questions you have that must be answered before you can create a full plan.

This section should detail the challenges that the stakeholder is facing? What issues might you come across? What are they concerned about? How can your plan support them?

What do you know from the case? How does this person like to receive information? How do they like to send it?

Note, this is *your* desired impact on the audience – how do you want your communication plan to impact the way the stakeholder feels about something? Or maybe your goal is to impact what they know?

Do you want to change a behavior?

Communications Plan

There is a growing sense of unresponsiveness by technical support that threatens relationships with current customers. Since technical support is the face of the organization to clients, the reputation of the company is only as good as the communications originating from this unit. As Garrett notes, “a great strategy is nothing without effective execution” (2011, p. 166). If Helix wants to operate as a smart organization, employees will have to focus on relationships with customers, not merely transactions.

Business Objective: Strengthen Relationships with Customers

Target Audience

Customers (both B2B and software firm partners). From our stakeholder analysis, we know that many customers have lost confidence in the company’s customer service capabilities.

Influencers

Technical support team, marketing and sales team, company leadership.

Communications Objective

Primary audience objective. Increase awareness of positive trend in customer service responsiveness. This objective focuses on the know and think purposes. Customers need to know that the entire Helix team, regardless of location, is delivering responsive and consistent technical support and be able to ‘see’ performance standards in a transparent way; they need to think that Helix is committed to delivering high‐quality customer service. In short, we want to reinforce perception that customer service standards are rapidly improving

Influencer objective: For Helix leadership, emphasize importance of customer service, for technical support, marketing, and sales teams, increase flow of communication within and across teams and deepen understanding of customer service metrics.

Communications Tactic/Activity  Helix employees will develop a Customer Service Scorecard campaign that captures the critical indicators of customer service and leverages the Commitment and Consistency principle of persuasion. We want the employees to ‘own’ this scorecard. As Cialdini (2011) notes, “identify something that the employee genuinely value in the workplace – high‐quality workmanship, perhaps, or team spirit – and then describe how timely reports are consistent with those values. That gives the employee reasons for improvement that he can own” (p. 77).

A cross‐functional team of employees from several different Helix locations will identify these indicators, such as response times in resolving customer issues. This design team will also gather input from a cross‐ section of Helix’s best customers, including global accounts. The final Customer Service Scorecard will be updated weekly and will be shared with all customers and all Helix employees; as Graf (as cited in Argenti, et. Al, 2005), argues, “Communication has to be able to talk to people inside and outside the company,” (p. 87). The focus of this communication activity is to support the communication objective of increasing awareness of the positive trend in technical support.

Communications Channels and Media

The Customer Service Scorecard will be located on the company’s intranet, so that employees will have 24/7 access to the latest trends in customer service and technical support indicators. The Scorecard will also be available to customers on a ‘secure’ section of the Helix public website. Helix senior management team members will launch the campaign by reviewing the Customer Service Scorecard with key customers via videoconferences. The cross‐functional design team will touch base with every Helix customer over the next 90 days to discuss the Scorecard. Helix managers in all locations will review the Scorecard at weekly staff meetings on an ongoing basis.

Success Indicators

We will know after 90 days that the Customer Service Scorecard campaign is working by monitoring the following:

· 80% of customers and 90% of employees view the Scorecard on a weekly basis.  

· 100% of Helix managers incorporate the Scorecard briefing in their staff meetings.  

· Higher level of customer and employee awareness of Helix’s commitment to high standards oftechnical support – we can deploy regular surveys to measure awareness.  

· Positive feedback from customers about greater transparency in reporting performance based  on verbal exchanges and periodic surveys.  