Effective Business Communication Assignment (PDF)

Running head: EFFECTIVE BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Effective Business Communication
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction:................................................................................................................................3
1.1 Describe the organization......................................................................................................3
1.2 Identify the purpose of the report..........................................................................................3
1.3 Detail the scope/boundaries of the report—what is covered what is not..............................4
1.4 Describe the report outcome..................................................................................................4
1.5 Preview the structure of the report.........................................................................................4
2. Analysis of the current situation (literature review of the three presenting issues):...................5
2.1 Issue one—social media........................................................................................................5
2.2 Issue two—feedback..............................................................................................................8
2.3 Issue three—Intercultural communication..........................................................................10
3. Conclusion:................................................................................................................................12
4. Recommendations: (300 words)................................................................................................13
4.1 Issue one—social media......................................................................................................13
4.2 Issue two—feedback............................................................................................................14
4.3 Issue three--Intercultural Communication...........................................................................14
References......................................................................................................................................15

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1. Introduction:
1.1 Describe the organization
This study is based on an understanding of effective business communication in reference
to the case study organization. The case study organization has been highlighted in this study as
struggling to maintain an effective communication within and outside of the organization. The
topic is chosen because communication is of utmost value in business and is a solution to many
issues that could arise, if there is an absence of the effective practices of communication. The
case study organization is an Australian based multinational company that is specialized in
manufacturing or preparing the agricultural equipments. Their customers are in both domestic
and the international markets. Some of its international markets include India, Vietnam, Nigeria
and Oman. The overall number of employees comprising of both domestic and international
business branches is equal to 8,000 as stated in the given case study. The number of customers is
close to 1 million. However, in recent times the company seemed to have struggled to maintain
the effective communication practices at the variety of channels with the types of stakeholders.
The business has struggled to correlate its activities with customers on the types of media sites
like blogs, wikis, and social networks. This has hampered the sharing of knowledge, effective
management of knowledge base and so. The communication had hampered to the extent that it
also failed to receive the feedback of clients on the quality of service and any further
improvement. The interrelationship between the internal stakeholders had also suffered due to
the ineffective practices of intercultural communication. It has created an environment where
organization people have lost the trust and also misunderstand each other.
1.2 Identify the purpose of the report

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It is quite evident from above discussion that the report is purposefully aimed at
describing the severity of ineffective business communication and also recommending a few of
solutions to the case study company to enable it to overcome the identified issue.
1.3 Detail the scope/boundaries of the report—what is covered what is not
The report is strictly confined to understand the significance of effective business
communication with the help of valuable articles. The study is in the reference of the case study
company. It covers the three different problems which are the consequences of one identified
issue the ineffective business communication. The three issues are as follows:
 Ineffective use of social media has hampered the sharing of ideas, building the bases of
knowledge and management of queries
 The ineffective use of communication has hampered the quality of feedback from
customers which has affected the service delivery and the quality of product
 There have been the development of misunderstanding and lack of trust due to the
presence of intercultural communication issues comprising of variety of kinds
Hence, the report is strictly limited just to the highlighted three issues as above.
1.4 Describe the report outcome
The probable outcomes of the report are the level of severity that an ineffective use of
business communication can cause to an organization and also the relevant solutions to mitigate
the issues.
1.5 Preview the structure of the report

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The report consists of the details on the identified issue in the context of the case study
company. It constructs a literature review section to establish an understanding regarding the
level of severity of using an ineffective business communication. It also put forward some
necessary countering solution to the issues in the form of recommendations.
2. Analysis of the current situation (literature review of the three presenting issues):
2.1 Issue one—social media
Social media sites are now a very good resource to be in constant communication with a
wider audience who may or may not be the customers. This is also a very good resource to share
some important happenings, so that, customers are informed on the activities. This helps to
deepen the bonding of trust between customers and the employers. The trust deepens because
customer feels valued by knowing that employers are in constant concern for their audience. If
contents are valuable and profitable also from the customer’s perspectives, they will have
positive perceptions for employers. The level of trust increases and also the chances of
misunderstanding get diminished (Jin, Liu & Austin, 2014). This is exactly what the problem is
with the case study organization. The case company has an ineffective presence on the social
media sites and it is also troublesome for the business profitability that can be understood when
looked on the benefits of being active on the social media sites. The benefits of effective
communication on the social media sites are as listed the below:
Brand Awareness: Social networking will uncover the organization or administration to
new eyes. With just a single tick the message is appeared to the huge number of individuals.
Online networking can enable the company to discover customers. It can discover customers and
help to reach to much more individuals. This means that brand awareness is created and

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thousands of customers using the product but not aware of the brand initially, gets to know the
brand (Hassan, Nadzim & Shiratuddin, 2015). The satisfied customers get to know the brand
which provides them the quality product or service. The trust which customers already had on
product or service gets converted into brand recognition. The business without social media
usage may not have provided the platform which the social media creates. The number of
audience that social media helps to reach to, is not realistic, if communication on social media
sites is not effective (Cornelissen & Cornelissen, 2017).
Know the target audience: Social media gives a bit of knowledge into what the gathering
of people does the employer has. Becoming more acquainted with the gathering of people that
one have, can enable to find innovative approaches to contact them through promoting or
substance. Catering and focusing to this degree will prompt expanded conversions (Cardon &
Marshall, 2015). This means the social media sites are a good resource to know or identify the
audience. The concept which the social sites follow is very much similar to interacting to
customers by physical meets. In the physical meets, customers exchange their views on the
products or services which may be either positive or negative. Few of them are also indulged in
open discussion for quite a second. Social media sites do provide the very similar concept but,
differs in its way of interaction with customers. The business just requires an exchange of words
through social media sites. Moreover, it generates a number of important comments which are
valuable irrespective of the types of comments. If comments are negative, the requirement for
‘need analysis’ will be created. This means finding the areas for improvement (Ellison et al.,
2014). Hence, an exchange of communication between employers and the audience generates
valuable facts that are difficult to analyze without it. Such data will also help in reaching to a
wider audience with much better product features and the service quality (Agnihotri et al., 2016).

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Relevant offers: Effective communication with customers on the social media sites
generates valuable data as well. Such data can be used to analyze the strong areas or the areas to
improve. Moreover, it generates the valuable data which employers can use to make few changes
to the existing products and also bringing the relevant products in future (Law, Buhalis &
Cobanoglu, 2014). For example, customers have complained of poor camera quality from a
Smartphone brand. Few of the customers may also have mentioned about where the phone has
gone wrong. Such comments if genuine can be utilized to consider in future products. Hence,
customer will also understand that their complaints are being taken care seriously. Such thing
can help in building up a brand image provided, that the escalated facts are removed from the
product (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014).
New opportunities: Social media sites as stated earlier are a good resource to interacting
to customers. Such interaction helps to know a bit of the customer views on a particular product
or service. If a product or a service receives the negative views this actually creates the
opportunities for employers. Employers get to know the areas which the customers have disliked.
Such information or data could not have been attained if social interactions were not there
(Chaudhri, 2016). The negative comments can be resolved in future by working on it effectively.
However, to get such data from the different corners of world is impossible without the
utilization of social sites. The modern day business depends a lot on data as it helps to construct
the strategies. This is why employers give honest attention to getting data from reliable resource,
so that, competency level is increased (Öztamur & Karakadılar, 2014).
Customer service: The discussions that have been covered so far do establish a few facts
like social interaction with customers produce the valuable data. Such data can be used for future
reference for bringing the necessary amendments in the products. The data can also be used to

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improve the marketing activities by making it much more realistic. Nonetheless, customers trust
on advertisements that appears realistic to customers (Ashley & Tuten, 2015).
2.2 Issue two—feedback
Feedback is very important to maintain a learning organizational progress and to remain
competitive (Dijkmans, Kerkhof & Beukeboom, 2015). It is quite easier to get the feedback from
employees in one single branch of the company; however, it is bit challenging to get it from
every single branch. It is even more challenging to get the feedback from customers. The social
media sites do not just allow getting the feedback from customers but, also the wider audience
that may not be the consumers of a particular product or service. Hence, it provides the
opportunities where customers and the audience can actually engage with their chosen brand and
exchange a few of views (Leung, Bai & Stahura, 2015). Customer can share their delights or the
frustration for a product. Employers can involve in further communication to know in details the
actual issue. In this way, useful data is generated which is of huge importance for a sustainable
business practice/
Feedback is one of the most necessary steps to complete communication, on the other
hand communication is very important to establish a proper business practice that would be
successful in making proper consumer engagement. Communication in itself is a dynamic
process which should be two way in order to make the communication process complete (Park,
Wilding & Chung, 2014). Apart from that the communication process must be measurable
according to its effectiveness. The measuring of communication process will happen when there
is feedback from the side of the listener of the communication. In business it is necessary for a
company to measure the effectiveness of the communication to understand whether the

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communication strategy that is followed is bringing proper return on investment or not. Feedback
also helps in understanding the view of the customers and hence giving better understanding of
the needs and requirements of the market. The message can be transmitted using various media.
It is important to decide what media is to be used in a particular circumstance in order to make
the message go through. Improper media is not effective as the audience reach is not proper
(Baker et al., 2013). A business has a target audience who are its potential customers and the
media used must be reaching the target audience in order to be effective. Feedback is the process
of not only sending the information across but also receiving important information that is
constructive for the business. This will make the base on which the business is constructed.
Customer feedback helps the company to formulate business policies based on market demand.
According to Ordenes et al. (2014) the measuring of customer feedback is a challenging
job. The customer feedbacks collected through various mediums are causing too much
complexities because of the presence of voluminous textual data. The authors have expressed
that that text mining is effective in solving such problem and searching for meaning in the hugfe
textual feedback data that is received from various sources. Radojevic, Stanisic & Stanic (2015)
has stated that in case of the hospitality industry customer feedback has emphatically stated that
the positive effects on customer feedback depends on the services given by the hospitality
organization. Therefore customer feedback and service is dependent on each other and vice
versa. Better service increases the positive customer feed and positive customer feedback
increases the service quality when the organization brings changes according to the customer
feedback. For business policy formulators it is important to understand what is the need of the
customers and how do they want to receive service. Oelke et al, (2009) has given a clear picture
about how to put customer feedback into perspective and visualize the same in a meaningful

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pattern. There are techniques to understand the viability of feedback and how it gives rise to
positive feeling among the customers. In this case the company might use such techniques from
professional resources that will give rise to the better management of customer feedback and will
help in producing more business. Sashi, (2012) has given a model through which customer
engagement and retention is possible through the process of “connection, interaction,
satisfaction, retention, loyalty, advocacy, and engagement as stages in the cycle”.
2.3 Issue three—Intercultural communication
Various regions of the world are more connected than ever before in today’s times. This
has mainly happened due to the technological revolution in the field of communication and
transportation. The concept of global village thus evolved stating the idea, that though the world
is separated by huge distances, but technology has brought everyone closer like that in a single
village (Piller, 2017). . In large companies across the world there are people from all around the
globe working together. The cultural differences sometimes give rise to complications within the
companies as the understanding about various management issues is different across culture
(Samovar et al., 2014). This can be understood by analyzing the Hofstede model (Saleem &
Larimo, 2017). Teams of different people having different language backgrounds, religious
beliefs, values, customs, working habits, and lifestyle work together in the same workplace, this
is bound to create some differences. However if intercultural communication be established
properly among the employees and with the customers, there is a vast potential of tapping
business from areas which are not explored as of yet by the company (House, 2014). The
corporate diversity policies and programs has been implemented by the companies keeping the

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potential of diversity as the focus. Intercultural communication not only takes place within the
organization but it also takes place beyond the organization, with the customers or vendors
(Sorrells, 2015).
The big organizations have presence in a number of countries including those which are
culturally diverse than the home country of the company. This creates the need for the company
to adopt the culture of the host country. Otherwise it would be difficult for the company to
successfully run business in the new scenario. Apple Inc. has its headquarters in USA, the source
of its parts and peripherals is from China, and its stores and offices are present in all the major
countries of the world. Therefore the company requires to maintain great intercultural
communication both within the company and beyond the company. These companies have to
maintain a culturally diversified employee base in order to understand the need of the diversified
customer base all over the world. Any company must adopt to the indigenous culture of a
country in order to cater to the need of the customer in that particular region.
According to Chen (2012) development of new media is one of the main reasons behind
the growth of globalization and intercultural communication. This is the reason that many new
scholars are now involved in the process of investigating relationship between intercultural
communication and new media. The areas where investigation is carried on in this regard are
“(1) the impact of national/ethnic culture on the development of new media, (2) the impact of
new media on cultural/social identity, and (3) the impact of new media (especially social media)
on different aspects of intercultural communication (e.g., intercultural relationships, intercultural
adaptation, and intercultural conflict)” (Chen, 2012). According to Hua, (2013) cultural identity
is a very complex term to understand and define. It has various layers to- understand and the
meaning has multiple implications in this regard. Therefore the human resource of a company is

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a very complicated system. Establishing effective intercultural communication would
automatically help the company in utilizing the best from its employees in terms of cultural
innovation. According to Washington, Okoro & Thomas, (2012) the countries across the globe
are becoming interdependent on each other in terms of business and financial activities.
Therefore it is the need of the hour to establish a better understanding among the countries about
each other’s culture in terms of financial and non-financial aspects. The globalized world is a
playground for the business entities to play and utilize the effects of globalization to the fullest.
“Therefore, businesses from different countries need to appreciate the importance of
understanding the cultures and values of their counterparts as well as develop intercultural
communication sensitivity and decorum.” (Okoro & Thomas, 2012). Intercultural
communication policy should be separately formulated in order to keep it clear how any
challenges on the way can be dealt. There are challenges like personal discrimination and bias
among the employees, less knowledge about culture of each other and ignorance of establishing
intercultural communication from employee’s side. These challenges must be dealt with in order
to establish effective intercultural communication.
3. Conclusion:
Therefore it can be concluded that effective communication is very important for a
business to successfully incur revenue and give the much needed stability to the business.
Business communication has several categories to look into, three very important of which are
social media communication, feedback from the consumers, and intercultural communication. As
it can be understood well from the above discussion that social media is the most important tool

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in today’s digital world to expand and publicize the business. All kinds of target customers are
users of social media hence it is necessary to reach these people. Secondly from social media and
other platforms it is necessary to retrieve feedback so that the needs and views of the customers
can be understood in real-time. Without customer feedback it is not possible for a company to
understand where it is going wrong and what changes are necessary. The last important aspect of
business communication is intercultural communication among various members and
stakeholders of the company. This may include the customers or the employees of the
organization. The company in question must take into consideration all these aspects about
business communication and establish a better business. The countries in which the company
operates are culturally diverse hence the communication must be targeted and customized
according to the target country. The recommendations will further provide some insights about
bringing the needed changes in the communication strategy of the company and improve its
performance.
4. Recommendations: (300 words)
4.1 Issue one—social media
The company operates in countries like “Australia, Vietnam, India, Oman, and Nigeria”.
This makes the target population highly diversified. The target is also the population who are
engaged in agricultural activities. In Australia the people who are engaged in agricultural
activities use social media in high rate, in India that rate is lower and in Nigeria the lowest.
Therefore The Company must formulate a social media strategy that will include the regions
where social media usage is high and people related to agriculture often use these sites. The

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social media campaign can be designed after proper research about the market and social media
usage in these countries.
4.2 Issue two—feedback
Customer feedback can be received through social media, company website, through the
sellers of the equipment’s, and through direct contact means such as phone calls, emails, and
letters. Apart from that the company can also use surveys and census to understand the need and
requirements of the customers. The feedbacks should be handled by a separate team of people
that may be called the customer feedback cell. This will categories the customer requirements in
tables and charts and they must be divided according to their importance, the requirements can
be solved according to their importance. Feedback must be given the highest priority in customer
service.
4.3 Issue three--Intercultural Communication
As mentioned, inter cultural communication is important both in case of customer
retention and in employee retention. This company operates in countries which have very diverse
population. The faith, customs, traditions, religious beliefs, lifestyle and culture in all these
countries are radically different. The company needs to incorporate people from these all areas
into its workforce in order to understand the need of the customers in all these regions. The
diversified work force will make cultural innovations that will give rise to a business model that
will cater to a diverse customer base. There must be a substantial intercultural policy within the
company in order to deal with the challenges that the company might face in this regard.

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