Effective Strategies for Overcoming Communication Barriers at SFE

This essay analyzes the communication barriers faced by the online retail company, 'Something For Everyone' (SFE), focusing on physical, emotional, informational, technical, and cultural barriers. The essay details how customers are unable to try clothes, experience emotional distress due to lockdowns and job losses, face confusion during online ordering, and encounter technical issues with the website. It then proposes effective strategies to overcome these barriers, including encouraging customers to buy clothes by promoting dressing up and rewarding best dressed customers, creating a seamless brand experience by improving website design, integrating advanced analytics to understand customer preferences, leveraging social commerce for customer interaction, and emphasizing the importance of cultural awareness in cross-country online services. The essay references supporting literature on cultural awareness and communication in various contexts.

Common barriers of communication of Something For
Everyone (SFE)
Physical barriers
Customers are not able to try the clothes and are getting unsure about the size of
the clothes to order online.
Emotional barriers
Due to the lockdown the customers have no reasons to buy clothes as they are not
going out for any events. The customer has lost their jobs, some are worried of
losing the job and some are working for few hours a day.
Informational barriers
The customers are confused for certain things while ordering online. The
customers think that returning will cost them money and will be complicated.
Technical barriers
The website of the company is having some issues like the bucket list of the
customers that is filled after some time as they choose and decide to buy certain
items, is getting empty after thirty minutes of shopping online. This is very
frustrating for the customers as they are looking for the specific items they want
after searching and selecting. Some of the products on the site are shown
available even if they are stocked out.
Cultural barriers
The website had the option of English only and has the limited selected styles in
the stock.

Effective strategies for overcoming communication barrier
Social commerce opportunities
The company can connect with the customers through social media where the
customers can talk about their issues that can be fixed by the company. This can
help in finding the technical barrier the customers are facing.
Creating seamless brand experience
The customers have given the best
experience by improving the website
design and making it easier for the
customers to understand.
Integrate advance analytics
The company can use the data from
various sources and analyse the
customer’s preferences, behaviours
and interest online. The cultural
differences of people can be
understood here and new styles as well
as more options can be generated
according to the need of the customers.
The company have to deal with the cross country cultures when providing
services online, if they lack in the awareness of cultural they are more likely to
make poor decisions. Cultural awareness helps the company to avoid making
the decisions by having more insightful decisions.
There are many people all around the world who shop online through the
website have different beliefs and values.
Cultural awareness will provide with approaches, decisions and thoughts that
will help in creating a positive outcome in the cross culture interactions. This
will help in the growth and development of the company.
Experiment with ideas
The company can give the customers
the reason to buy clothes like
promoting the customers to get
dressed up to stay positive or start a
task in the website where the best
dressed individual will be awarded
with something. This can increase the
interest of people in buying more
clothes.
Importance of cultural awareness
References
Acharibasam and Wynn, 2018. The importance of cultural awareness when planning and implementing telepsychiatric
services. Rural and remote health. 18(3). p.294.
Clark and et.al, 2019. Increasing diversity in clinical trials: overcoming critical barriers. Current problems in
cardiology. 44(5). pp.148-172.
Ramlan and et.al, 2018. The impact of language barrier and communication style in organizational culture on
expatriate’s working performance. Management Science Letters. 8(6). pp.659-666.