Report: Business Communication Challenges in Multi-National Company

This report examines the communication challenges faced by a multi-national organization operating in Oman, Australia, Nigeria, Vietnam, and India. The organization, dealing with agricultural equipment, encounters issues in social media, feedback mechanisms, and intercultural communication. The report analyzes ineffective social media practices, lack of customer feedback platforms, and intercultural communication barriers arising from diverse cultural perspectives. Recommendations include setting social media goals, using leading platforms like Facebook and YouTube, and creating consistent brand identity. To improve feedback, the report suggests implementing live chat options and dedicated feedback forms. Addressing intercultural communication issues involves conducting meetings to expose employees to different cultures, offering training on cultural norms, and facilitating role-playing exercises to mediate misunderstandings. The report aims to provide strategies for enhancing communication and fostering long-term success in the global market.

Effective Business Communication
Communication
5/3/2018

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Analysis of Current Situation.................................................................................................2
Social Media.......................................................................................................................2
Feedback............................................................................................................................3
Intercultural Communication.............................................................................................3
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................4
Recommendation....................................................................................................................4
Social Media.......................................................................................................................4
Feedback............................................................................................................................5
Intercultural communication..............................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
This report is about a multi-national organization operates in different countries such as
Oman, Australia, Nigeria, Vietnam, and India. The organization deals with production and
distribution of agriculture equipment to international as well as local clients with headquarter
in Australia. In all five countries, the company has a total of 8,000 employees and around 1
million customers' globally. However, the organization is facing various communication
challenges. The purpose of this report is to analyse the communication challenges that
company is facing. The scope of the report is limited towards developing the strategies in
order to remove the communication barriers. Outcome of the report will include
recommendations of the strategies to enhance communication within the organization. The
structure of the report will involve introduction, analysis of the communication issues in the
multi-national organization i.e. social media, feedback, and intercultural communication,
conclusion of the report and recommendations to deal with challenges.
Analysis of Current Situation
Social Media
Social media can be explained as collaborative technologies and online applications which
allow an increase conversation, creation, participation, openness, and socialization between
communities of operators (Panahi, Watson & Partridge, 2012). In order words, use of mobile
and web-based technologies to take communication into a cooperating discussion is called as
Social Media (Bredl, 2017). Making use of social media in today's scenario has to turn out to
be the most operative tools of marketing which is available to every business in the world.
However, despite the remarkable achievement social media can offer to one company, there
are some ineffective ways of using this universal tool. The Poor social media campaigns of

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multi-national organization might have irritated consumers this can result in loss of a
customer. The reason behind ineffective social media is lack of action plan, selection of the
wrong channel, using the wrong language, posting irrelevant content, not able to build social
relationships, not engaging customers in the business (Gamble, 2012).
Feedback
Feedback is explained as helpful information about the previous action from an individual,
conversed to another individual who can utilize that information to amend and enhance the
present and future actions. It happens when an environment responds to behavior or an action
(Defranzo, 2015). It is very important for a multi-national organization which is dealing in
the manufacturing of agricultural equipment’s to get the idea of customer’s viewpoints,
complaints in order to make changes and enhancement in the offerings. If the organization
will not receive quality feedback from the clients it will get demotivated which will result in
poor organization performance. Feedback is very important for continuous learning and
bringing new changes in the organization, however in multi-national-organization they are
not able to get proper feedback of the clients because they do not have proper platform to
extract information from the customers due to which they will not be able to bring new
technologies in the market and will result in their sales.
Intercultural Communication
Intercultural communication is broadly observed as being very challenging as compared to
normal communication because it happens between two or more people with widely different
views (Holliday, Kullman & Hyde, 2016). It helps in removing cultural barriers and enhances
negotiation skills. However, in intercultural communication, there are chances of
miscommunication due to a different point of view, culture, etc. as faced by the above
mentioned multi-national organization. For example- the organization involves people from
individualistic and egalitarian countries like Australia may be familiar to raising their

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unfiltered ideas and opinions, whereas people from hierarchical cultures have a habit to talk
only after their senior colleagues have stated their opinions (Toegel, 2016). This results in
miscommunications among employees.
Conclusion
In the conclusion, it can be said that above stated multi-national organization is operating in
five countries i.e. Oman, Australia, Nigeria, Vietnam, and India, need to manage effective
communication among all the offices in these countries in order to survive in the market for
long-term and earn profits. The company is dealing with three types of issues such as social
media, client feedback, and intercultural communication. Considering social media issues the
organization lacks in preparing an action plan, has selected the wrong channel of
communication, using the wrong language, posting irrelevant content, not able to build social
relationships, and not engaging customers in the business.
In terms of feedback, the company is unable to take proper feedback form its clients due to
the absence of feedback platform, the distance between the company and its clients. Besides
this, there are intercultural communication barriers in the organization, due to the presence of
different culture employees with different viewpoints.
Recommendation
Social Media
In order to improve the performance of social media platform Company needs to first set
their social media goals such as gain new clients, increase engagement, and building brand
awareness. These goals will support in setting marks that can be measured and tracked. This
will enable the organization to concentrate on winning strategies (Gregory, 2016).

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After this, it needs to eliminate irrelevant social media platform and get involved in leading
social platforms such as Facebook, and YouTube is the most valued platforms. These two
platforms have a wider range which makes it a perfect platform for the companies to target
their customers.
The final step is of creating social media profile pages. The perception of the identity of the
company must be constant in all channels. The company is not only trying to make stronger
brand but also increase loyalty and awareness. This makes easy for the consumer to classify
business. This can be done by creating a proper tagline, logo, tone, and voice, company
description, etc.
Feedback
In order to get proper and fair feedback from the clients, the organization needs to start a live
chat option on its official online website. This will support in addressing various issues. For
instance, it will support customers who are incapable to find the items they try to find, or
response to the questions about obtainability, payment, delivery, etc. Chat support can
support a company in getting closer to its client by understanding their desires and challenges
(Zajdo, 2017).
Besides this, the company can offer dedicated feedback forms on company's website, for
instance, [e-mail]. If there will be any complaints, clients can convey their issues
through this form or email. This is said to be the most operative approaches of producing
feedback. As per a survey, 54% of the customers favored this technique of interacting with
customer service.
Intercultural communication
In order to avoid miscommunications and barriers in intercultural communication
organization need to follow some of the techniques such as

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Conduct meetings in order to expose employees to other cultures
The multi-national organization needs to conduct meetings so that employees working
together should know each other better and respect each other cultures. Learning different
culture’s norms, language, norms, and rules support in getting ready for every situation when
they occur (Duggan, 2018). Altering presumptions can result in more favorable working
relationships.
Prepare workforce to mediate issues based on a cultural misunderstanding
Offer opportunities for employees to react to circumstances from perceptions which are
different from their own perception. Divide a group into pairs of two or more members in
order to conduct exercises of role-playing that enable participants to recognize the existence
of cultural difference. Motivate every pair to consider an issue they have acknowledged
currently because of differences in culture. Then allow every participant to recommend the
solution of the problem.
Perform activities to determine that everyone is dependent on language
For instance, devote one day of being silent. Have each worker develop an agreement
declaring what they expect to learn, how long they would stay silent and how they do
planning to handle without talking whole day. After undergoing one day staying silent or
with limited communication, members can naturally narrate how they feel living in a foreign
environment.

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References
Bredl, K. (2017). Methods for Analyzing Social Media. 2nd edn. U.K: Routledge.
Defranzo, S.E. (2015). 5 Reasons Why Feedback is Important. Retrieved from
https://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/5-reasons-feedback-important/
Duggan, T. (2018). How to Overcome Cross Cultural Communication in Business. Retrieved
from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/overcome-cross-cultural-communication-
business-134.html
Gamble, S. (2012). 6 Reasons Why Social Media is Ineffective. Retrieved from
https://blog.smile.io/6-reasons-social-media-ineffective
Gregory, S. (2016). 7 Effective Social Media Best Practices for Business. Retrieved from
https://freshsparks.com/social-media-best-practices-for-business/
Holliday, A., Kullman, K., & Hyde, M. (2016). Intercultural Communication: An Advanced
Resource Book for Students. 3rd edn. U.K: Taylor & Francis.
Panahi, S., Watson, J., & Partridge, H. (2012). Social Media and Tacit Knowledge Sharing:
Developing a Conceptual Model. Retrieved from
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0b20/4a58bec71fdcc7ddcdf6e6f69cabc514ca7a.pdf
Toegel, G. (2016). 3 Situations Where Cross-Cultural Communication Breaks Down.
Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/06/3-situations-where-cross-cultural-
communication-breaks-down

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Zajdo, C. (2017). 18 Very Effective Methods To Get Quality Customer Feedback. Retrieved
from https://www.optimonk.com/blog/15-ways-e-commerce-websites-get-customer-
feedback/#.WuqnAaSFPIU