Woolworths & Dreamworld: A Business Communication Case Study Report

This report examines the business communication strategies of Woolworths and Dreamworld, highlighting the effectiveness of Woolworths' cloud contact center in managing customer relationships and contrasting it with Dreamworld's communication failures during a crisis. Woolworths' proactive use of a cloud contact center, integrating voice calls, social media, and email, facilitated direct and efficient communication, enhancing customer experience and employee empowerment. Conversely, Dreamworld's indirect communication, particularly their delayed social media response and reliance on press conferences after a tragic incident, negatively impacted their public relations and brand image. The report concludes that Woolworths' direct communication approach fostered business growth, while Dreamworld's poor communication damaged customer loyalty and overall business performance. The analysis underscores the critical role of effective communication in managing stakeholder relationships and maintaining a positive brand reputation.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Professional Business Communication
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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Executive Summary
This present report deals with the professional business communication in the context of
Woolworths and Dreamworld. These two businesses are popular in Australia. However, the
communication process of Woolworths was effective as they had used cloud contact centre to
manage the customer relationship. On the other hand, Dreamworld failed to manage the direct
communication with the public via the voice call and email. They tried to use social media
application, however; due to late response, this was not successful. Hence, the cloud contact
center enhanced the business of Woolworths while the poor communication process damaged the
brand value of Dreamworld.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Description of the businesses...........................................................................................................4
Comparison of each communication in the context of Dreamworld and Woolworths...................5
Types of communication that worked and which did not work......................................................6
Impact of the communication on these two businesses...................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Professional business communication is an integral part of any business, which includes
verbal, non-verbal, digital and visual communication processes in the context of the workplace
(Fearn-Banks, 2016). Technical communication is a big part of the professional communication.
In the modern era, the communication is changing rapidly. A wider variety of skills are
associated with the professional communication. The main aim of the professional
communication in an organization is to establish the stakeholder's relationship in an organization.
Effective communication in an organization can enhance the growth as well as improve the
brand image of an organization while poor communication affects the reputation of an
organization. This study deals with the poor and effective communication process in the context
of Dreamworld and Woolworths.
Description of the businesses
Woolworths is one of the major Australian supermarkets and most popular for its grocery
items. Apart from the grocery items, this organization includes household products, health
products, and beauty products (Woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2018). This company focuses on the
development of the customer-centric business by using effective communication. However, this
organization has a large number of suppliers, clients, and customers. Thus, the establishment of
an effective communication is crucial for such organization to build a good relationship between
the internal and external stakeholders. The traditional communication process of Woolworths
includes the telephonic conversation while their new communication process is the establishment
of cloud contact centre, which is an internet-based communication system.

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Dreamworld is a popular theme park in Australia, which is situated on the Gold Coast in
Queensland. This park consists of Zoo. This land has a vast collection of animal exhibits, show,
rides, and food shop (Dreamworld.com.au, 2018). One of the major disasters of Dreamworld is
the death of the people during the visit of such park. Two women and two men were killed on the
Thunder river rapid ride in this park. However, such organization was not able to establish an
effective communication with the family of the died people. However, Dreamworld focuses on
the social media application to establish a good customer relationship but in this particular
situation, they failed to communicate with the stakeholders.
Comparison of each communication in the context of Dreamworld and Woolworths
Woolworths focuses both verbal and non-verbal communication process in their business
to provide an excellent customer service. One of the major challenges that Woolworths has been
faced is the high cost of different telephony platforms. However, different agents of Woolworths
are present in different countries then it was difficult for them to link each agent and make an
effective customer service through different telephony platforms. In order to reduce such
problem, they have established a single contact centre by the implementation of cloud contact
centre platform (Woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2018). Cloud contact centre is referred to the
central point of an organization. This is based on the internet server through which the entire
inbound and outbound customer communications are managed (Jasper, VanVleet & Hushka,
2015). Voice call, social media application and email are the major components of the cloud
communication centre. This clod contact centre helps Woolworths to blend the brand and the
agents and the executives do not require to swap between the chat vice and email to display the
customer information. However, this professional communication system was crucial for
Woolworths to rectify their problem.

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The death of the people during the riding in Dreamworld was a big incident, which affects the
organization. However, the communication between the staffs and the supervisor is not good in
this organization and many staffs, as well as the customers, are treated badly. They feel
uncomfortable while acquiring the service. During this incident, Dreamworld was failed to
manage the public relationship or PR due to their poor communication strategy (Abc.net.au,
2018). They have used the indirect communication with the family members of died people
through the press conference and the social media sites. They did not make any direct
communication with them. In the recent years, the social media is a popular aspect to build a
good public relation in the context of any organization (Breakenridge, 2017). However,
Dreamworld has given a sub-standard communication response to the family members of died
people. They have shown response via social media by taking 3 hours while it could be done
within 30 minutes.
As per the analysis of the business communication in the context of Woolworths and
Dreamworld it has been received that Woolworths has taken direct communication process to
satisfy their stakeholders. On the other hand, Dreamworld has taken indirect communication
process, which was not effective to reduce their current problem. Direct communication by using
a single contact centre Woolworths was able to reduce the communication gap between the
internal and the stakeholders while indirect communication and late response via social media
affected the image of Dreamworld.
Types of communication that worked and which did not work
Direct communication works quickly in comparison to the indirect communication
(Passera, Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen, 2017). However, in order to get a quick response,

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it is crucial for all organizations to make a direct communication with their external and internal
stakeholders as this helps to collect the feedback from the stakeholders. In the context of
Woolworths that have faced the issue due to different telephony platforms. This creates huge
cost and makes the communication process complicated. Hence, Woolworths has applied a
single centreed communication by using the cloud contact centre platform. This consists of social
media, email and voice call, which are used to make a direct communication with the
stakeholders. This direct communication process via cloud contact centre has worked properly in
the context of Woolworths. On the other hand, Dreamworld gave their focus on the press
conference to deliver their message to the victim’s family. This highlights the indirect
communication process in the business. On the other hand, they used the social media to
communicate with the stakeholders, however; the response was not received quickly as they had
taken more time to show the response. Thus, their direct communication did not work in this
situation.
Hence, this was a major drawback of Dreamworld in their professional business
communication process. However, they had used both direct and indirect communication
approaches but these did not work properly. It is important for a business to assist the
stakeholders those are affected by the business (Ulmer, Sellnow & Seeger, 2017). For this
purpose, proper business communication is required. Woolworths was successful by the
application of the cloud centre approach as it allows the agents to display the full history of the
customers without making any swap between the email, voice and chat system. On the other
hand, for Dreamworld they did not utilize the direct communication via using the social media
due to their late response. Therefore, they had used a press conference to communicate with the
victim's family but this failed to provide the satisfactory result, as the victim's family wanted

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direct communication. As a result, Dreamworld failed to manage the public relationship in their
business by using both direct and indirect communication.
Impact of the communication on these two businesses
Business communication is a process to share the vision, mission, and objectives of a
business with the stakeholders. Therefore, another aim of the professional business
communication is to provide assistance to the stakeholders to give them any solution regarding
the service (Patterson, 2016). In the context of business, their cloud contact center enhanced their
business as they are able to reduce the high cost of the different telephony platforms. Therefore,
cloud contact has provided a better customer experience and the employee empowerment. On the
other hand, agent efficiency is optimized by the cloud contact centre in the business of
Woolworths. Therefore, cloud contact centre is associated with the improvement of the
flexibility and scalability. However, it is not possible for a business to communicate with the
customers within proper time without having any functional contact centre (Fearn-Banks, 2016).
Hence, cloud contact centre provides Woolworths a dynamic communication with their
customers as well as it improves the customer-relationship by using mail, voice call, and social
media application.
It is important for an organization to utilize their communication technique by using it
properly (McChesney, 2015). In the context of Dreamworld, they failed to communicate with the
stakeholders as well as the victim's family. However, they did not use the direct call or direct
communication with the victim's family, which had left a negative impact on their public
relationship management. Their brand image has affected due to their poor communication. On
the other hand, customer loyalty has broken in the context of this business. They have delivered

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their messages via press conference, which affected the trust of the consumers. As a result, this
organization failed to manage the customer relationship in their business. Such poor
communication damaged the business of Dreamworld.
Conclusion
The entire piece of work highlights the effective communication process in the context of
Woolworths and poor business communication in the context of Dreamworld. However,
application of the cloud contact centre was an effective approach of such organization to enhance
the customer relationship in their business. On the other hand, Dreamworld failed to manage the
public relationship as they were not able to make a direct communication with the public. This
affects their brand image as well business growth. On the other hand, Woolworths got a
successful business growth by satisfying their customers and by providing empowerment to th
employees through cloud contact centre.

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References
Abc.net.au. (2018). Lessons in how not to handle a crisis Retrieved 12 February 2018, from
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4566666.htm
Jasper, J., VanVleet, J. A., & Hushka, N. J. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 9,137,368. Washington, DC:
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office..
Breakenridge, D. (2017). Answers for Modern Communicators: A Guide to Effective Business
Communication. Routledge.
Passera, S., Kankaanranta, A., & Louhiala-Salminen, L. (2017). Diagrams in contracts: Fostering
understanding in global business communication. IEEE Transactions on Professional
Communication, 60(2), 118-146.
Ulmer, R. R., Sellnow, T. L., & Seeger, M. W. (2017). Effective crisis communication: Moving
from crisis to opportunity. Sage Publications.
McChesney, R. W. (2015). Rich media, poor democracy: Communication politics in dubious
times. New Press.
Patterson, P. (2016). Retrospective: tracking the impact of communications effectiveness on
client satisfaction, trust and loyalty in professional services. Journal of Services
Marketing, 30(5), 485-489.
Fearn-Banks, K. (2016). Crisis communications: A casebook approach. Routledge.

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Woolworthsgroup.com.au. (2018). Woolworthsgroup. Retrieved 12 February 2018, from
http://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au
Dreamworld.com.au. (2018). Dreamworld. Retrieved 12 February 2018, from
https://www.dreamworld.com.au/