Question

16. Your company has sold 80 ready-to-assemble bookcases to customers. You have noticed some disgruntled customers discussing this bookcase on Facebook and Twitter, but they did not mention a specific problem. For two weeks you have been closely monitoring these complaints and finally a customer gives the details you need. This customer says that the instructions for putting the bookcase together were not in the box.
After a trip to the warehouse, you confirm that this is a problem and stop all boxes from going out. You have instruction sheets printed and have them placed in a sealed, marked plastic envelope on the outside of the boxes, before resuming shipments.
Customer service pulls the contact information for all the orders shipped without instructions. How would you handle your response to customers? What would you say?

17. As the sales manager, you have eight sales associates and one administrative assistant working for you. You have asked your assistant to make the arrangements for you and your sales group to attend a trade show. The day before the event, one of your sales associates becomes ill and will not be able to attend.  
Your assistant asks if he may go with you. Instead of giving an immediate answer, you ask for time to consider his request. Having everyone out of the office at once is not an option. Who will take any sales calls that may come in? Your department's phones must be covered while you are all away. You have decided not to approve his request.

How do you reject a request? What should you say? What type of buffer can you use to soften the blow of the rejection?

19. Now that you have completed your PowerPoint slides and your presentation, is there anything that you would have done differently? Would you have chosen a different way to design your presentation slides? What advice would you give others trying to do a presentation?

20. Take a look at the variables of group communication: conflict, conformity, and consensus. Is there such a thing as healthy conflict? When is conflict in a team good, and how should a team avoid personal conflict?

Answer 1

16. In a situation where a customer feedback helps to Resolve the issue and avoid a large scale mishap, it is a better decision for the management to reach out to the other previous customers who suffered due to the lack of manual instructions for the bookcase. To this end, the list of customers’ contact information would be used to contact them and writing a formal apology along with offering them a solution to alleviate their grievance. For instance, the customers can be given the following message:

“ I’m really sorry, [their name]. We made a mistake by not enclosing the instructions for assembling the bookcase in the product kit. Please be assured that our packaging team is taking measures to fix it immediately, and it may take up to [number] days/hours to fully resolve. We appreciate the trust which you, our customer place in our service and we assure you that we will stand up to our commitment to delivering you quality products. We are sending you an original copy of the instructions manual along with a warranty card against the product that you purchased. We value your feedback to help us ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Management

XYZ”

Such a message offers a constructive resolution of the initial complaint and also helps control the customers’ grievance by Framing an apology from the organisation in a clear language.