Camelbak Report

BUSINESS COMMUNICATION-I

Table of Contents

Page

|Background |1 |
|Company Information |2 |
|Product Features and Functions |3 |
|Product Tagline |4 |
|Pricing and Business Communication strategy |5 |
|Analysis of several business communication problems |6 – 14 |
|Overall analysis of product and company |15 |
|Conclusion and recommendation |16 |
|References |17 |
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Background

You all work in a multi-national company which has several manufacturing operations located in Mexico, India, Brazil, and China. Your department (group) is in charge of your company’s business communications activities (marketing) and the current staff consists of around 10 employees. Business Communications Manager (group leader) has key responsibilities to make sure that the right types of business communication activities have been selected to communicate with business partners and target customers in mentioned countries. Your department’s success (group’s success) hugely depends on all of you working cohesively as a team. Therefore, finishing the project on time and getting a good grade on your project can be easily achieved if you as a team determine the appropriate roles and responsibilities for each group member and dividing the workload accordingly.

You need to use your imagination and think that this hypothetical situation take place in a real-world company and your department (group) is extremely important in the success of the corporation. As it would be true in the real world scenario, you are supposed to deal with any obstacles or problems in your group in a positive way and work together as a team to come up with acceptable and workable solutions. Remember this; companies in their communication with customers always try to build a favorable relationship. However, I am always here to assist you in any situation where your group tries the hardest but nonetheless fails to resolve an issue.

Real world companies’ business communications tend to be very complex and sometimes they can be very difficult to determine what type of products consumers actually want and need. For the sake of this project and easiness to evaluate, we’ll try to keep it relatively simple.

Your group is expected to do the following:

Analyze the situation(s) in the cases
Identify the problem(s)
Explain business communication issues covered in lectures
Discuss among your group members
And come up with best solution(s) to resolve the issues in the case
Provide recommendations what could or should have been done differently

Company Information

CamelBak is an outdoor products company based in Petaluma, California, well known for its hydration product such as hydration pack and bottle. Besides that, CamelBak is also a supplier of hydration pack, protective gear and others product to US Military and low enforcement agency around the world.

CamelBak is an idea born from the human basic need which is thirst. In 1988, Bicycle enthusiast, Michael Eidson, is competing in a 100-mile road race "Hotter 'N Hell 100" at Wichita Falls, Texas. Water is fundamentals to surviving the race and there are few places to refill a water bottle. Eidson decides to fill an IV bag with water and slip it into a white tube sock. Then he stuffs the appliance into the back of his bike jersey, throws the thin hose over his shoulder and clamps it with a clothespin. Hands-free hydration is born and Eidson is able to drink as he pedals. Jeff Wemmer, a competitive cyclist was so impressed by the product that he started bringing packs to races to sell them. CamelBak eventually hired him.

CamelBak figures out the best way to reduce waste is to create products that last. So the company 's products are meant to be used over and over and over again- standing up to rigorous use before they are eventually recycled or repurposed. Their Petaluma, California headquarters is built to LEED-certification Standards. CamelBak Company’s sourcing team works hard to find and develop materials that are more sustainable and biodegradable. Their bottles are all dishwasher safe which half the energy, one-sixth of the water and less soap vs. hand-washing.

CamelBak is recognized as one of the "Best Places to Work" by Outside Magazine. Employees enjoy a casual, active lifestyle when off the clock; they promote a casual, supportive, team-oriented work environment while on the job. Their recruitment process is coordinated by the Human Resources team. CamelBak Products, LLC is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, national origin, gender, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, or marital status.

Product Features & Functions

The Transformer sport water bottle is filled with 0.75 liter of water capacity and weight up to 10oz. The Transformer sport water bottle is fill able with any kind of water is filling able like tap water and it make fresh water with 2 types of filtrations which are filtration lid and filtration straw. The Transformer sport water bottle is the water bottle that can remove bacteria, viruses, cysts, parasites and other microbiological waterborne pathogens without the aid of any wrong tasting chemicals like chlorine. The carbon filter is not dishwasher safe and it needs to be removed before rinse the water bottle.

Besides that, The Transformer sport water bottle is combining the category’s top-performing filter with a convenient design. Transformer sport water bottle has unique features that is different from other water bottles and is safe to use. Transformers water bottle features are:

• FLIP-FILL-SEAL Lid Design- Allows you to fill the water without removing the lid.

• Double-wall construction keeps water cold twice as long as regular sport bottles and reduces condensation.

• Turns tap water into fresh, great-tasting water anywhere you go.

• Sustainable, plant-based filter lasts about 3 months or 48 gallons (180L) of water.

• Easy to refill and easy to use bottle with a filter built into the straw

• Light weight, easy squeeze bottle, durable and spill-proof

• 100% BPA-Free

• Filtration disc lid

Product Tagline

Our tagline is “Trust in each and every drop”. Water is nature resources in the earth. Water is one of the essential requirements for animal, plant and human to survive. Because in human body contain up to 70% of water. Therefore, water is very important for us. A person can survive about two months without food, but only a few days without water. Industrialization, architectural, and others developing in our country, will cause many types of pollution, such as water pollution.

According to the deterioration of water pollution, company introduced water heater and water filter. Our company has invented a transformer sport water bottle that combines of these two functions. With this bottle, we can drink safety water whatever the water come from river, pipe, and unfiltered water. The unique functions of this bottle are killing the bacteria by boil the water. Therefore we can drink safety water and get healthier.

Scientists have done a research and the clinical test shows that water filter by our bottle are safe to drink. The quality of drinking water is confirmed by WHO. People could maintain their health by using Transformer sport water bottle. It also prevents our body by getting disease and feels uncomfortable, increase your vitality and refresh your emotions. Water produced by Transformer sport water bottle’s taste is always superior to boring tap water. Bottled water contains taste enzymes that invigorate your senses, enhance your mood, and give you a refreshed feeling. We would like to use free publicity as advertising in our promotion. This can be on television, in newspapers and so on and these may reduce the cost of advertising. Next, we will use Point-of-sale displays. These are special displays of a product or range of products inside a shop. We also need to tell people about our benefit of our product. On the other hand, the features of our product such as healthy, easy to bring and use, and good or best value would be highlight in our banner.

Pricing & Business Communication Strategies

The main target audiences to market the Transformer sport water bottle are the athletes like mountain hiker. The second target audiences are those adventures like militaries and scouts which are camping in forest. The other audiences are including tourists, students and other business mans. Especially for people that like long time outdoor activity. With this product, they can hydrate themselves whenever and wherever possible. It’s because this bottle contains heater function. Besides that, we also can supply this product to foreign countries that have high water pollution.

First of all, we would like to use push strategy such as free publicity as advertising in our first promotion. This can be on radio or television, in newspapers or magazines, on posters and billboards, or by using leaflets handed out in the street or delivered to homes and these may offer the possibility of relatively low-cost advertising. Next, we will use Point-of-sale displays and product demonstration. In addition to the products being on their usual shelves, they are displayed at other locations, often, in the case of supermarkets, near the check-out area. As the result, we can increase our product awareness. Through the product demonstrations, customers can know more detail about the product and the right way to use this product.

Before we set up the price, we had identified the cost of production for this product. The cost for producing per unit of this product is around RM 40. Besides that, we have done the market survey to make sure the amount that customer willing to pay for this type of water bottle. According to the result, majority consumers are willing to pay around RM70 to RM90. Our company’s goal is to get the maximum profit and at the same time we also hope to increase the society welfare. We are using cost-plus pricing strategy to set the price which is set the price of product by double the cost of product to ensure a reasonable profit. At last, our company was decided to sell this bottle at the price of RM80 in the market. However we will adjust the price of bottle according to our sales and consumers respond if necessary in future.

Analysis of several business communication problems
CASE 1

The email that sent by the manager does not fit into the formal written communication rules in the workplace. Formal communication email must include a specific subject line and it is business related that planned by organizations. A subject line is aids in filing and retrieving the document which tells the readers or receiver why they need to read the document, and provides a framework in which to set what you are about to say. The subject line have to specific enough to differentiate the message from others and broad enough to cover everything in the message. Therefore, the manager needs to ensure that the subject line is catchy, as some e-mail receiver will not bother the email that sent if they do not recognize the sender or the subject line is not stated to a formal written communication.

If the manager always finger points at employees and he assumes that he is right and didn’t listen to all sides of the story and he often makes a decision without checking all the facts, it will affect the company production and workers because attitude of manager make all employees feel disrespect, angry, hate manager and this will be low productivity. All employees will be low morale, somehow this problem can be solving if the manager stop pointing other and use grapevine concept. Manger should be opened mined, honest and complete the entire problem. The problem can be solve easily because manager can get more information and he also can try search and think about alternative how to solve the problem, somehow he can choose best alternative to solve the problem because manager know the root of problem.

My manager transferred me to a different department and asked a fellow employee to provide orientation and training for me, it is horizontal internal communication. When my fellow friends are having orientation and training there will be a lot of communication barriers and me have to face a lot of problem. First of all there will be language barriers, choosing poor word, incorrect grammar, wrong message about company that will affect me. Other from that, I have face culture diversity workplace and multicultural communication with some of my fellow employees whose are from different culture and different race. When we communicate with each other there will be barriers within us. To avoid the problem I will understanding my own culture and then learning other culture while keep on open mid and adapting to variations in culture communication patterns. With this I can avoid issues like culture relativism, ethnocentrism and stereotypes.

In meetings, manager speaks at high rapidness may contribute to employees mistranslation and loss of information. Fast delivery of information will create a barrier to audience to get the precise information even though they paying full attention. Besides that, managers should avoid from the use of complex words or culture specific words. Misunderstand will happen on which employees assume the complex words or words which are too culture specific use by managers. Moreover, the excessive uses of legalese or financial terms during presentations will create stress to employees because the employee has to equip themselves with ability in order to understand the presentation and messages well. High pressure environment will affect the performance of the employees and suffer in psychology disease. If the manager puts employees on the spot to ask very specific and detailed questions which is outside of their roles and responsibilities, it will make the employee to panic and feel helpless due to he or she not able to answer or explain it. As a result, the employee may lose their confidence and motive to build up the company goodwill. It also damages the relationship between the employees and the manager.

If I as the department manager whom do not listen to the subordinates and do not send clear messages, it will cause the employees unhappy and not willing to work with me. The subordinates will unsatisfied and give negative effects to the company project. When I proclaim new and ambitious plans and ignore feedback from employees and professional input from the concerned department, this will make the employees feel unsatisfied and turns against me. Hence, I have to get certified input to make sure that the customer will not be affected and providing the good and services to fulfill their. On the other way, if I canceled the project that was already underway and only told to a junior employee, the senior employee may not get the updated information. The junior employees will dissatisfy because their contribution to the project is not achieved. Whereas, customers will distortion and the goodwill of the organization will be affected. Lastly the organizational goals cannot be achieve as planned.

CASE 2

As a manager, I will apologize to the customer because conflict always deal by apologize. Apologize repairs the relationship between the customers and employees. To show my purpose to apologize, I will invite her to meet face-to-face such as having dinner in restaurant. Besides that, I will ask the employee to attend the dinner together for apologize to the customer as the employee was using unprofessional tone of voice and arguing with the customer. At the same time, I will bring along some special souvenir of the company. “I apologize for this inconvenience. There are some error occur when we deliver the information about the product. I’m here to help you to solve the problem. As my intention, please accept this souvenir and please forgive to my employee because of his rudeness in the communication process. ”

Next, I will make promise to the customer that I will give the information as she wants by set a date for follow-up and give a better customer service to her. “As a manager of this company, I will responsible to this problem and promise you to give the information that you want in two days’ time. I’m serious about this problem and make sure that it will not happen again in the future. We will provide the better customer service to you.”

Besides that, I will give some offer when she decides to purchase the product from our company to fulfill her satisfaction. This can prevent she purchase the product from the other company. “I will give you an offer price when you buy the product of our company to show the purpose of apologizes.” Then, I will ask feedback from her because the most important goal of business communication is receiver understanding the message, feedback is essential to confirm that understanding. “I very appreciated if you give me the feedback about the service and the product of our company.” We can improve our performance by review the feedback from the customer to make sure that we can give a better customer service to the customer. “I will use your feedback to improve our customer service quality and work performance. Thank you for your corporation with us.”

I would handle this situation by listening to the customer first. Listening is challenging because people don’t work as hard at it as they should because listening seems to occur naturally. Next, I would identify the problem that faced by the customer. The problem that faced by her is about the information of the product that she wants to use in her business. She tried to get her information from the employee through customer specialist who promised her to follow up by email. However, she didn’t get any reply from the customer specialist. In this case, I will use the grapevine to solve this problem. Grapevine use to find useful resources that can help us to investigate the way to solve this problem. After that, I will invite the customer to have a meeting with the employee who make her unhappy when she requests the information about the product from the employee. To build the favorable relationship, I will promise the customer to provide a better customer service and it will not occur again in the future. Lastly, I will look for the win-win opportunities as the solution. This will overcome the problem and prevent the bad image of our company.

After the meeting, I will provide training program about the communication skill to the employee. Employee’s communication skill such as oral communiocation skill, listening skill, writing skills and online communication challenges are important because it can help the receiver what did the employee sends to them. But the most importance skill in this situation is the oral communication skill. The customer will clearly know about what employee wants to say after the employee improves the communication skill. The listener also will pay attention to him when he presents his proposition.

Customers are always right. Therefore, I will tell the employee to respect the customer. The employee need to manage their emotion while communicate to the customer by using the rude tone. The employee should listen and pay attention to everything that the customer tries to perform. This is important so that the customer will feel they are be respected and confidence when they are saying something. The employee should be never say “I don’t know” while communicate to the customer. This is because this will show them having no enough knowledge, experience and unprofessional communication skill.

Case 3

The main problem in this case is inefficient in receiver’s role because our manager always fail to follow up when we give her updates about key customer accounts. In receiver’s role, receivers have to take note when there is necessary. In addition, she also never provides feedback to customer and employees. As a receiver, she has to providing appropriate feedback to sender to make sure that she can understand the information given by the sender. Moreover, she did not ever listen to employees ideas or ask any inputs from employees and kept repeating paraphrases incorrectly. As a leader and receiver, she has to be open different types of sender and to new ideas.

This problem can causes miscommunication among manager and employees. Thus, communication barrier occur such as poor massage appearance, wrong message type and poor appearance of sender. Manager may misunderstand the message from employee and cause her takes wrong action or decision. Our company may not operate efficiently and may not achieve the target. Because of her closed minded, many new ideas from employees cannot be discover and the talent of employees were wasted. Company will not have any improvement if this situation is not being solved. In addition, she tried to lying and accusing employees for not being team players. This action causes the commitment among employees becomes loose. Yet the workplace become uncomfortable and last employees decided to leave the workplace. The company will face shortage of workers in the future.

In order to solved this problem, a harmony environment is needed to let manager and employees stick together to discuss the problem that they facing and everyone are given chance to spread out their idea. Tighten the relationship between manager and employee can let the workplace become peace and raise the morale among employees. The operation of company will become more efficient because all parties in company attain common consensus. Company has to be aware from recruiting manager based on the aspect of leadership, efficient in communication skill, be open mind because manager is acting a model to all the employees. A good manager should be able to influences and motivates employees towards the attainment of the goals. Sometimes manager needs transcend self-interest to serve others. Besides that, manager has to respect diverse viewpoint, she must consider all the idea from employees. Employees will feel happy because they are not being ignored and they are willing to put more effort in their performance.

The other problem in this case is lack of feedback received make the communication process was not successful. Employee tried to send the message to the manager but manager ignored it. This situation called one way communication. Yet she won’t appreciate the work done by employees. She hardly says "please" and "thank you" when requesting and receiving something from you and other employees.

Miscommunication will happen if the manager doesn’t give the feedback to sender. Thus, manager will make a wrong decision or taking wrong action. Conflict and misunderstanding among the manager and employees will emerge. Communication barrier will happen such as poor appearance of the sender, wrong message type. Ideas and skill of employee can’t be use efficiently and wasted because of incomplete communication. Besides that, when employee will feel ignore by manager and they will unhappy to work in their workplace. Hence, morale falls among the employees and they will not put more effort on their performance. The actual performance is not achieved to the target that company set.

Manager should actively provide feedback to let both of sender and receiver can understanding the information. Manager also can assist the receiver in giving the response. For an example, when speak to a group sender can gain feedback by observe audience, asking question and making evaluation. Manager also can use the You-Viewpoint to gives primary consideration to employees when composing and sending message. This is important to achieve common understanding. On the other hand, grapevine is one of the ways to solve the problem. Manager should be open minder, honest and as complete as possible. She can create random pattern and monitor the grapevine to learn whether formal messages have been understood or need restating by employees.

Case 4

When writing an email, the manager and employees must avoid writing too much in email. Sender should stick to the facts which help keep the message short because the long e-mail is a thing of the past. Write the email concisely and use simple English, with lots of white space, so as to not overwhelm the recipient. The receiver that read the e-mail should not have to dig through several paragraphs in order to figure out what was the question. Through these ways, there will not occur any receiver misunderstanding and ensure the communication to be successful. Besides that, the managers should not laid-off the employees by email without prior notice. The company should remember that email isn’t private, when the company laid-off the employees through email, it will affect the image of the employee because email can been seen by others. E-mail is considered company property and can be retrieved, examined, and used in a court of law. The company might also inadvertently send something to the wrong party by using email inappropriately, so always keep the content professional to avoid embarrassment. The company also needs to notice it when do things so, or using different kind of communication like face-to-face communication.

Email is an important communications method in a company, so employees and managers need to pay close attention to when sending and receiving company emails. For the email sender, it is important that senders which are employees and managers need to remember the word “KISS”. The word “KISS” means keep it short and simple, so the manager should make email short and simple to showing that manager is appreciates employees’ time. Using a few words as possible, introduce who you are, context if necessary, inform about objective of your email and being brief while emailing. Apart from that, the receiver feedback towards the email is also important to determine whether the communication is successful or not. Therefore, the managers can encourage a response from the employees by asking them questions. The receiver must provide an appropriate feedback to the sender in order to inform the sender about that message is understandable.

The definition for annual reports is an official financial statement that is distributed annually and showed to investors and other concerned parties. Annual report is important to shareholders because it make shareholders easier to make decision for choosing stock. Through this information, shareholder can find information about the debt and revenue. This will outline any strategic business decisions that have been made and try to explain how they affect investors. The annual report will also provide information with future vision and tells about future products or services. Other than that, the annual report is also important to employees because it provides an admiration for employee improvement, excellence, cooperation, and obligation, which are important components for business success. Furthermore, an annual report also provides information about company successes such as a new agreement, a new product, cost-saving creativities, new applications of products, new geographies expansion which can affect the work force. Besides that,the annual report enable company to make promotion for customers by highlighting its business mission and essential values. The company can also demonstrate a company 's customer orientation by telling about company creativities designed to improve industrial processes, reduce costs, create quality, or improve service through an annual report. Lastly, the annual report can also show the company 's monetary strength. The monetary strength can be evaluation standard for customers who reducing their number of suppliers because they only need the committed suppliers.

Companies use a vision statement to articulate their overall objective which comes into play when long-term strategic plans are being made. The definition of vision statement outlines is where the companies want to communicates both the purpose and values of the business for consumer. The companies use a vision statement to communicate to their employees by giving direction about how they expected to behave and inspires them to give their best. The companies use and shared the information of the product with target audiences, it shapes customers’ understanding of why they should work with to organization. For example, Ford’s Vision statement which is he stated that how a company should use communication to influence the consumer and it’s became the world’s leading consumer for automotive products and services.

Strategic plans define as action steps that taken by the company in order to achieve strategic goals. The strategic plan designed the organizational activities and resource distributions. Strategic plan also counted as long term plan which may take two to five years to achieve it. Companies use strategic plans in their top-level communication. Top-level strategic plans are triggered down to lower management levels and employees by using the formal communication channels. Company uses the formal communication channels because it is flowing within the chain of command in the organization. The strategic plans flow through downward communication and managers can communicate downward to employees in many ways. For example, the downward communication can travel through speeches, videos, blogs, podcasts, and company internets. The strategic plans are developed by the top management. The strategic plans provide information about specific targets and expected behaviors. It gives direction for lower levels of the organization. For example, “we must improve our product quality in order to survive in competitive market”. Then, the job instructions will be given by the middle of management to the employees that indicate how to do a specific task and how the job relates to other organizational activities based on strategic plans that had been developed by the top management. For example, the supervisor is giving order to employees that they must sell 30 units of bottles per week.

Overall analysis product and company

One of the problem of CamelBak is the procedure to replace the product take too long times to process. There are many forms such as customer personal detail and the problem of their product that need to fill by customer. These is because the company need the data to analysis the problem of their product, then they can find the solution to solve the problem to make sure that the problem won’t occur in the new product. This action may causes customers feel impatient and they will give up replacing their product because of the procedure is too inconvenient.

Company should simplify all the forms that need to fill by customer and keep it short and simple. The procedure should only focus on the problem of product and the suggestion from them. Besides that, the company should establish a customer service department for handle the replacement of product to make sure customers can get the service as fast as possible. Customers can either call to the service hotline or fill the replacement forms via online to process their product replacement.

Other than that, CamelBak is faces the problem in management. Camelbak will change each batch of workers for each new type of bottles is product. This will increase temporary unemployment worker. Once the company wants to produce new products, they will create new management for the product and hired temporary employees. This process will take a long time to done it and it was wasted of time. The company is taking a risk because some of the worker are without experience, this will affect the production. New management may be failure to practice and the company will facing the multicultural management problem.

To solve the problem of management, Manager must build a good relationship within workers. Manager must give the liberty and trust the workers, workers will give full commitment in their workplace. Thus productivity increases and workers will perform better to establish the company goals. Besides this, multicultural management problem can be solved by understanding their own cultures. Be open mind and respecting differences while learning other cultures. Adapt the variation in the cultural communication patterns.

Conclusion and recommendation

In conclusion, Camelback is a branded company. Camelbak produce various types of bottle in most of the Europe country. The key to success for Camelbak are their unique management which different with others company. Their company only employed temporary worker to produce a batch of products, this kind of management is to prevent the leakage of company privacy. All the products that produced by Camelbak have been tested in many several clinical tests. The result shows that these products are safety to use and durable that suitable to those consumers who like outdoor activities such as mountain climbing, jungle tracking, camping.

Even though this company is successful and efficient, but they still have their weakness in their operation and strategy. The main problem is the price of their product set too high that only can afford by medium or high salary income of classes. Besides this, the instruction of the Camelbak’s product only wrote in english. For those who were poor in english will not truly understand about the instruction of the product. Moreover, several numbers of customers have complained that the process of exchanging product took too much time and need to go through many steps. There is a lot of form that need to fill and the repeated question is asked to the customer. These cause them lose their patience to exchange the product and finally they lose their trust for the company.

To make the improvement of company, Camelbak can reduce their price for the product to attract more customers. They can do research and development about the customer willing to pay to analyze their price and improve the technology used to produce the product so that they can reduce the cost. In other hands, the instruction of the product should be in multi languages such as Chinese, English, Japanese, and so on. With this costumers that from any country will get clearly about the function and the use method of the product. Lastly is about the services, company should abandon the redundant process and simplify the question for the customers and making the process of exchange product as fast as possible to maintain the commitment of the customers.

References

http://www.camelbak.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamelBak

http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/salesmarketing/a/pricingstrategy_2.htm

References: http://www.camelbak.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamelBak http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/salesmarketing/a/pricingstrategy_2.htm