Virtual Communication Plan 4

Virtual Communication Plan

COMM/470

Annjela Hynes-Porter

August 13, 2018

Virtual Communication Plan

Virtual communication is a form of tool that most company are going towards to communicate with their stakeholders. Some companies communicate virtual and some don’t, but as we hear in the news some business suffer from the lack of communicate effectively virtually with their stakeholders such as Facebook. What are some negative effects from Facebook communication techniques? What are some methods of communication used to reach Facebook external stakeholders of the business? What are some challenges experienced with customers satisfaction as a result of communication failure? There can be some future risk if these issues are not addressed for a better effective way to communicate with the stakeholders, so what are the changes that should be implemented?

Facebook is the number one social media platform in the digital world, but they still lack effective virtual communication to their stakeholders. There are a couple negative effects to the company and stakeholders due to the lack of virtual communication. Some negative effects from the poor communication is people are dropping Facebook all together. People feel their privacy and the lack of communication from the company is at fault. People joined Facebook to communicate with people and not to have their information taken without their knowledge. Their lack of communication in recent news also hit the company in the way of drop of their shares in the stock market. So, the lack of virtual communication hurt the company by losing share prices and even losing users all together. The company loss of money and users is all due to the lack of virtual communication. Even thou some users may have not quiet Facebook all together the amount of time spent on Facebook has dropped due to this concern and lack of information provided to them from Facebook in general.

Workflow and Escalation Procedures

According to “Pnmsoft” (2016), “Workflow is the definition, execution and automation of business processes where tasks, information or documents are passed from one participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules.” (What is a Workflow?). When customer expectations are not met or they feel that their views have not been heard, it is human nature to want to “intensify” and escalate to the next level. There is an over-all belief amongst several customers, that if they escalate to a senior leader, then action will happen faster. However, this is not always the case.

Google’s Dictionary defines escalation as “an increase in the intensity or seriousness of something; an intensification”.  Customers experience is the overall interaction that a client has with a business and its product and services. Facebook is continuously enhancing their methods and techniques in how they need to enhance customer experience and improve their data privacy to rebuild customer relationships. There are different ways that Facebook can enhance customers experience by including tools like mobile support, live chat (instant messenger), and self-service support. These tools will not only work to improve their clients experience but will bring other benefits, as well.

Below is a list of Best Practices for Better Service, stated by “Oracle” (2012):

1. Establish a knowledge foundation.
2. Empower your customers.
3. Empower your frontline employees.

4. Offer multichannel choice.
5. Listen to your customers.
6. Design seamless experiences.
7. Engage customers proactively.
8. Measure and improve continuously

Challenges with Virtual Communication

Virtual communication can be challenging for both ends of customer service. Customer satisfaction is important to all companies, to ensure that, there must be a healthy relationship between the two. Customer service is available to help customers in need, and is communicated over a few different channels; phone, email, online chat is the most popular. Challenges that can arise with virtual customer service could be due to lack of connection on either parties’ channel, bad service or internet outage. Another challenge is miscommunication between the service and the customer, language barriers can impose along with the attitude of either party. With a customer service phone calls being transferred out of the United States, to other countries, language barriers make up most of the frustrations with calling with questions, concerns and problems. Speaking to a customer service representative with an attitude can also send bad signals to a customer. Although it can be frustrating, it is important to remember that everyone is human and deserves a chance to be civil. Communication failures can cause a loss of a lifelong customer, which can be detrimental to any business. Companies depend on customer satisfaction, without them, no one would buy their products, which would send them out of business. Taking into consideration the severity of keeping your customer base satisfied will also help in maintaining loyalty. Many businesses will attempt to mimic a successful business model and being able to show the uniqueness and efficiency of your services will keep customers subscribed to your services for a much longer period of time.

Identifying the Risks
Being able to identify the risks in a scenario where virtual communication is being utilized is imperative to the success of a business in satisfying the needs of its customer or user base. Any application or software that requires the presence of a technology based platform such as a smart phone or computer is going to be subject to attacks and potential failures within the software itself. Understanding that not all of your user or client base is familiar with simple troubleshooting methods such as virus scanning or checking the file path of a program will need to be approached in a step by step type of manner. By standardizing how issues are handled by customer service we as a company can provide an easy to follow set of instructions to keep our customers satisfied. As a company we should be able to identify new and upcoming risks such as new types of viruses of phishing scams that may occur. In this way we can communicate with our users and inform them of potential attacks which in turn protect them in the unfortunate case that they are approached by malicious entities such as other companies with similar business models or hackers. Not only does this type of communication help to ease the minds of our users but also it will assist in loyalty and the amount of time a user will use our services or subscribe to them. Another important point is to understand that not all users are utilizing our services from the same digital platforms. Knowing the procedures to assist on each individual platform such as a smart phone or home desktop computer will expedite the process of troubleshooting and more importantly, getting the customer back using our products as quickly as possible. Through these actions we can expect as a company to maintain a high level volume of users that will consistently use our services and choose not to utilize the services of our competitors.

Steps to Prevent Lose of Customers

Facebook has taken a few steps to try to prevent customers from leaving their social media network. The steps that they are taking are a step in the right direction. It begins with letting the customers know that the breach has happened. Informing the people is one of the most important things that any company can do. When the customers are kept informed they feel like they matter to the company. Facebook is also making that they simplify the privacy settings, so that people can take and adjust the setting on the third-party access and the applications as well (Badshah, 2018). While Facebook makes the privacy setting easier to adjust the people are going to feel more comfortable with being able to adjust their privacy setting on their own. After this breach Facebook has decided to share less information with third-party vendors making it a little harder for the information of the customers to get out there. This will give some customers some relief and make them want to stay, it will help them feel like they can keep their information safe with Facebook. All of these changes will help Facebook keep the customers from leaving and will help them feel comfortable that Facebook is working on changes so that a breach does not happen again.