It won’t do to say that the snoozing reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. My sympathies are with him.

It won’t do to say that the snoozing reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. My sympathies are with him.

It won’t do to say that the snoozing reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. My sympathies are with him.

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Business Communication

Case I

Communication Failure

Mr. and Mrs. Basu went to Woodlands Apparel to buy a pullover. Mr. Basu did not read the price tag on the piece selected by him. At the counter, while making the payment he asked for the price. Rs. 950 was the answer.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Basu, who was still shopping came back and joined her husband. She was glad that he had selected a nice black pullover for himself. She pointed out there was a 25% discount on that item. The counter person nodded in agreement.

Mr. Basu was thrilled to hear that. “It means the price of this pullover is just Rs. 712. That’s fantastic”, said Mr. Basu.

In no time, he returned with the second pullover and asked them to be packed. When he received the case memo for payment, he was astonished to find that he had to pay Rs. 1,900 and not Rs. 1,424.

Mr. Basu could hardly reconcile himself to the fact that the counter person had quoted the discounted price which was Rs. 950. The original price printed on the price tag was Rs. 1,266.

Case I Questions:

1. Identify the three sources of Mr. Basu’s information.

2. Discuss the main filter involved in this case.

3. What should Mr. Basu have done to avoid the misunderstanding.

4. Who is to blame for this communication gap? And Why?

Case II

ON WRITING WELL

It won’t do to say that the snoozing reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. My sympathies are with him. If the reader is lost, it is generally because the writer has not been careful enough to keep him on the path.

This carelessness can take any number of forms. Perhaps a sentence is so excessively cluttered that the reader, hacking his way through the verbiage, simply doesn’t know what it means. Perhaps a sentence has been so shoddily constructed that the reader could read it in any of several ways. Perhaps the writer has switched tenses, so the reader loses track of who is talking or when the action took place. Perhaps Sentence B is not a logical sequel to Sentence A – the writer, in whose head the connection is clear, has not bothered to provide the missing link. Perhaps the writer has used an important word incorrectly by not taking the trouble to look it up. He may think that ‘sanguine’ and ‘sanguinary’ mean the same thing, but the difference is a bloody big one. The reader can only infer (speaking of big differences) what the writer is trying to imply.

Faced with these obstacles, the reader is at first a remarkably tenacious bird. He blames himself he obviously missed something, and he goes back over the mystifying  sentence, or over the whole paragraph, piecing it out like an ancient rune, making guesses and moving on. But he won’t do this for long. The writer is making him work too hard, and the reader will look for one who is better at his craft. The writer must therefore constantly ask himself: What am I trying to say? Surprisingly often, he doesn’t know. Then he must look at what he has written and ask: Have I said it? Is it clear to someone encountering the subject for the first time? If it’s not, it is because some fuzz has worked it’s way into the machinery. The clear writer is a person clear-headed enough to see this stuff for what it is: fuzz.

I don’t’ mean that some people are born clear-headed and are therefore natural writers, whereas others are naturally fuzzy and will never write well. Thinking clearly is a conscious act that the writer must force upon himself, just as if he were embarking on any other project that requires logic: adding up a laundry list or doing an algebra problem. Good writing doesn’t come naturally, though most people obviously think it does.

It won’t do to say that the snoozing reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. My sympathies are with him.

It won’t do to say that the snoozing reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. My sympathies are with him.

Case II Questions:

1. What is Fuzz?

2. Rewrite the given case study in a succinct manner.

3. Do you believe that some people are born writers? Justify

Case III Outsourcing Backlash Gets Abusive, Ugly

I don’t want to speak to you. Connect to your boss in the US,” hissed the American on the phone. The young girl at a Bangalore call centre tried to be as polite as she could.

At another call centre, another day, another yound girl had a Londoner unleashing himself on her, “ Yound lady do you know that because of you Indians we are losing jobs.”

The outsourcing backlash is getting ugly. Handling irate callers is the new brief for the young men and women taking calls at these outsourced job centers. Supervisors tell them to be “cool”.

Avinash Vashistha, managing partner of NEOIT, a leading US-based consultancy firm says,” Companies involved in outsourcing both in the US and India are already getting a lot of hate mail against outsourcing and it is hardly surprising that some people should behave like this on the telephone.” Vashistha says Indian call centers should train their operators how to handle such calls.

Indeed, the furore raised by the western media over job losses because of outsourcing has made ordinary citizens there sensitive to the fact that their call are being taken not from their midst but in countries, such as India and the Philippines.

The angry outbursts the operators face border on the racist and sexist, says the manager of a call center in Hyderabad. But operators and senior executives of call centers reguse to go on record for fear of kicking up a controversy that might result in their companies’ losing clients overseas.

“It’s happening often enough and so let’s face it,” says a senior executive of a Gurgaon call centre, adding, “This doesn’t have any impact on business.”

Questions:

1. Assume you are working as an operator at a call centre in India and are receiving irate calls from Americans and Lodoners. How would you handle such calls? Conceive a short conversation between you and your client, and put it on paper.

2. “Keep your cool.” What does this mean in term of conversation control?

3. Do you agree with the view that such abusive happenings on the telephone do not have any impact on business? Justify.

Case IV

Arvind Pandey Caught in Business Web

Arvind Pandey is a project manager at Al Saba Construction Company in Muscat.   It s a flourishing company with several construction projects in Muscat and abroad.  It is known for completing projects on time and with high quantity construction.  The company’s Chairman is a rich and a highly educated Omani.  A German engineer is Arvind’s Vice – President for urban and foreign construction projects.  Three months ago, Al Saba had submitted a tender for a major construction project in Kuwait.  Its quotation was for $ 25 million.  In Kuwait the project was sponsored and announced by a US – based construction company called Fuma.  According to Al Saba, their bid of $ 25 million was modest but had included a high margin of profit.  On 25 April, Arvind was asked to go to Kuwait to find out from the Fuma project manager the status of their construction proposal.  Arvind was delighted to know that Fuma had decided to give his company, (Al Saba) the construction project work.  The project meant a lot of effort and money in planning the proposed construction in Kuwait. But before Arvind could tank the Fuma project manager, he was told that their bird should be raised to $ 28 million.  Arvind was surprised. He tried to convince the Fuma project manager that his (Arvind company had the bast reputation for doing construction work in a cost effective way.  However, he could always raise the bid by $ 3 million. But he wanted to know why he was required to do so.  The Fuma manager’s reply was, “That’s the way we do our business in this part of the world, $ 1 million will go to our Managing Director in the US, I shall get $ 1 million, you, Mr. Pandey, will get $ 1 million in a specified account in Swiss Bank.  Arvind asked, “But why me?”  “So that you never talk about it to any one.”  The Fuma Project Manager said.  Arvind promised never to leak it out to any one else.  And he tried to bargain to raise the bid by $ 2 million.  For Arvind was familiar with the practice of “pay – offs” involved in any such thing.  He thought it was against his loyalty to his company and his personal ethics.  Arvind promised the Fuma project manager that the bid would be raised to $ 28 million and fresh papers would be put in. He did not want to lose the job.  He came back to Muscat and kept trying to figure out how he should place the whole thing before his German Vice President.  He obviously was at a loss. 

Questions:

1.                  Analyse the reasons for Arvind Pandey’s dilemma.

2.                 Does Arvind Pandey really face a dilemma?

3.                 In your view what should Arvind Pandey do? Should he disclose it to his German Vice President? 

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