Memorandum

To:

Business 2200 Colleagues

Date:

12/7/2015

From:

Joshua Schreiber

RE:

Request for Proposal - Business Communication Issue Project

OVERVIEW: I propose to develop steps that retail stores such as REI, can take to ensure
customers receive a much higher satisfactory level of shopping experience, which will enhance
the customer experience and most important, increase sales. Based on feedback from customers
we know some REI customers do not feel they are receiving adequate attention in the Sandy
location. REI cares deeply about its customers and needs to reverse these customer impressions.

RESEARCH QUESTION: How do we identifying what can be done to increase a customers

shopping experience? With REI as our subject business, we need to discover what the policy is
for welcoming and assisting in store customers.
CUSTOMER Preferences:
o To be left alone
o Be addressed and assisted immediately
o Prefers to find an employee and ask for assistance

RATIONALE: Understanding how much interaction customers like to have with the store staff
will help to make sure we know how to make more customers comfortable shopping and
spending their money.
GOALS Achieved:
o Be more confident in presenting ourselves to businesses in a sales environment
o REI will be gain a customer interaction policy backed by factual data

FEASABILITY: We have our very own REI Employee, Laura S. who has experience with the
issue. She will provide the customer survey data. We will also talk with the Salt Lake REI
location to confirm they also have this issue or that theyve resolved this and how.
In the article, How to Make the Most out of Customer Feedback, Inc. Staff tells us to before
starting to build a survey strategy focus on the goals you expect to achieve with this info. That
info will help you to engineer your strategy for gaining customer feedback and turning that
feedback in to results. http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/07/how-to-make-most-of-customerfeedback.html
The article, Making the Most of Customer Complaints, by Stefen Michel, David Bowen and
Robert Johnston, a point that should stand out is that customers are more tolerant for poor
service than for poor service recovery. We deduct from this that customers can forgive when
they receive poor service, but failure to correct that leads to lost customers.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122160026028144779

MATERIALS AND METHODS: There will be no financial cost, simply a time commitment
for preparing and gathering questionnaires, online surveys and secret shopper observations.
o Instore customer service feedback questionnaires
o SurveyMonkey.com surveys shared via facebook.com
o Inside secret shopper observations in 2 store locations

PERSONNEL: As an employee of REI Laura will provide information discussed between her
and her team members regarding the issues they perceive and how theyll fix those. We will also
each spend 1 hour at an REI location documenting employee and customer interactions.
o hour observing employee interactions with customers
o hour tracking customer habits, do they look lost, look prepared, etc.

TIME FRAME: We will have 3 weeks to accomplish the interviews with each store and the
employee/customer interactions.
o October 23-24, perform customer shopping observations
o October 26-29, compile observation data and customer feedback form data
o November 4, meet to review data and create strategy from the customer feedback and
observations
o November 9, present sales pitch to REI

HURDLES: We anticipate an insufficient number of people responding to the Survey Monkey

survey or a lack of available secondary data to reference. In anticipation of that we will turn to
direct interviews with store management and employees of the stores.