Graziadio Business Report Blog

Nancy Ellen Dodd, MPW, MFA

I have been teaching with Frances Grimes in the Management Communications program here at Graziadio this fall and so business communication is on my mind.

Face-to-face business communication is difficult—attempting to read body language, facial expressions, and gestures (although some gestures speak for themselves), can be a challenge. Not to mention cultural differences that can blur the meaning to any one or all of the above.

Even more difficult can be written communication when there are no expressions and gestures to guide us. Add poor grammar, haphazard punctuation, and misspellings… well, we all know where that can lead. Then mix in the language of different cultures and disciplines, and you can really have a problem.

I once wrote an email to someone in another department who was handling our IT. Since we were just starting to develop audio and video, I needed extra help with a particular project. In the email I wrote that I just needed a download of the file in a new format for “audacity.” The recipient of the email responded not quite in the way I expected, offering to do something quite different than I requested. Continue reading ‘5 Simple Rules for Better Email Business Communication’

Nancy Dodd, MPW, MFA, is editor of the Graziadio Business Report and an adjunct professor of screenwriting.

Customer service has been on my mind lately, or I should say a lack thereof. Business executives budget fortunes to figure out how to attract customers while the customers they lose out the front door go unnoticed. It seems that one of the best budget expenditures a company could make would be to train their employees on how to treat customers.

For example, I moved to a new neighborhood and on the way home was fortuitously placed a grocery store from a large chain that I thought would be ideal for me to stop at to buy a few groceries. Now even though this wasn’t a prime area, it was on a busy street and it is a major grocery chain. I made my way through the panhandlers and into the store, did my shopping and went to the checkout stand. The lady in front of me was buying a fifth of some sort of liquor that she thought was on sale. The lady and the cashier got into an argument over the price of the bottle—I distracted myself with magazines on the newsstand. The lady moved on—I didn’t notice whether she left with or without her purchase—and my transaction began. Another employee, who I took to be a supervisor, walked up to the cashier and told her, “That lady called you a ‘b—-’” [I didn't hear the word clearly]. The cashier was incensed. The supervisor nodded, sighed as though her job was such a burden, and said, “Go ahead.” The cashier left in the middle of my transaction and went after the lady to do who knows what, leaving me standing there with my mouth open, while the supervisor took over the transaction. It just seemed wrong on so many levels. No, I didn’t continue to shop there. I drive way out of my way to another store from another chain. Granted this is an extreme case of bad customer service.

Continue reading ‘Businesses Pay for Lack of Customer Service’

This is a guest post by Charles D. Kerns, PhD, Associate Professor of Applied Behavioral Science

If an organization does not perform and sustain performance it will decline over time and perhaps die. To sustain performance, a sufficient level of happiness needs to be introduced to an organization. Performance and happiness partner to help assure an organization’s long term success.

High performers will drive the achievement of key results in an organization; happiness will help sustain and maximize performance over time. I encourage you to increase the number of people in your organization who are both happy and high performers. There is good reason to pursue this goal: Happiness research, conducted largely outside organizational settings, suggests that happy, high-performing workforces relate to greater employee satisfaction, productivity, and profits!

Continue reading ‘Bring Happiness to Work!’