Assessment: The Brief
You will create a customer engagement audit and strategic plan. You are a new marketing manager for your chosen organization who has recently completed a module on customer engagement. You have been asked to produce this report for your Board of Directors that analyses the current customer engagement practices within the organization (the audit), showcases how much you know about customer engagement, and provides recommendations about customer engagement (the strategic plan).
Background
You will create a customer engagement audit and strategic plan. You are a new marketing manager for your chosen organization who has recently completed a module on customer engagement. You have been asked to produce this report for your Board of Directors that analyses the current customer engagement practices within the organization (the audit), showcases how much you know about customer engagement, and provides recommendations about customer engagement (the strategic plan).
You may choose a B2C, B2B, or not-for-profit organisation that either has a physical presence in the UK OR if it is an online-only organization, does business in English.
You may choose an organisation that has both a physical and online presence OR one that has only an online presence. During this time of social distancing, we expect that you can mostly or only examine the online aspects of your chosen organization.
Requirement
This assignment comprises a 3,000-word individual report.
There are two main sections:
Customer Engagement Audit: Provide a critical analysis of the customer engagement practices currently in operation within your chosen organisation. To do this, you will need to draw on concepts, theories, and models identified throughout the module as well as examples of best practice used within the industry
Recommendation: Recommend a new engagement strategy to enhance customer engagement within the organisation. The list below provides some examples of new engagement strategies, but you are not limited by this list – feel free to consider other ideas. Justify your choice with reference to relevant theory. You need to ensure that your recommendation follows on from your analysis in the audit.
Examples of a new engagement strategy could include one of the following: –
Improved in-store service encounters that encourage repeat visits
An online customer community
Technology such as self-service technologies, artificial intelligence, etc.
A referral marketing programme
A comprehensive service recovery programme.
You may not choose the following organisations for your assignment:
• Hillside Beach Club
• Amazon
• Motor Trike
• Singapore SMRT
• Organisations used in past student example(s) that are posted in the learning
room for this module.
Further Guidance
A. Content
Title page: Title page should include your student number, the module name, the name of the organization, title of the work, and word count on the front page. You should NOT include your real name anywhere in the report.
Executive summary: Should be one page and should summarise the key findings and recommendations in your report. Do not simply state what the report will cover.
Contents page: Use the Word facility to generate automatic page numbers.
Introduction: Introduce the purpose of the report and how the report is structured. Remember that this report is for your own Board of Directors, so a long general history about the organization is not necessary, but if there is historical context that relates to customer engagement that is a useful reminder for the Board, that would be appropriate.
This section should be around 200 words
Customer engagement audit: Provide a critical analysis of the customer engagement practices currently in operation within your chosen organisation. The analysis includes identifying (1) what the company does well and (2) what the company does not do well. To do this analysis, you will need to draw on concepts, theories, and models identified throughout the module as well as examples of best practice used within the industry.
In the report, you do not need to discuss all stages of the customer engagement cycle equally. As you do your analysis, you will find that your organization has weaknesses in particular stages of the customer engagement cycle – focus your analysis and discuss the concepts, theories, and models related to these stages. This will allow you the word count to critically discuss those concepts, theories, and models in depth.
Make sure the focus is on customer engagement practices that occur after purchase.
It is important that you do not simply describe the various practices but use theory and wider evidence to analyse their effectiveness. To achieve the higher grades, you need to provide evidence of your analysis and relate the analysis to deep understanding of the customer engagement literature.
You will need to demonstrate a sound understanding of the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of relevant customer engagement literature and apply it to the business issues.
In this section, you may want to consider:
Any evidence from observations you have made such as a service blueprint. Customer feedback on the effectiveness of the customer engagement practices.
Any documentation which outlines the customer engagement strategies and how they fit with the company’s brand values and current brand position.
The extent to which the practices align with others used within the relevant industry sector.
Use appendices whenever suitable (a summary table of your content analysis or service blueprint should be in the body of the report, with the details in the appendices).
This section should be around 1800 words
Recommendation: Recommend a new engagement strategy to enhance customer engagement within the organisation. The list below provides some examples but you are not limited by this list – feel free to consider other ideas. Justify your choice with reference to relevant theory. You need to ensure that your recommendation follows on from your analysis in the audit.
Examples of a new engagement strategy could include one of the following:
Improved in-store service encounters that encourage repeat visits
An online customer community
Technology such as self-service technologies, artificial intelligence, etc.
A referral marketing programme
A comprehensive service recovery programme.
In this section you will need to:
Describe your new customer engagement strategy and explain how it will operate.
Identify why this new customer engagement strategy was chosen (why this is the best strategy compared to other options, how this strategy addresses the issues and weaknesses that were identified from the audit), using customer engagement literature to support your recommendation.
Identify what the benefits could be for this organization using your deep understanding of customer engagement literature and your analysis from the audit.
You are encouraged to use visual material or drawings to illustrate your new strategy.
Your recommendation will likely not address ALL the weaknesses you have identified in the audit. You will discuss alternative strategies and identify why the recommended strategy is the most appropriate one for your organization at this time.
This section should be around 1000 words
Appendices: Do not use the appendices as a dumping ground – the report should be able to stand on its own without the reader needing to read the appendices. The appendix is only to be used to provide more detailed information – should be viewed as optional for the reader. Remember, the appendices are not marked. Thus, any important tables or figures should be included in the body of the report.
Reference List: This includes only references that are cited within the report. Use Harvard referencing style for citations and references. Refer to the NTU Harvard referencing style guide https://now.ntu.ac.uk/d2l/lor/viewer/view.d2l?ou=6605&loIdentId=25435
