MBAdissertation-66口语案例研究
12-18, 2015
66口语是一个在线英语培训机构，成立于2014年12月。它始终坚持“热情、务实、利他主义”的核心价值观,专注于整合优质教育资源和先进的互联网技术为英语学习者提供服务。66口语打破传统教学模式,强调口语,注重沟通,把英语作为一种技能来培训学生,这样学生就可以克服说话困难的担心,让他们在会谈中敢于发言。66口语的老师来自美国,英国,澳大利亚，他们都有教师认证,可以为学生提供最专业的服务。66口语为参与者提供服务的网络,学生可以随时预约足不出户享受优质的服务。与此同时, 66口语提供的培训课程的价格在同类培训课程中是最优惠的。
自7月以来,66口语离开的客户的数量达到了88个。作者是通过打电话来确定的,有58个客户愿意接受问卷调查。问卷发放和收回的电子邮件。在回收问卷,47个副本有效,有效率为81%。问卷调查的内容包括三个部分。 第一部分介绍了问卷调查的目的。第二部分描述了受访者对于66口语的评价,第三部分调查受访者的背景信息。
问卷的内容如下所示。
问题1: 你选择66口语的原因是什么?(多项选择)数量的受访者选择答案
公司信息和问题 Company information and problems
公司信息 Company information
66Speak was an online English training institution established in December 2014. It has always adhered to "warm, pragmatic, altruism," core values and focused on the integration of quality educational resources and advanced Internet technology to provide services to English learners. 66Speak breaks traditional teaching modes, by emphasizing oral language, focusing on communication, taking English as a skill to train students, so that students can overcome the difficulties of fearing to speak and they can be fluent in using English in conversation. The teachers in 66Speak come from the United States, Britain, Australia and they all have teacher certification, they provide students with most professional service. 66Speak provides service to the participants by the network, students can make an appointment at any time to enjoy quality service without leaving home. Meanwhile, the price of training courses provided by 66Speak is the most favorable among similar training courses.
问卷结果Questionnaire results
Since July, the number of defecting customers achieved 88 in 66Speak, the author was through phoning to determine that there were 58 customers who were willing to accept questionnaire survey. The questionnaires were distributed and taken back in the form of e-mail. Among the recovered questionnaires, 47 copies were valid, the effective rate was 81%. Contents of the questionnaire include three parts. The first part introduces the purpose of the questionnaire survey. The second part describes respondents’ views on 66Speak, and the third part investigates the background information of respondents. Contents of the questionnaire are shown as follows.#p#分页标题#e#
Question 1: What was the reason for your choosing 66Speak? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
Improving oral English 22
Experiencing authentic English education and foreign cultures 11
Improving English test scores 31
Improving ability in using English to meet work needs 28
Other reasons 9
The survey results showed that 22 people chose 66Speak to improve their oral English; 11 people’s reason was to experience authentic English education and foreign cultures; 31 people were for improving their English test scores; 28 people chose “improving ability in using English to meet work needs; 9 people chose other reasons.
Question 2: What was the reason for your leaving 66Speak? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
The training failed to help me to achieve the intended purpose. 31
I have achieved the purpose through training. 17
I was not satisfied with the communication, management and service provided by 66Speak. 21
I found other better training institutions. 8
Other reasons 9
The survey results indicated, 31 people left 66Speak, as the training provided by 66Speak failed to help their to achieve the intended purpose; 17 people left after they achieved their intended purpose by the training; 21 people left because they were not satisfied with the communication, management and service provided by 66Speak; 8 people left to go to other better training institutions; 9 people left for other reasons.
Question 3: Which English test will you intend to participate in future? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
CET 31
IELTS 24
BEC 21
GRE 11
TOEFL 22
Other tests 5
The survey results showed that 31 people chose CET; 24 people chose IELTS; 21 people chose BEC; 11 people chose GRE; 22 people chose TOEFL; 5 people chose other tests.
Question 4: If there are, do you like the training courses provided by 66Speak for the above-mentioned tests? Number of respondents who chose the answer
Yes 41
No 5
I don’t care. 1
41 respondents showed that they liked the training courses, a respondent did not care about it, 5 respondents did not like it.
Question 5: Is it necessary for 66Speak to interact and exchange with participants more frequently? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
Yes 44
No 1
Indifferent 2
44 respondents expressed that “it is necessary”; 2 respondents showed that “it is indifferent”; a respondent believed that “it is not necessary”.#p#分页标题#e#
Question 6: What way do you like in communication with 66Speak? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
QQ 21
WeChat 35
Microblog 33
Face to face 21
Phone 14
Other ways 11
21 people said that they liked communication through QQ; 35 people chose WeChat; 33 people chose Microblog; 21 people liked face to face communication; 14 people chose phone; 11 people chose other ways.
Question 7: Will you learn English long? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
Yes 36
No 3
No sure. 7
36 respondents chose “Yes”; 3 respondents chose “No”; 7 respondents chose “not sure”.
37 respondents chose “Yes”; 7 respondents chose “indifferent”; 3 respondents chose “No”.
Question 8: Is it necessary for 66Sppeak for students learning English to do future planning? Number of respondents who chose the answer
Yes 37
No 3
Indifferent 7
问题 Problems
The primary problem that 66Speak faces is that the training courses set can not meet the customer's individual needs. The first and foremost characteristic of 66Speak is through English native speakers to attract customers to accept training provided by 66Speak. Living teaching methods, authentic and pure English accent of native speakers’, as well as Chinese students’ goodwill and trust for native speakers, in the early days when 66Speak was established, it did attract a lot of students to accept training. However, according to the survey in this study, Chinese people’s involvement in training is based on the following motivations. First, 53% of the respondents said that they hoped to improve their English to meet the needs of academic achievement to lay the foundation for future education, employment, study abroad, TOEFL, IELTS, CET, GRE were such kinds of tests that they wanted to pass through participating in English training. Second, 48% of the respondents wanted to improve their English language proficiency to lay the foundation for their own promotion and participating in business activities, BEC was such kind of test to help them achieve the purpose. Third, 19% of people participated in English training for their interest in English and Western cultures. Overall, the rate of people who participate in English training because of the first and second reasons has reached about 81%, while only about 11% of people involved in training because of the third reason. 66Speak hires foreign teachers, which can give students a whole new learning experience, they can teach students authentic English, as well as Western cultures, ideas, to satisfy the above-mentioned third demand of students’. However, due to the lack of pertinence in teaching, its training mainly confines to speaking, listening, and it is less related to the above-mentioned tests, it does not provide a targeted one-stop service, so the training can not meet the above-mentioned first and second needs of students’. The survey results in this study proved that 54% of the respondents left 66Speak, as the training provided failed to help them to achieve their intended purpose, this result verified the above statement. Thus, although many students chose to accept training provided by 66Speak because of the English native speakers, after the novelty of contacting with the foreign teachers, most of them chose to leave 66Speak, because they thought that their needs were not met.#p#分页标题#e#
The minor problem that 66Speak faces is that it fails to effective find and encourage the individual needs of students, nor does it take customers as long-term partners, but as objects of a transaction. The survey results in this study proved that 29% of the respondents (17 respondents) left 66Spea after getting help through training provided to achieve their intended purpose. Generally speaking, being proficient in using a language needs students to make long-time efforts, the survey results in this study have proved 62% of the respondents (36 respondents) have long-term needs for learning English. Short-term training can only help students to achieve certain learning objectives in a short term, to ultimately achieve their ultimate goal of learning needs each student to learn a lot of knowledge and skills (Li, 2014), Therefore, there are many potential needs of students that requires training institutions to develop. For various reasons, most of the participants are still not very familiar with how to plan their own personalized English learning career in accordance with their own purposes. The survey results in this study showed that 63% of the respondents (37 respondents) believed that it was necessary for 66Speak to design a long-term learning planning for them. Thus, if an English training institution can be based on each student's goals, their actual levels, interests, hobbies and other conditions to design long-term English language learning programs for them, which can better find and motivate the individual needs of students’, and maintain long-term relationships with students to reduce customer loss. However, in the past, 66Speak ignored this problem and lost the opportunity to retain customers of this part.
The last problem existing in 66Speak is that the communication, management, service provided by 66Speak fails to satisfy consumers. The survey results also showed that 36% of the respondents (21 people) were not satisfied with communication, management, service provided by 66Speak. Students often have many questions that need to communicate with teachers or management personnel in learning process, while training institutions should also take the initiative to communicate regularly with students to understand their individual needs, assessing their study situation and providing timely feedback, this frequent communication not only helps to improve the consumption experience of students, but also helps to strengthen the feelings and contact between the two sides to improve students' loyalty to reduce student loss. However, in the past, 66Speak has many deficiencies in terms of communication with students, for example, it failed to provided timely feedback for students, it rarely took the initiative to communicate with students, nor did it assess each student's learning situation and provide timely feedback, which was obviously not conducive to retaining trainees.
个性化服务策略 Personalized service strategy
调整培训课程 Adjust training courses#p#分页标题#e#
调整培训内容 Adjust training content
Understanding individual needs of consumers and satisfying them are what a modern enterprise focuses in marketing management, in order to achieve a win-win result between customers and itself (Hang, 2009). The questionnaire results in this study showed that 59 person / times chose 66Speak to improve their achievement in English examination, so as to get good grades in order to obtain further education and promotion opportunities for a raise. 31 respondents explained that they participate in the training provided by 66Speak, as they aimed to pass CET. 24 respondents have the plan to pass IELTS. 21 respondents hoped to participate in the training for BEG. 22 respondents wanted to attend the training for TOEFL. In the past, 66Speak has more emphasis on training customers’ ability of using daily English, they failed to be targeted to help customers to improve their scores in exams. In future, 66Speak should provide customers with one-stop service, as well as the training aiming at helping customers to pass relevant exams and consultancy services. Providing one-stop value-added services bring consumers a better service experience, at the same time, it will increase the company's revenue to achieve a win-win result.
In future, 66Speak should take helping students to pass CET, BEC, IELTS, TOEFL as the purpose, taking CET syllabus as a standard to set training courses, from listening, speaking, reading and writing, these four aspects to set up training courses. From the aspect of listening, it should help students to be familiar with the patterns and rules of past listening tests, providing suitable material to practice listening and encouraging students’ initiative to do long-term listening exercises. Considering from reading, it should rely on past tests to explain core syntax, core vocabulary, it should increase students’ understanding of background information about reading materials to improve their reading ability and problem-solving skills. In terms of speaking, it should help students to be familiar with the oral test mode, training students’ ability of using English to discuss and express their views, so as to constantly improve their skills of speaking English. It can also help students to master vocabulary, sentence patterns and kinds of questions which are often used in the tests, by cultivating their proactive communication skills to enable students to get a high score in the tests to truly improve their speaking skills. From the perspective of writing, it should help students to understand the basic theoretical knowledge of English writing, namely, the basic theoretical knowledge of language writing, such as format, wording and phrasing, rhetoric, sentence, etc., and to help students to understand topics of past writing tests, methods and formats of writing different types of articles, as well as to guide students to accumulate writing materials.
Also, it is noted that business English takes adapting to the language requirements in workplace as the purpose, the content covers all aspects of business activities (Wei, 2016). Considering the training content, in future, 66Speak should be based on listening, speaking, reading and writing standards required by BEC to arrange training, based on improve candidates’ BEC scores to set training courses, in addition to teaching them necessary vocabulary, as well as skills of using English language in sign contracts, negotiations, writing business letters and other business aspects, they should also teach students the Western concept of enterprise management, work psychology, business practices and even how to deal with foreigners, how to cooperate with foreigners, ways and means of work with foreigners, as well as living habits of foreigners.#p#分页标题#e#
调整训练方法 Adjust training methods
In future, the training provided by 66Speak aiming at CET has the following characteristics in terms of teaching methods.
First, it will implement one-to-one, interactive teaching, learners can accept guidance and exchanges by teachers with rich teaching experience relating to the CET.
Second, it will be based on CET syllabus to design targeted teaching plan to mainly carry out training aiming at four kinds of questions (reading comprehension, vocabulary and structure, error correction, writing) involved in CET to ensure that students can improve CET scores in a short period of time.
Third, the teachers will provide targeted instruction, each course will be provided by different teachers to ensure high quality teaching.
In addition, in terms of business English training, in future, 66Speak can make use of case-teaching method. In process of teaching knowledge, it is through specific case to explain a theory in simple terms to guide students to take the initiative to analyze and think, so as to improve students' interest, deepening their understanding of the theory, in order to help them to better master professional knowledge (Hang, 2009). The target of business English courses is not only to equip students with basic business theory, more importantly, it trains students’ ability in practice (Wei, 2015). Thus in future, 66Speak can make use of a situational approach, teachers should be possible to design a variety of business environments, training students’ ability to freely and accurately use English to solve practical problems in business scene. Scene simulation is a relatively convenient and effective way which allows students to experience more realistic business scenarios (Long, 2013). Teachers should be based on course content, combined with teaching practice to well design business scenario of moderate difficulty, such as airport reception, company visits, organizing meetings, marketing planning, job interviews, factory inventory audits, product complaint handling, insurance purchase, negotiations and so on. In the vivid business scenario, students are through personal simulation training to be familiar with various business sectors, which improve students' practical ability in use of language and business knowledge.
提供良好的学习职业生涯管理 Provide good learning career management
The investigation results of this study also showed that 62% of the respondents (36 respondents) said that they have a long-term demand to learn English; 63% of the respondents (37 respondents) believed that it was necessary for 66Speak to make a long-term planning for them to learn. Therefore, if 66Speak can be based on each customer’s goals and interests, as well as their own conditions to design long-term English language learning programs for them, it will better find and motivate customers’ individual needs to maintain long-term relationships between 66Speak and customers to reduce customer churn.#p#分页标题#e#
66Speak can be based on the following three steps to design long-term personalized learning plans for trainees in future. Firstly, it should understand trainees’ current English levels to understand their performance in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Secondly, staff of 66Speak should interview every trainee to understand their background information, including their future study plan, career plan, hobbies and so on. Thirdly, according to trainees’ different learning goals and current levels of English, the staff can make long-term planning for trainees on learning English (as below). Finally, it should be on a regular basis to understand trainees’ learning situation, make the appropriate adjustments to long-term learning plans based on trainees’ demands and views.
Trainees with different learning motivations Learning plan
Trainees who finish study during high school and have plans to study abroad (13-18 year old minors) Junior English Training → Training for IELTS (go to study in Commonwealth countries) or Training for TOEFL (go to North America to study)
Trainees who finish domestic undergraduate study and have plans to study abroad for master or doctoral degree (college students) Junior English Training → Training for CET→ Training for IELTS or TOEFL → Training for GRE
Trainees who finish all studies (high school students or college students) Junior English Training → Training for CET
Trainees who have demand for learning business English (trainees of office field) BEC Preliminary Level (being familiar with and mastering the use of English in a variety of business activities) → BEC Vantage Level (being able to use English in simple business activities) → BEC Higher Level (being able to use English in complex business activities)
Adults who learn English for interests Listening Training → Speaking Training→ Reading Training→ Writing Training
Trainees who have demand for preliminary study on English (children who are less than 12 years old) Cultivating children's interest in English → Cultivating children's sense of English language →Developing children's simple reading and writing skills
Chart 1: Learning Career Management
提高管理 Improve management
The questionnaire results in this study showed that 36% of (21) respondents left 66Speak because they were not satisfied with the communication, management, service provided by 66Speak. Thus the author will be from the following six aspects: performance appraisal system, communication with trainees, communication with parents and promotional aspect, customer relationship management and organizational structure optimization to bring forward improvements for 66Speak to better meet consumers’ personalized demand.#p#分页标题#e#
绩效评估系统 Performance appraisal system
Scientific performance appraisal system can both make appraisal work truly reflect each employee's work performance and promote staff motivation to play a good role. Thus, fair, reasonable and scientific performance appraisal system has a positive effect on promoting employee to improve their work to improve customer satisfaction. Firstly, the previous performance assessment indicators that 66Speak uses primarily inspects teacher attendance and timely completion of work, and trainees’ satisfaction is seldom inspected in the performance appraisal system. Secondly, 66Speak’s assessment in the past is mainly through qualitative criteria, the qualitative criteria are divided into six levels: preeminent, excellent, fine, ordinary, qualified and unqualified, to assess the teachers’ work performance. Such qualitative indicators lack objective evaluation criteria, which is not conducive to accurate evaluation on teachers’ work. Finally, 66Speak’s performance assessment results are not very closely linked with teachers’ performance pay, reengagement, for example, if a teacher’s performance evaluation result is poor, he can still get engagement, which is not conducive to encouraging the teacher to improve his work.
Hereinafter, the author is from the aspect of performance appraisal to bring forward recommendations on 66Speak’s future improvements.
(1) 职业分析Job analysis
Job analysis is an essential prerequisite for performance management, in future, 66Speak should make use of careful job analysis and investigation to understand the tasks, objectives, conditions, qualifications and other factors of each job to develop job description. Job description clearly allows staff to be aware of their responsibilities and understand the performance appraisal standards.
(2) 绩效指标Performance indicator
Tsai and Cheng (2012) note that key performance indicators (KPI) are quantitative indicators used to measure the job performance of staff, it is an important part of a performance plan, establishing a clear and practical KPI system is essential for good performance management. In future, 66Speak can build targeted KPI system, which contributes to a better assessment of teachers to ensure that the work of teachers can better meet the requirements of trainees’ to improve their satisfaction. Specific KPI are shown as follow.
KPI Description Proportion Assessment criteria
Renewal rate Renewal rate = amount of people who actually continue payment ÷ amount of people who should continue payment 25% 90%-99%: 90 points
80%-89: 80 points
and pro rata
Less than 10%:10 points
0%: zero point
Rate of satisfaction on teaching feedback
Trainees’ evaluation on teachers’ performance in the classroom#p#分页标题#e#
Rate of satisfaction on teaching feedback =(amount of trainees who are satisfied ÷ amount of all trainees)×
100%
25% 90%-99%: 90 points
80%-89: 80 points
and pro rata
Less than 10%:10 points
0%: zero point
0 is defined as a serious teaching accident, the company is entitled to dismiss the employee.
Timely completion of work Teachers complete the production of electronic teaching plans and upload them promptly. 15% Postponing a time will be deducted of 10 points.
Attendance Teachers’ timely attendance 15% Being late a time will be deducted of 10 points.
Satisfaction on communication Trainees’ evaluation on teacher performance outside the classroom
Rate of satisfaction on communication=(amount of trainees who are satisfied ÷ amount of all trainees)×100%
20% 90%-99%: 90 points
80%-89: 80 points
and pro rata
Less than 10%:10 points
0%: zero point
Chart 2: KPI
(3) Clear and reasonable assessment frequency
In future, 66Speak should maintain the performance evaluation towards teachers once a month, so that the company's management can keep abreast of the company's operating status, while at the end of each year, it should conduct a comprehensive annual assessment to summarize the operating conditions and provide a reference for the development strategy for the coming year.
(4) Result of appraisal
Result of appraisal as the main basis for allocation of performance pay, when there is deduction or increase of 10 points, it will relate to change of performance pay of $ 20. In addition, the assessment results will be linked with the staff’s year-end awards, reappointment and other appraisal.
3.3.2 Improve communication with trainees
The questionnaire results indicated that the respondents’ favorite tools in communication with 66Speak included QQ, WeChat, Microblog and e-mail. Then, in future 66Speak should make use of these communication tools to communicate with its trainees.
QQ and WeChat are instant messaging software most widely used in China now, their advantages lie in the ability to instantly communicate, strong privacy (Chen and Zhou, 2014). In future, 66Speak should primarily use QQ and WeChat in daily communication with trainees, for example, students may use them to bring their own proposals and views to 66Speak, and 66Speak can use them to send immediate feedback on trainees’ views and provide consulting services.
Microblog can disseminate information of a wide range, but the privacy is weak (Chen and Zhou, 2014). Thus 66Speak can not use Microblog to communicate information about the company's business as well as individual trainee’s achievement. In future, 66Speak should microblog daily, the main content can be sharing experiences and thoughts of learning English with trainees, or cheering everyone to learn English, or publishing English study and examination-related policies and information. Through Microblog, 66Speak can create a harmonious and mutually beneficial partnership between the company and trainees, and it also helps trainees to form a long-term communication habit with 66Speak, therefore ultimately helping to increase trainees’ loyalty for 66Speak.#p#分页标题#e#
As e-mail is very easy to be archived, while the confidentiality is better, e-mail is often used to send more formal content and information (Chen and Zhou, 2014). In future, 66Speak can mainly make use of e-mail to send more formal information and notifications to trainees, such as contracts signed between 66Speak and trainees, arrangement of training courses, training price lists, feedback and evaluation of trainees’ achievement, and so on. When each trainee has the intention to accept training provided by 66Speak, the training contracts, training courses, training price lists and other information should be sent to the trainee within 12 hours through e-mail. While 66Speak should send e-mail weekly to each trainee about feedback and assessment reports on their achievement.
Moreover, in the past, the administrative staff was part-time involved in the customer service work of 66Speak, as a result of the heavy burden of the work, the staff often failed to give customers timely reply. At the same time, the lack of appropriate expertise and support from other staff, the contents of reply provided by the administrative personnel failed to make customers satisfied. Therefore, Therefore, in future, 66Speak should choose full-time customer service staff to be responsible for using these tools to communicate with customers, while increasing support and cooperation, as well as relevant information in a timely manner provided by various departments for customer service work, which can on the one hand ensure a timely manner to communicate with trainees, on the other hand, customer service staff should also be trained accordingly to have more communication skills and expertise to ensure that they can better meet trainees’ demands in communication with them.
改善与父母的沟通 Improve communication with parents
In China, parents have very large influence on child's study, whether a child participates in training depends largely on the will the parents (Hou and Yang, 2013). Parents’ attaching importance to English learning indeed positively relates to children’s participating in training, if parents pay attention to English education, children will stick to learning; if parents are absent-minded, after learning of a certain period of time, children will be difficult to insist (Chen, 2012; Ma, 2012). Therefore, the management personnel of 66Speak should keep a good communication with parents, allowing teachers to keep at least 15 minutes of conversation with parents once a week at least to report each child's learning situation to their parents, as well as to exchange educational concepts and methods with parents, which will help 66Speak to guide parents to keep taking children’s learning English seriously and obtain the trust of parents for the company.
Teachers must pay close attention to absent children, under normal circumstances, within a month, if a child is absent for 3 classes, the rate of his possibility to continue the training will be reduced by 50%, because it shows that the child's enthusiasm for learning is not high or he is not satisfied with the teaching. Therefore, the usual rate of attendance can also predicate the future rate of children’s continuing the training course, thus if teachers find that a child has a case of absence, they should contact his parents or the child himself to understand the situation, so as to develop appropriate solutions. In addition, the first class after holiday is important, because only trainees and parents who attach great importance to English learning or training course will not forget the time for the class, thus for those who may forget the time for class, teachers must telephone them in the evening before the day for the class, so that it can effectively guarantee the attendance rate. The work of telephoning parents must be done at ordinary times to avoid making parents feel that they are informed as they need to pay for continuing training courses. Telephoning in normal times can relate to teaching philosophy, family education, etc., teachers must find ways to become their educational consultants, allowing them to be willing to discuss educational problems with teachers.#p#分页标题#e#
For those who have finished training of a certain period of time and do not pay for the training of the following period, they can also be notified by telephone to attend class of the new period for two times. As they may just be in hesitation, if they are invited to come to class, they are more likely to continue on it. The last lesson before continuing payment for the training of the next period is also very important, staff of 66Speak must find ways to make all children to complete the last course.
促销措施 Promotional measures
The questionnaire results showed that 44% of the respondents (22) left 66Speak because they found other more appropriate English training institutions. Although there is a large demand for English training in current China, the competition faced by English training institutions is very intense, in Ningbo, there are also more than 10 well-known English training institutions, thus for 66Speak, in order to retain customers, it must consider how to take measures to have comparative advantage to effectively reduce customer churn.
In order to compete for new trainees and retain old trainees, in future, 66Speak can use the following promotional tools and provide value-added services. For example, for those who have accepted training in 66Speak before, they can profit in terms of the price of training courses; for trainees who have a one-time enrollment of more than three months of training courses, they can enjoy a discount of up to 15%; a couple of old customers who renew training courses at the same time can also enjoy a more favorable group purchase price of getting up to 20% discount, these measures have a positive effect on retaining price-sensitive old customers. In addition, in order to provide effective assistance for those who aim to go abroad for study, as well as help them to eliminate all kinds of questions and confusion during the process of going abroad, 66Speak can make use of itself resources and channels in the English education industry to establish an information database for studying abroad, which is free for trainees to search, it can help them to consult the latest admission conditions and modalities of North American and European universities, information about the universities and scholarships. In addition, for trainees who need to pass certain English tests, 66Speak can promise them, if they can not pass the tests, they can accept next similar training courses unconditionally provided free by 66Speak. Typically, in customer classification and management, enterprises are in accordance with how much they can profit from certain customers to sort them, 80% of corporate profits are from 20% of customers, customers of this part are core customers, therefore in the future, 66Speak should focus on retaining those core customers. Generally speaking, trainees who can keep learning for more than two months are those who have more demand for learning and they are generally perseverant, thus they are more likely to continue their future course, which will bring 66Speak more revenue, so they should be core customers, in future, 66Speak can set up a club and make them members of the club to retain this part of customers. For those who join the club, they will not be limited to two-way communication between the company and members, they will be more encouraged to interact between members, the exchange among its members allows members to gain knowledge, experience, as well as a lot of new friends. In terms of club members, 66Speak will provide a more personalized and comprehensive value-added services, for example, if they are not satisfied with certain course or teacher, they can select other classes at any time; if they want to terminate the study, for any reason, they can ask for unconditional refund.#p#分页标题#e#
客户关系管理 Customer relationship management
In future, 66speak needs to implement personalized service strategy, which requires collecting a lot of customer information and analyzing the information correctly, then the use of effective technological means such as customer relationship management (CRM) system is an effective way to help 66Speak to achieve the goal successfully.
CRM is an enterprise’s use of information technology to achieve the automation of marketing, management, service, communication and other activities (Hou and Yang, 2013). Customer relationship management system can help companies to better understand customer demand to facilitate companies to provide customers with more personalized and attentive service, which shows companies’ sincerity for customers (Long, 2013). In addition, customer relationship management system can also provide the basis for a company's customer classification policy, as well as help a company to understand its marketing performance, the new situation of customer churn and circumstances of increased customers, so that it can make timely improvements and remedies for its marketing strategy (Wang, 2014). Currently, 66Speak fails to establish and use customer relationship management system, which will restrict the further development of 66Speak to provide better services to consumers.
EDUS educational administration system is one of the customer management systems most widely used in Chinese educational circles, it owns teaching management, financial management, marketing management modules, they can be applied to greatly improve work efficiency, optimize management to greatly improve competitiveness (as shown in the following Figure 3) (Wang, 2014). In future, 66Speak can make use of EDUS system to carry out its customer relationship management. In future, 66Speak should note the following aspects in building customer relationship management system. Firstly, it should pay attention to the training of all employees, so that the employees can quickly grasp the use of the system. Secondly, the use and promotion of customer relationship management system requires the participation of all employees, employees of various departments should timely input information and use the system to complete their own jobs, for example: 66Speak sales staff should enter the contact ways of customers in time, when customer information changes, they need to update customer information promptly; at the same time, the details of sales staff’s communication with customers should also be entered in a timely manner; the sales staff can also take advantage of customer relationship management system to achieve the following functions, such as helping sales staff to find ways to contact with trainees who do not renew training, which will help them to understand why the trainees do not choose renewal and prompt the trainees to accept training provided by 66Speak again through communication with the trainees; it also facilitates 66Speak managers’ inquiry and carrying out statistics of the sales staff’s sales achievement. Teachers can make use of CRM to understand customer information, understanding customer needs and their learning situation and learning progress in 66Speak, so that teachers can develop targeted teaching programs to facilitate the teachers to take proper measures to retain trainees at the end of each learning cycle. Financial staff should input prices for training courses and discount information in a timely manner to facilitate sales personnel to provide relevant information in a timely manner to trainees to promote their renewals as soon as possible. When trainees fee for training courses, the system can directly print bills, making payment process more convenient. Finally, with the widespread use of wireless mobile, 66Speak should add mobile applications module in the CRM system, so that customers can have timely access to training course information, course promotion information, news relating to 66Speak via phone, which will strengthen the ties between 66Speak and its customers.#p#分页标题#e#
优化组织结构 Optimization of organizational structure
To implement personalized service strategy in future, it may relate to the transformation of 66Speak’s existing workflow, the company's original linear organizational structure may have a impediment towards the transformation process of the personalized service strategy, and therefore there is the need for 66Speak to optimize its original organization structure.
Organizational structure usually refers to corporate decision-making power distribution system, as well as division of labor system within an enterprise (Wang, 2013). Organizational structure matched with a company's strategic objectives, element resource can help to maximize the enterprise’s resources, improving the efficiency of implementation of decision-making and enhancing internal coordination effect within the enterprise to get better competitive advantage for the enterprise (Li, 2014). Organizational structure of companies is usually divided into four types: linear structure, functional structure, division system structure, flat structure (Wang, 2013). Organizational structure of a linear system has a vertical leadership structure, the subordinate units generally accept only the instruction of direct leader. Functional structure is characterized by that in addition to accepting instruction of direct leader, the subordinate units are also leaded by other departments. Division organizational structure is characterized by that an enterprise is divided into several divisions, each divisions do not fully have budget, oversight and personnel decisions rights, but they enjoy independent management right and accounting alone. Flat organizational structure means that by reducing administrative levels, reduction of redundant personnel, it establishes a compact, capable organizational structure. Advantages of flat organizational structure lie in strengthening internal communication and mobilizing the creativity of staff to more quickly react to changes in consumer demand (Wang, 2013).
In the past, 66Speak adopts a linear organizational structure (as shown in Figure 4), this organizational structure is disadvantageous for 66Speak’ adopting personalized service strategy in future. Firstly, personalized service strategy emphasizes collaboration of various departments in order to provide customers with timely, personalized service, and in a linear organizational structure, each employee directly accept instructions from the department head, and there is inadequate transverse communication with staff of other department, which is obviously not conducive to cooperation between employees of various departments. For instance, retaining trainees needs teachers, marketing personnel, customer service personnel and other employees to communicate and cooperate with each other, but in 66Speak linear organizational structure in the past, the company does not create a good environment for staff of various departments to communication with each other, which is obviously not conducive to carrying out work of retaining trainees. Secondly, in a linear organizational structure, employees accept direct leadership of a manager, staff can not get sufficient authority and support, which is not conducive to making timely response to changes in customer and market demands. For example, if a trainee puts forward a requirement towards the company, but the customer service personnel needs to give a reply by asking for instruction from superiors, which is not conducive to improving customer satisfaction. In this study, the author believes that based on its management status and the personalized service strategy 66Speak will carry out in future to suggest that 66Speak can adjust its organizational structure and change it into a flat organizational structure in future. The organizational structure adjusted is shown as Figure 5. The advantage of this adjustment lies in that, it will help to strengthen the communication and coordination of various departments; it makes the management elastic, employees can obtain sufficient authorization, which is in favor of various departments to respond to market changes in a timely manner to facilitate the successful implementation of personalized service strategy.#p#分页标题#e#
66Speak个性化服务程序实现成本和评估计划程序 66Speak personalized service program implementation costs and evaluation scheme procedures
成本Costs
Implementation of 66Speak personalized service program requires the company to invest some funds as a support, specific investment is shown as below. Therefore, the author believes that although the implementation of the program in the short term might lead to increased administrative costs, these increased costs will help improve customer loyalty, reduce customer churn and maintain long-term cooperation between the company and their customers. Considering from a long-term view, the implementation of the program will help the company to achieve a more sustainable development.
Item Costs
Recruiting IELTS, SAT, TOEFL, BEC teachers $ 6,000
Purchasing customer relationship management software $ 1,800
Providing value-added services (such as providing consultancy services, establishment information database for studying abroad, etc.) $ 500
Increasing a full-time customer service staff $ 500
Re-planning of the company's performance appraisal system and optimization of organizational structure $ 1,000
Staff training (about performance assessment, learning career planning for trainees, communication, promotion, etc.) $ 1,000
Total $ 10,850
Chart 3: Costs for 66Speak Personalized Service Program
评估方案Evaluation scheme
Under normal circumstances, a good evaluation scheme is very important for the success of an enterprise’s strategy. The importance of an evaluation scheme not only lies in that it provides an assessment basis for whether a corporate strategy achieves the desired objectives, but also rests in that an evaluation scheme helps a company's management and employees to understand the significance of implementation of corporate strategy, how resource is allocated, the focus of implementation of corporate strategy, the objectives of corporate strategy, so that the establishment of a evaluation scheme is important for future success of 66Speak’s personalized service strategy. The author will be based on Kim, Suh and Hwany’s (2003) research results to design a evaluation scheme for 66Speak’s personalized service program, the evaluation scheme mainly consists of four parts, namely, customer information, customer interaction, customer satisfaction, customer value, etc. The specific content is shown as the following Table 3.
Module Index Significance Specific Measures
自7月以来,66口语离开的客户的数量达到了88个。作者是通过打电话来确定的,有58个客户愿意接受问卷调查。问卷发放和收回的电子邮件。在回收问卷,47个副本有效,有效率为81%。问卷调查的内容包括三个部分。 第一部分介绍了问卷调查的目的。第二部分描述了受访者对于66口语的评价,第三部分调查受访者的背景信息。
问卷的内容如下所示。
问题1: 你选择66口语的原因是什么?(多项选择)数量的受访者选择答案
公司信息和问题 Company information and problems
公司信息 Company information
66Speak was an online English training institution established in December 2014. It has always adhered to "warm, pragmatic, altruism," core values and focused on the integration of quality educational resources and advanced Internet technology to provide services to English learners. 66Speak breaks traditional teaching modes, by emphasizing oral language, focusing on communication, taking English as a skill to train students, so that students can overcome the difficulties of fearing to speak and they can be fluent in using English in conversation. The teachers in 66Speak come from the United States, Britain, Australia and they all have teacher certification, they provide students with most professional service. 66Speak provides service to the participants by the network, students can make an appointment at any time to enjoy quality service without leaving home. Meanwhile, the price of training courses provided by 66Speak is the most favorable among similar training courses.
问卷结果Questionnaire results
Since July, the number of defecting customers achieved 88 in 66Speak, the author was through phoning to determine that there were 58 customers who were willing to accept questionnaire survey. The questionnaires were distributed and taken back in the form of e-mail. Among the recovered questionnaires, 47 copies were valid, the effective rate was 81%. Contents of the questionnaire include three parts. The first part introduces the purpose of the questionnaire survey. The second part describes respondents’ views on 66Speak, and the third part investigates the background information of respondents. Contents of the questionnaire are shown as follows.#p#分页标题#e#
Question 1: What was the reason for your choosing 66Speak? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
Improving oral English 22
Experiencing authentic English education and foreign cultures 11
Improving English test scores 31
Improving ability in using English to meet work needs 28
Other reasons 9
The survey results showed that 22 people chose 66Speak to improve their oral English; 11 people’s reason was to experience authentic English education and foreign cultures; 31 people were for improving their English test scores; 28 people chose “improving ability in using English to meet work needs; 9 people chose other reasons.
Question 2: What was the reason for your leaving 66Speak? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
The training failed to help me to achieve the intended purpose. 31
I have achieved the purpose through training. 17
I was not satisfied with the communication, management and service provided by 66Speak. 21
I found other better training institutions. 8
Other reasons 9
The survey results indicated, 31 people left 66Speak, as the training provided by 66Speak failed to help their to achieve the intended purpose; 17 people left after they achieved their intended purpose by the training; 21 people left because they were not satisfied with the communication, management and service provided by 66Speak; 8 people left to go to other better training institutions; 9 people left for other reasons.
Question 3: Which English test will you intend to participate in future? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
CET 31
IELTS 24
BEC 21
GRE 11
TOEFL 22
Other tests 5
The survey results showed that 31 people chose CET; 24 people chose IELTS; 21 people chose BEC; 11 people chose GRE; 22 people chose TOEFL; 5 people chose other tests.
Question 4: If there are, do you like the training courses provided by 66Speak for the above-mentioned tests? Number of respondents who chose the answer
Yes 41
No 5
I don’t care. 1
41 respondents showed that they liked the training courses, a respondent did not care about it, 5 respondents did not like it.
Question 5: Is it necessary for 66Speak to interact and exchange with participants more frequently? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
Yes 44
No 1
Indifferent 2
44 respondents expressed that “it is necessary”; 2 respondents showed that “it is indifferent”; a respondent believed that “it is not necessary”.#p#分页标题#e#
Question 6: What way do you like in communication with 66Speak? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
QQ 21
WeChat 35
Microblog 33
Face to face 21
Phone 14
Other ways 11
21 people said that they liked communication through QQ; 35 people chose WeChat; 33 people chose Microblog; 21 people liked face to face communication; 14 people chose phone; 11 people chose other ways.
Question 7: Will you learn English long? (Multiple Choice) Number of respondents who chose the answer
Yes 36
No 3
No sure. 7
36 respondents chose “Yes”; 3 respondents chose “No”; 7 respondents chose “not sure”.
37 respondents chose “Yes”; 7 respondents chose “indifferent”; 3 respondents chose “No”.
Question 8: Is it necessary for 66Sppeak for students learning English to do future planning? Number of respondents who chose the answer
Yes 37
No 3
Indifferent 7
问题 Problems
The primary problem that 66Speak faces is that the training courses set can not meet the customer's individual needs. The first and foremost characteristic of 66Speak is through English native speakers to attract customers to accept training provided by 66Speak. Living teaching methods, authentic and pure English accent of native speakers’, as well as Chinese students’ goodwill and trust for native speakers, in the early days when 66Speak was established, it did attract a lot of students to accept training. However, according to the survey in this study, Chinese people’s involvement in training is based on the following motivations. First, 53% of the respondents said that they hoped to improve their English to meet the needs of academic achievement to lay the foundation for future education, employment, study abroad, TOEFL, IELTS, CET, GRE were such kinds of tests that they wanted to pass through participating in English training. Second, 48% of the respondents wanted to improve their English language proficiency to lay the foundation for their own promotion and participating in business activities, BEC was such kind of test to help them achieve the purpose. Third, 19% of people participated in English training for their interest in English and Western cultures. Overall, the rate of people who participate in English training because of the first and second reasons has reached about 81%, while only about 11% of people involved in training because of the third reason. 66Speak hires foreign teachers, which can give students a whole new learning experience, they can teach students authentic English, as well as Western cultures, ideas, to satisfy the above-mentioned third demand of students’. However, due to the lack of pertinence in teaching, its training mainly confines to speaking, listening, and it is less related to the above-mentioned tests, it does not provide a targeted one-stop service, so the training can not meet the above-mentioned first and second needs of students’. The survey results in this study proved that 54% of the respondents left 66Speak, as the training provided failed to help them to achieve their intended purpose, this result verified the above statement. Thus, although many students chose to accept training provided by 66Speak because of the English native speakers, after the novelty of contacting with the foreign teachers, most of them chose to leave 66Speak, because they thought that their needs were not met.#p#分页标题#e#
The minor problem that 66Speak faces is that it fails to effective find and encourage the individual needs of students, nor does it take customers as long-term partners, but as objects of a transaction. The survey results in this study proved that 29% of the respondents (17 respondents) left 66Spea after getting help through training provided to achieve their intended purpose. Generally speaking, being proficient in using a language needs students to make long-time efforts, the survey results in this study have proved 62% of the respondents (36 respondents) have long-term needs for learning English. Short-term training can only help students to achieve certain learning objectives in a short term, to ultimately achieve their ultimate goal of learning needs each student to learn a lot of knowledge and skills (Li, 2014), Therefore, there are many potential needs of students that requires training institutions to develop. For various reasons, most of the participants are still not very familiar with how to plan their own personalized English learning career in accordance with their own purposes. The survey results in this study showed that 63% of the respondents (37 respondents) believed that it was necessary for 66Speak to design a long-term learning planning for them. Thus, if an English training institution can be based on each student's goals, their actual levels, interests, hobbies and other conditions to design long-term English language learning programs for them, which can better find and motivate the individual needs of students’, and maintain long-term relationships with students to reduce customer loss. However, in the past, 66Speak ignored this problem and lost the opportunity to retain customers of this part.
The last problem existing in 66Speak is that the communication, management, service provided by 66Speak fails to satisfy consumers. The survey results also showed that 36% of the respondents (21 people) were not satisfied with communication, management, service provided by 66Speak. Students often have many questions that need to communicate with teachers or management personnel in learning process, while training institutions should also take the initiative to communicate regularly with students to understand their individual needs, assessing their study situation and providing timely feedback, this frequent communication not only helps to improve the consumption experience of students, but also helps to strengthen the feelings and contact between the two sides to improve students' loyalty to reduce student loss. However, in the past, 66Speak has many deficiencies in terms of communication with students, for example, it failed to provided timely feedback for students, it rarely took the initiative to communicate with students, nor did it assess each student's learning situation and provide timely feedback, which was obviously not conducive to retaining trainees.
个性化服务策略 Personalized service strategy
调整培训课程 Adjust training courses#p#分页标题#e#
调整培训内容 Adjust training content
Understanding individual needs of consumers and satisfying them are what a modern enterprise focuses in marketing management, in order to achieve a win-win result between customers and itself (Hang, 2009). The questionnaire results in this study showed that 59 person / times chose 66Speak to improve their achievement in English examination, so as to get good grades in order to obtain further education and promotion opportunities for a raise. 31 respondents explained that they participate in the training provided by 66Speak, as they aimed to pass CET. 24 respondents have the plan to pass IELTS. 21 respondents hoped to participate in the training for BEG. 22 respondents wanted to attend the training for TOEFL. In the past, 66Speak has more emphasis on training customers’ ability of using daily English, they failed to be targeted to help customers to improve their scores in exams. In future, 66Speak should provide customers with one-stop service, as well as the training aiming at helping customers to pass relevant exams and consultancy services. Providing one-stop value-added services bring consumers a better service experience, at the same time, it will increase the company's revenue to achieve a win-win result.
In future, 66Speak should take helping students to pass CET, BEC, IELTS, TOEFL as the purpose, taking CET syllabus as a standard to set training courses, from listening, speaking, reading and writing, these four aspects to set up training courses. From the aspect of listening, it should help students to be familiar with the patterns and rules of past listening tests, providing suitable material to practice listening and encouraging students’ initiative to do long-term listening exercises. Considering from reading, it should rely on past tests to explain core syntax, core vocabulary, it should increase students’ understanding of background information about reading materials to improve their reading ability and problem-solving skills. In terms of speaking, it should help students to be familiar with the oral test mode, training students’ ability of using English to discuss and express their views, so as to constantly improve their skills of speaking English. It can also help students to master vocabulary, sentence patterns and kinds of questions which are often used in the tests, by cultivating their proactive communication skills to enable students to get a high score in the tests to truly improve their speaking skills. From the perspective of writing, it should help students to understand the basic theoretical knowledge of English writing, namely, the basic theoretical knowledge of language writing, such as format, wording and phrasing, rhetoric, sentence, etc., and to help students to understand topics of past writing tests, methods and formats of writing different types of articles, as well as to guide students to accumulate writing materials.
Also, it is noted that business English takes adapting to the language requirements in workplace as the purpose, the content covers all aspects of business activities (Wei, 2016). Considering the training content, in future, 66Speak should be based on listening, speaking, reading and writing standards required by BEC to arrange training, based on improve candidates’ BEC scores to set training courses, in addition to teaching them necessary vocabulary, as well as skills of using English language in sign contracts, negotiations, writing business letters and other business aspects, they should also teach students the Western concept of enterprise management, work psychology, business practices and even how to deal with foreigners, how to cooperate with foreigners, ways and means of work with foreigners, as well as living habits of foreigners.#p#分页标题#e#
调整训练方法 Adjust training methods
In future, the training provided by 66Speak aiming at CET has the following characteristics in terms of teaching methods.
First, it will implement one-to-one, interactive teaching, learners can accept guidance and exchanges by teachers with rich teaching experience relating to the CET.
Second, it will be based on CET syllabus to design targeted teaching plan to mainly carry out training aiming at four kinds of questions (reading comprehension, vocabulary and structure, error correction, writing) involved in CET to ensure that students can improve CET scores in a short period of time.
Third, the teachers will provide targeted instruction, each course will be provided by different teachers to ensure high quality teaching.
In addition, in terms of business English training, in future, 66Speak can make use of case-teaching method. In process of teaching knowledge, it is through specific case to explain a theory in simple terms to guide students to take the initiative to analyze and think, so as to improve students' interest, deepening their understanding of the theory, in order to help them to better master professional knowledge (Hang, 2009). The target of business English courses is not only to equip students with basic business theory, more importantly, it trains students’ ability in practice (Wei, 2015). Thus in future, 66Speak can make use of a situational approach, teachers should be possible to design a variety of business environments, training students’ ability to freely and accurately use English to solve practical problems in business scene. Scene simulation is a relatively convenient and effective way which allows students to experience more realistic business scenarios (Long, 2013). Teachers should be based on course content, combined with teaching practice to well design business scenario of moderate difficulty, such as airport reception, company visits, organizing meetings, marketing planning, job interviews, factory inventory audits, product complaint handling, insurance purchase, negotiations and so on. In the vivid business scenario, students are through personal simulation training to be familiar with various business sectors, which improve students' practical ability in use of language and business knowledge.
提供良好的学习职业生涯管理 Provide good learning career management
The investigation results of this study also showed that 62% of the respondents (36 respondents) said that they have a long-term demand to learn English; 63% of the respondents (37 respondents) believed that it was necessary for 66Speak to make a long-term planning for them to learn. Therefore, if 66Speak can be based on each customer’s goals and interests, as well as their own conditions to design long-term English language learning programs for them, it will better find and motivate customers’ individual needs to maintain long-term relationships between 66Speak and customers to reduce customer churn.#p#分页标题#e#
66Speak can be based on the following three steps to design long-term personalized learning plans for trainees in future. Firstly, it should understand trainees’ current English levels to understand their performance in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Secondly, staff of 66Speak should interview every trainee to understand their background information, including their future study plan, career plan, hobbies and so on. Thirdly, according to trainees’ different learning goals and current levels of English, the staff can make long-term planning for trainees on learning English (as below). Finally, it should be on a regular basis to understand trainees’ learning situation, make the appropriate adjustments to long-term learning plans based on trainees’ demands and views.
Trainees with different learning motivations Learning plan
Trainees who finish study during high school and have plans to study abroad (13-18 year old minors) Junior English Training → Training for IELTS (go to study in Commonwealth countries) or Training for TOEFL (go to North America to study)
Trainees who finish domestic undergraduate study and have plans to study abroad for master or doctoral degree (college students) Junior English Training → Training for CET→ Training for IELTS or TOEFL → Training for GRE
Trainees who finish all studies (high school students or college students) Junior English Training → Training for CET
Trainees who have demand for learning business English (trainees of office field) BEC Preliminary Level (being familiar with and mastering the use of English in a variety of business activities) → BEC Vantage Level (being able to use English in simple business activities) → BEC Higher Level (being able to use English in complex business activities)
Adults who learn English for interests Listening Training → Speaking Training→ Reading Training→ Writing Training
Trainees who have demand for preliminary study on English (children who are less than 12 years old) Cultivating children's interest in English → Cultivating children's sense of English language →Developing children's simple reading and writing skills
Chart 1: Learning Career Management
提高管理 Improve management
The questionnaire results in this study showed that 36% of (21) respondents left 66Speak because they were not satisfied with the communication, management, service provided by 66Speak. Thus the author will be from the following six aspects: performance appraisal system, communication with trainees, communication with parents and promotional aspect, customer relationship management and organizational structure optimization to bring forward improvements for 66Speak to better meet consumers’ personalized demand.#p#分页标题#e#
绩效评估系统 Performance appraisal system
Scientific performance appraisal system can both make appraisal work truly reflect each employee's work performance and promote staff motivation to play a good role. Thus, fair, reasonable and scientific performance appraisal system has a positive effect on promoting employee to improve their work to improve customer satisfaction. Firstly, the previous performance assessment indicators that 66Speak uses primarily inspects teacher attendance and timely completion of work, and trainees’ satisfaction is seldom inspected in the performance appraisal system. Secondly, 66Speak’s assessment in the past is mainly through qualitative criteria, the qualitative criteria are divided into six levels: preeminent, excellent, fine, ordinary, qualified and unqualified, to assess the teachers’ work performance. Such qualitative indicators lack objective evaluation criteria, which is not conducive to accurate evaluation on teachers’ work. Finally, 66Speak’s performance assessment results are not very closely linked with teachers’ performance pay, reengagement, for example, if a teacher’s performance evaluation result is poor, he can still get engagement, which is not conducive to encouraging the teacher to improve his work.
Hereinafter, the author is from the aspect of performance appraisal to bring forward recommendations on 66Speak’s future improvements.
(1) 职业分析Job analysis
Job analysis is an essential prerequisite for performance management, in future, 66Speak should make use of careful job analysis and investigation to understand the tasks, objectives, conditions, qualifications and other factors of each job to develop job description. Job description clearly allows staff to be aware of their responsibilities and understand the performance appraisal standards.
(2) 绩效指标Performance indicator
Tsai and Cheng (2012) note that key performance indicators (KPI) are quantitative indicators used to measure the job performance of staff, it is an important part of a performance plan, establishing a clear and practical KPI system is essential for good performance management. In future, 66Speak can build targeted KPI system, which contributes to a better assessment of teachers to ensure that the work of teachers can better meet the requirements of trainees’ to improve their satisfaction. Specific KPI are shown as follow.
KPI Description Proportion Assessment criteria
Renewal rate Renewal rate = amount of people who actually continue payment ÷ amount of people who should continue payment 25% 90%-99%: 90 points
80%-89: 80 points
and pro rata
Less than 10%:10 points
0%: zero point
Rate of satisfaction on teaching feedback
Trainees’ evaluation on teachers’ performance in the classroom#p#分页标题#e#
Rate of satisfaction on teaching feedback =(amount of trainees who are satisfied ÷ amount of all trainees)×
100%
25% 90%-99%: 90 points
80%-89: 80 points
and pro rata
Less than 10%:10 points
0%: zero point
0 is defined as a serious teaching accident, the company is entitled to dismiss the employee.
Timely completion of work Teachers complete the production of electronic teaching plans and upload them promptly. 15% Postponing a time will be deducted of 10 points.
Attendance Teachers’ timely attendance 15% Being late a time will be deducted of 10 points.
Satisfaction on communication Trainees’ evaluation on teacher performance outside the classroom
Rate of satisfaction on communication=(amount of trainees who are satisfied ÷ amount of all trainees)×100%
20% 90%-99%: 90 points
80%-89: 80 points
and pro rata
Less than 10%:10 points
0%: zero point
Chart 2: KPI
(3) Clear and reasonable assessment frequency
In future, 66Speak should maintain the performance evaluation towards teachers once a month, so that the company's management can keep abreast of the company's operating status, while at the end of each year, it should conduct a comprehensive annual assessment to summarize the operating conditions and provide a reference for the development strategy for the coming year.
(4) Result of appraisal
Result of appraisal as the main basis for allocation of performance pay, when there is deduction or increase of 10 points, it will relate to change of performance pay of $ 20. In addition, the assessment results will be linked with the staff’s year-end awards, reappointment and other appraisal.
3.3.2 Improve communication with trainees
The questionnaire results indicated that the respondents’ favorite tools in communication with 66Speak included QQ, WeChat, Microblog and e-mail. Then, in future 66Speak should make use of these communication tools to communicate with its trainees.
QQ and WeChat are instant messaging software most widely used in China now, their advantages lie in the ability to instantly communicate, strong privacy (Chen and Zhou, 2014). In future, 66Speak should primarily use QQ and WeChat in daily communication with trainees, for example, students may use them to bring their own proposals and views to 66Speak, and 66Speak can use them to send immediate feedback on trainees’ views and provide consulting services.
Microblog can disseminate information of a wide range, but the privacy is weak (Chen and Zhou, 2014). Thus 66Speak can not use Microblog to communicate information about the company's business as well as individual trainee’s achievement. In future, 66Speak should microblog daily, the main content can be sharing experiences and thoughts of learning English with trainees, or cheering everyone to learn English, or publishing English study and examination-related policies and information. Through Microblog, 66Speak can create a harmonious and mutually beneficial partnership between the company and trainees, and it also helps trainees to form a long-term communication habit with 66Speak, therefore ultimately helping to increase trainees’ loyalty for 66Speak.#p#分页标题#e#
As e-mail is very easy to be archived, while the confidentiality is better, e-mail is often used to send more formal content and information (Chen and Zhou, 2014). In future, 66Speak can mainly make use of e-mail to send more formal information and notifications to trainees, such as contracts signed between 66Speak and trainees, arrangement of training courses, training price lists, feedback and evaluation of trainees’ achievement, and so on. When each trainee has the intention to accept training provided by 66Speak, the training contracts, training courses, training price lists and other information should be sent to the trainee within 12 hours through e-mail. While 66Speak should send e-mail weekly to each trainee about feedback and assessment reports on their achievement.
Moreover, in the past, the administrative staff was part-time involved in the customer service work of 66Speak, as a result of the heavy burden of the work, the staff often failed to give customers timely reply. At the same time, the lack of appropriate expertise and support from other staff, the contents of reply provided by the administrative personnel failed to make customers satisfied. Therefore, Therefore, in future, 66Speak should choose full-time customer service staff to be responsible for using these tools to communicate with customers, while increasing support and cooperation, as well as relevant information in a timely manner provided by various departments for customer service work, which can on the one hand ensure a timely manner to communicate with trainees, on the other hand, customer service staff should also be trained accordingly to have more communication skills and expertise to ensure that they can better meet trainees’ demands in communication with them.
改善与父母的沟通 Improve communication with parents
In China, parents have very large influence on child's study, whether a child participates in training depends largely on the will the parents (Hou and Yang, 2013). Parents’ attaching importance to English learning indeed positively relates to children’s participating in training, if parents pay attention to English education, children will stick to learning; if parents are absent-minded, after learning of a certain period of time, children will be difficult to insist (Chen, 2012; Ma, 2012). Therefore, the management personnel of 66Speak should keep a good communication with parents, allowing teachers to keep at least 15 minutes of conversation with parents once a week at least to report each child's learning situation to their parents, as well as to exchange educational concepts and methods with parents, which will help 66Speak to guide parents to keep taking children’s learning English seriously and obtain the trust of parents for the company.
Teachers must pay close attention to absent children, under normal circumstances, within a month, if a child is absent for 3 classes, the rate of his possibility to continue the training will be reduced by 50%, because it shows that the child's enthusiasm for learning is not high or he is not satisfied with the teaching. Therefore, the usual rate of attendance can also predicate the future rate of children’s continuing the training course, thus if teachers find that a child has a case of absence, they should contact his parents or the child himself to understand the situation, so as to develop appropriate solutions. In addition, the first class after holiday is important, because only trainees and parents who attach great importance to English learning or training course will not forget the time for the class, thus for those who may forget the time for class, teachers must telephone them in the evening before the day for the class, so that it can effectively guarantee the attendance rate. The work of telephoning parents must be done at ordinary times to avoid making parents feel that they are informed as they need to pay for continuing training courses. Telephoning in normal times can relate to teaching philosophy, family education, etc., teachers must find ways to become their educational consultants, allowing them to be willing to discuss educational problems with teachers.#p#分页标题#e#
For those who have finished training of a certain period of time and do not pay for the training of the following period, they can also be notified by telephone to attend class of the new period for two times. As they may just be in hesitation, if they are invited to come to class, they are more likely to continue on it. The last lesson before continuing payment for the training of the next period is also very important, staff of 66Speak must find ways to make all children to complete the last course.
促销措施 Promotional measures
The questionnaire results showed that 44% of the respondents (22) left 66Speak because they found other more appropriate English training institutions. Although there is a large demand for English training in current China, the competition faced by English training institutions is very intense, in Ningbo, there are also more than 10 well-known English training institutions, thus for 66Speak, in order to retain customers, it must consider how to take measures to have comparative advantage to effectively reduce customer churn.
In order to compete for new trainees and retain old trainees, in future, 66Speak can use the following promotional tools and provide value-added services. For example, for those who have accepted training in 66Speak before, they can profit in terms of the price of training courses; for trainees who have a one-time enrollment of more than three months of training courses, they can enjoy a discount of up to 15%; a couple of old customers who renew training courses at the same time can also enjoy a more favorable group purchase price of getting up to 20% discount, these measures have a positive effect on retaining price-sensitive old customers. In addition, in order to provide effective assistance for those who aim to go abroad for study, as well as help them to eliminate all kinds of questions and confusion during the process of going abroad, 66Speak can make use of itself resources and channels in the English education industry to establish an information database for studying abroad, which is free for trainees to search, it can help them to consult the latest admission conditions and modalities of North American and European universities, information about the universities and scholarships. In addition, for trainees who need to pass certain English tests, 66Speak can promise them, if they can not pass the tests, they can accept next similar training courses unconditionally provided free by 66Speak. Typically, in customer classification and management, enterprises are in accordance with how much they can profit from certain customers to sort them, 80% of corporate profits are from 20% of customers, customers of this part are core customers, therefore in the future, 66Speak should focus on retaining those core customers. Generally speaking, trainees who can keep learning for more than two months are those who have more demand for learning and they are generally perseverant, thus they are more likely to continue their future course, which will bring 66Speak more revenue, so they should be core customers, in future, 66Speak can set up a club and make them members of the club to retain this part of customers. For those who join the club, they will not be limited to two-way communication between the company and members, they will be more encouraged to interact between members, the exchange among its members allows members to gain knowledge, experience, as well as a lot of new friends. In terms of club members, 66Speak will provide a more personalized and comprehensive value-added services, for example, if they are not satisfied with certain course or teacher, they can select other classes at any time; if they want to terminate the study, for any reason, they can ask for unconditional refund.#p#分页标题#e#
客户关系管理 Customer relationship management
In future, 66speak needs to implement personalized service strategy, which requires collecting a lot of customer information and analyzing the information correctly, then the use of effective technological means such as customer relationship management (CRM) system is an effective way to help 66Speak to achieve the goal successfully.
CRM is an enterprise’s use of information technology to achieve the automation of marketing, management, service, communication and other activities (Hou and Yang, 2013). Customer relationship management system can help companies to better understand customer demand to facilitate companies to provide customers with more personalized and attentive service, which shows companies’ sincerity for customers (Long, 2013). In addition, customer relationship management system can also provide the basis for a company's customer classification policy, as well as help a company to understand its marketing performance, the new situation of customer churn and circumstances of increased customers, so that it can make timely improvements and remedies for its marketing strategy (Wang, 2014). Currently, 66Speak fails to establish and use customer relationship management system, which will restrict the further development of 66Speak to provide better services to consumers.
EDUS educational administration system is one of the customer management systems most widely used in Chinese educational circles, it owns teaching management, financial management, marketing management modules, they can be applied to greatly improve work efficiency, optimize management to greatly improve competitiveness (as shown in the following Figure 3) (Wang, 2014). In future, 66Speak can make use of EDUS system to carry out its customer relationship management. In future, 66Speak should note the following aspects in building customer relationship management system. Firstly, it should pay attention to the training of all employees, so that the employees can quickly grasp the use of the system. Secondly, the use and promotion of customer relationship management system requires the participation of all employees, employees of various departments should timely input information and use the system to complete their own jobs, for example: 66Speak sales staff should enter the contact ways of customers in time, when customer information changes, they need to update customer information promptly; at the same time, the details of sales staff’s communication with customers should also be entered in a timely manner; the sales staff can also take advantage of customer relationship management system to achieve the following functions, such as helping sales staff to find ways to contact with trainees who do not renew training, which will help them to understand why the trainees do not choose renewal and prompt the trainees to accept training provided by 66Speak again through communication with the trainees; it also facilitates 66Speak managers’ inquiry and carrying out statistics of the sales staff’s sales achievement. Teachers can make use of CRM to understand customer information, understanding customer needs and their learning situation and learning progress in 66Speak, so that teachers can develop targeted teaching programs to facilitate the teachers to take proper measures to retain trainees at the end of each learning cycle. Financial staff should input prices for training courses and discount information in a timely manner to facilitate sales personnel to provide relevant information in a timely manner to trainees to promote their renewals as soon as possible. When trainees fee for training courses, the system can directly print bills, making payment process more convenient. Finally, with the widespread use of wireless mobile, 66Speak should add mobile applications module in the CRM system, so that customers can have timely access to training course information, course promotion information, news relating to 66Speak via phone, which will strengthen the ties between 66Speak and its customers.#p#分页标题#e#
优化组织结构 Optimization of organizational structure
To implement personalized service strategy in future, it may relate to the transformation of 66Speak’s existing workflow, the company's original linear organizational structure may have a impediment towards the transformation process of the personalized service strategy, and therefore there is the need for 66Speak to optimize its original organization structure.
Organizational structure usually refers to corporate decision-making power distribution system, as well as division of labor system within an enterprise (Wang, 2013). Organizational structure matched with a company's strategic objectives, element resource can help to maximize the enterprise’s resources, improving the efficiency of implementation of decision-making and enhancing internal coordination effect within the enterprise to get better competitive advantage for the enterprise (Li, 2014). Organizational structure of companies is usually divided into four types: linear structure, functional structure, division system structure, flat structure (Wang, 2013). Organizational structure of a linear system has a vertical leadership structure, the subordinate units generally accept only the instruction of direct leader. Functional structure is characterized by that in addition to accepting instruction of direct leader, the subordinate units are also leaded by other departments. Division organizational structure is characterized by that an enterprise is divided into several divisions, each divisions do not fully have budget, oversight and personnel decisions rights, but they enjoy independent management right and accounting alone. Flat organizational structure means that by reducing administrative levels, reduction of redundant personnel, it establishes a compact, capable organizational structure. Advantages of flat organizational structure lie in strengthening internal communication and mobilizing the creativity of staff to more quickly react to changes in consumer demand (Wang, 2013).
In the past, 66Speak adopts a linear organizational structure (as shown in Figure 4), this organizational structure is disadvantageous for 66Speak’ adopting personalized service strategy in future. Firstly, personalized service strategy emphasizes collaboration of various departments in order to provide customers with timely, personalized service, and in a linear organizational structure, each employee directly accept instructions from the department head, and there is inadequate transverse communication with staff of other department, which is obviously not conducive to cooperation between employees of various departments. For instance, retaining trainees needs teachers, marketing personnel, customer service personnel and other employees to communicate and cooperate with each other, but in 66Speak linear organizational structure in the past, the company does not create a good environment for staff of various departments to communication with each other, which is obviously not conducive to carrying out work of retaining trainees. Secondly, in a linear organizational structure, employees accept direct leadership of a manager, staff can not get sufficient authority and support, which is not conducive to making timely response to changes in customer and market demands. For example, if a trainee puts forward a requirement towards the company, but the customer service personnel needs to give a reply by asking for instruction from superiors, which is not conducive to improving customer satisfaction. In this study, the author believes that based on its management status and the personalized service strategy 66Speak will carry out in future to suggest that 66Speak can adjust its organizational structure and change it into a flat organizational structure in future. The organizational structure adjusted is shown as Figure 5. The advantage of this adjustment lies in that, it will help to strengthen the communication and coordination of various departments; it makes the management elastic, employees can obtain sufficient authorization, which is in favor of various departments to respond to market changes in a timely manner to facilitate the successful implementation of personalized service strategy.#p#分页标题#e#
66Speak个性化服务程序实现成本和评估计划程序 66Speak personalized service program implementation costs and evaluation scheme procedures
成本Costs
Implementation of 66Speak personalized service program requires the company to invest some funds as a support, specific investment is shown as below. Therefore, the author believes that although the implementation of the program in the short term might lead to increased administrative costs, these increased costs will help improve customer loyalty, reduce customer churn and maintain long-term cooperation between the company and their customers. Considering from a long-term view, the implementation of the program will help the company to achieve a more sustainable development.
Item Costs
Recruiting IELTS, SAT, TOEFL, BEC teachers $ 6,000
Purchasing customer relationship management software $ 1,800
Providing value-added services (such as providing consultancy services, establishment information database for studying abroad, etc.) $ 500
Increasing a full-time customer service staff $ 500
Re-planning of the company's performance appraisal system and optimization of organizational structure $ 1,000
Staff training (about performance assessment, learning career planning for trainees, communication, promotion, etc.) $ 1,000
Total $ 10,850
Chart 3: Costs for 66Speak Personalized Service Program
评估方案Evaluation scheme
Under normal circumstances, a good evaluation scheme is very important for the success of an enterprise’s strategy. The importance of an evaluation scheme not only lies in that it provides an assessment basis for whether a corporate strategy achieves the desired objectives, but also rests in that an evaluation scheme helps a company's management and employees to understand the significance of implementation of corporate strategy, how resource is allocated, the focus of implementation of corporate strategy, the objectives of corporate strategy, so that the establishment of a evaluation scheme is important for future success of 66Speak’s personalized service strategy. The author will be based on Kim, Suh and Hwany’s (2003) research results to design a evaluation scheme for 66Speak’s personalized service program, the evaluation scheme mainly consists of four parts, namely, customer information, customer interaction, customer satisfaction, customer value, etc. The specific content is shown as the following Table 3.
Module Index Significance Specific Measures
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