Role-play 1: Sales and Marketing Manager

You want to help the company to achieve its goals through meeting customer needs and generating sales in a competitive marketplace.

For the e-commerce strategy to succeed, in your view, we will need the following:

1. 8 skilled online sales and customer service people will be needed to manage the increased volume of online customers. Positions require skills and knowledge to:

• Handle customer interaction in under ten minutes. Customers will not tolerate longer than this.

• Provide detailed product information. 10% error rate is industry average. We need to do much better than this to match our in store service quality.

• Take and process orders manually to assist online customers to modify automatic orders. 10% error rate is industry average. We need to do much better than this to match our in store service quality.

2. Since stores are overstaffed, four online staff could be gained by drawing from existing employees at the two stores.

3. Training for online customer service. Training needs to be taken seriously. We need to deliver an online experience that replicates the quality of our in store experience. Currently no staff has online customer service skills. Management would like to develop people through re-training rather than hire new staff to handle online sales where possible.

4. As for our e-commerce website, usability for customers is the key to success according to customer research. Also, our customers demand we accept all major credit cards and PayPal.

5. BBQfun needs to be able to manage content that is put on the website and will need to ensure that there is an agreement with the website developers for BBQfun to be the owners of any content produced by the website developers.

6. Office space needs to be reconfigured to accommodate online sales. Access to information is the key to quality service for online customers.

7. Set up logistics for online retail. We will need to purchase delivery vehicles, make arrangements with Australia Post, purchase forklifts and reconfigure warehouse.

You are concerned that the board may be getting cold feet because of e commerce set-up costs. Profit projections for e-commerce over the next three years are positive but moderate; however, the real danger is the risk of revenue loss if there is no online store. Unsatisfied customers will flock to our online competitors. The choice is stark: accept the costs and moderate profitability, or prepare to go out of business, if not this year, then in three years’ time.