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Abstract摘要
66speak是宁波电子商务公司的子公司，技术上始于2014年12月。在过去的三个月里，只有不到一半的学生申请续签。与今年8月份公司销售额的增长率相比，9月份的增长率下降了25%。针对这一情况，笔者通过对47份问卷的分析，进行了问卷调查，发现66份口语在三个方面存在以下主要问题。第一，66speaker开设的培训课程不能满足客户的个性化需求；第二，66speaker未能有效地发现和鼓励学生的个性化需求；第三，66speaker管理无法提高消费者满意度。为解决上述问题，作者提出了个性化的服务策略，包括提供个性化课程、提供个性化学习生涯管理、改革公司绩效考核体系、加强与学生的沟通、加强与家长的沟通、设计TAR等。制定促销措施，建立CEM体系，优化组织结构。
66Speak is a subsidiary of Ningbo E-Commerce Company which has technically started in December 2014. In the past three months, less than ½ students come up for renewal. Compared to the growth rate of the company's sales in August this year, the growth rate in September fell by 25%. Aiming at this situation, the author conducted a questionnaire survey through analyzing 47 copies of questionnaire to find that 66Speak has the following main problem in three aspects. Firstly, the training courses set up by 66speaker fails to meet the customer's individual needs; second, 66Speaker fails to effectively find and encourage students’ individual needs; thirdly, 66Speaker management is unable to improve consumer satisfaction. To solve the above-mentioned problems, the author proposes a personalized service strategy, including providing individualized courses, providing personalized learning career management, reforming the company's performance appraisal system, improving communication with students and strengthening communication with parents, as well as designing targeted promotions measures, CEM system and optimization of organizational structure.
Keywords: 66Speak; customer churn rate; personalized service strategy; customer satisfaction; customer demand关键词：66speak；客户流失率；个性化服务策略；客户满意度；客户需求
1.0 Introduction引言
中国“十二五”发展规划提出实施科教兴人战略，注重人才培养，把人才培养作为提高国家核心竞争力和综合国力的重要保障，强调大力发展。职业教育NT，发展各种形式的职业技能培训，发展远程教育和继续教育，建设终身学习型社会（龙，2013年）。改革开放以来，我国经济发展迅速，增长8%，经济发展对人才的需求日益旺盛，对人才的需求也越来越高。中国人口众多，教育产业的市场规模非常大，2014年，整个教育培训市场的总规模约为1500亿美元（王，2014）。中国教育是以考试为导向的教育体系，中小学生面临着竞争压力，为培训和教育提供了广阔的市场（杭，2009）。在中国，父母重视子女的教育，受传统文化的影响，中国父母竭尽全力促进子女成为人才，目前，子女的教育支出已超过养老金和住房消费，成为家庭储蓄的最大目的（王，2014）。
China's 12th Five-Year Development Program points out implementation of the strategy of rejuvenating China with science, education and human resources; paying attention to personnel training; taking personnel training as an important guarantee to enhance the country's core competitiveness and overall national strength; stressing vigorous development of vocational education, development of various forms of training of vocational skills, development of distance education and continuing education, building a learning society with lifelong learning people (Long, 2013). Since the reform and opening up, China's economy develops with a rapid rise of 8%, economic development promotes increasingly strong demand for talents, the requirements for talents are also increasingly higher. China has a large population, the market scale of the education industry is very large, in 2014, the total scale of the entire education and training market was about $ 150 billion dollars (Wang, 2014). Chinese education is examination-oriented education system, school kids are faced with competitive pressure, which provides a broad market for training and education (Hang, 2009). In China, parents pay attention to their children's education, affected by the traditional culture, Chinese parents make every effort to promote their children to be talent, currently, children's education spending has exceeded pension and housing consumption and become the most purpose of household savings (Wang, 2014). With the development of China's Internet technology, online education has been popular, compared to traditional education, online education is considerably flexible, it eliminates costs for teaching spaces and other expenses, training costs are significantly reduced, lower training costs attract more people to participate in the training. According to statistics, in 2014, the market scale of China's online education reached $ 15 billion (Wang, 2014). In this favorable macroeconomic backdrop, 66Speak (溜溜英语 in Chinese), a subsidiary of Ningbo E-Commerce Company, technically started in December 2014. It offers one-on-one customized virtual Language lessons to the students who want to learn authentic languages from the native speakers. The total number of students who taking classes has reached 60 and it’s still increasing, but the problem is that after the first 3-month session, less than ½ students come up for renewal. Compared to the growth rate of the company's sales in August this year, the growth rate in September fell by 25%. How to improve 66Speak online customers’ royalty concerns my partners and me a lot. We’ve employed personalized service strategy to solve the problem by personalized, one-stop service strategy, communication strategy and strategy of establishing long-term relationships between the company and its customers. The author expects that through these strategies, in the next six weeks, the customer churn rate will be reduced from 50% to 15%, the growth rate of the monthly income will be improved from a decline of 25% to 10%.
Table 1: Customer Loss Rate
Figure 1: Customer Loss Rate
Table 2: Monthly Income of 66Speak (7-9) 
Figure 2: Monthly Income of 66Speak (7-9)
2.0 Company information and problems
2.1 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.
2.2 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.
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.
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.
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.#p#分页标题#e#
41 respondents showed that they liked the training courses, a respondent did not care about it, 5 respondents did not like it.
44 respondents expressed that “it is necessary”; 2 respondents showed that “it is indifferent”; a respondent believed that “it is not necessary”.
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.
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”.
2.3 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.
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.
3.0 Personalized service strategy
3.1 Adjust training courses
3.1.1 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#
3.2 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.
3.3 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.
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.
Chart 1: Learning Career Management
3.4 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.
3.3.1 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) 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) 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.
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.
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.#p#分页标题#e#
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.
3.3.3 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.
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.
3.3.4 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.
3.3.5 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#
Figure 3: EDUS CRM System
3.3.6 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).
Figure 4: The Original Linear Organizational Structure
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.
Figure 5: Flat Organizational Structure
4.0 66Speak personalized service program implementation costs and evaluation scheme procedures
4.1 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
Chart 3: Costs for 66Speak Personalized Service Program
4.2 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.
Table 3: Evaluation Scheme for 66Speak Personalized Service Program
4.3 Implementation procedures
66Speak personalized service program will be implemented through the following steps (as shown in the following Chart 4).
4.3.1 Preparation
Before implementation of 66speak personalized service program, the relevant persons who are in charge of the program should develop promotional program and prepare materials, determine the specific processes for implementation of the program, division of responsibilities and related cooperative matters, deducting problems which are likely to happen during the process of conducting propaganda for the program and developing appropriate programs to prepare to cope with unexpected situations.
4.3.2 Propaganda of the program
First, relevant personnel, such as management personnel of the company's various departments, personnel of relevant functional departments, such as staff of human resource department, finance department, marketing department, teachers should be called together to understand the background, significance, specific implementation steps, methods of the personalized service program, the head of each department should further publicize and explain the specific content of the program to their subordinates. Meanwhile, appropriate training for the relevant personnel will be arranged during different periods of time. For example: for HR staff, they will accept training related to staff recruitment, job evaluation, performance appraisal, and so on.
4.3.3 Follow-up of program implementation process
After the formal implementation of this program, 66Speak’s relevant senior management personnel needs to fully supervise the program to see whether it has been fully implemented, when there are certain emergency situations, they should provide timely solutions or provide appropriate support to ensure the smooth conduct of the program. At the same time, relevant management personnel should promptly collect proposals from staff at all levels for implementation of the program and provide timely feedback.
4.3.4 Evaluation and adjustment of effects of program implementation
Two months after the implementation of the program, 66Speak should conduct a timely periodic summary and review, which summarizes the problems in the implementation process of the program and assess the effects of the implementation of the program in time, for example, they should compare the customer churn situations before and after the implementation of the program, the changes in employee satisfaction, monitor costs invested and so on. And make appropriate adjustments based on the results of the assessment and feedback of employees at all levels, as well as comments of customers on implementation of the program.
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Chart 4: Implementation Steps of 66Speak Personalized Service Program
Chart 5: Gantt Chart of 66Speak Personalized Service Program
5.0 Conclusion
As a subsidiary of Ningbo E-Commerce Company, 66Speak was technically started in December 2014. It offers one-on-one customized virtual language lessons to the students who want to learn authentic languages from the native speakers. In the past three months, less than ½ students come up for renewal. Compared to the growth rate of the company's sales in August this year, the growth rate in September fell by 25%. According to the questionnaire results in this study, the author analyzes that 66Speak has the following main problem in three aspects. Firstly, the training courses set up by 66speaker fails to meet the customer's individual needs; second, 66Speaker fails to effectively find and encourage students’ individual needs; thirdly, 66Speaker management is unable to improve consumer satisfaction. To solve the above-mentioned problems, the author proposes a personalized service strategy, including providing individualized courses, providing personalized learning career management, reforming the company's performance appraisal system, improving communication with students and strengthening communication with parents, as well as designing targeted promotions measures, and so on.
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