A Model of Customer-Oriented Communication and its Implementation in the Transition Economies

Abstract

The former Soviet Bloc countries are faced with the challenge of switching from a command economy to a free market oriented one. Coping with the turbulence of changes largely depends on whether the people involved wish and are able to break with their old attitudes and behaviour. Naturally, the attitudes, knowledge and skills related to the hitherto dominant rules of those societies will influence direct customer communication. In order to train salespeople in the transition economies, we constructed a model of Customer-Oriented Communication (COC). By now this model has been implemented on more than a thousand salespersons in four former socialist countries - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia. The paper describes the COC model, views the training courses conducted, and discusses the evaluation of the training process.

Keywords: Selling, customer service, customer-oriented communication, transition economies

JEL Classification: M39, M53, P29