Styles and Influences

Styles and Influence

Being part of a customer service based organization, there are always the questions: "How do we get better?" and "How do we market to our customers?"

The United States gathers census data every 10 years and it is call "The Decennial Census". The goal is to collect information about the people and housing of the United States. The main purpose of the census is to provide a basis for congressional districting. The federal government uses census data for many purposes while businesses and many others also use census data. Businesses also may use the data to decide where to locate an outlet, or to select products for a specific area. (Sevetson, p1)

Census information is gathered by a survey questionnaire sent to every household in the United States. The information gathered is so critical that at one point

And now here was the problem. When the 2000 US census results were publicized, many customer service companies received a jolt, including my company of FleetBoston Financial.

Swot analysis

Swot analysis image

Bank of America Tower

Hispanics now made up nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population and had surpassed African Americans as the largest minority group in the country.

After receiving these results, my company, FleetBoston Financial (Fleet), as well as many others, realized that there was a problem; as a company, we weren't correctly marketing our products to the right demographics. As a responsibility to the shareholders, who are the stakeholders in this publicly traded company, Fleet knew that changes had to be made quickly in order to satisfy it's shareholders.

Fleet's management used a "SWOT analysis method" to identify the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. For its strengths, Fleet new that its credit card division was the 9th largest credit card issuer in the world. Fleet saw the opportunity in the Hispanic market.