Listening skills are important for career success and organizational effectiveness. Considered one of the soft skills, listening skills allow you to improve the effectiveness of your communication with supervisors, colleagues, and customers. To become a more powerful listener, you can employ a variety of techniques. For example, if you’re having trouble focusing on a message, you could

A. take a break
B. become actively involved
C. change the subject

Onsider the following subscription behavior information from genie, a web site that provides tools for constructing a family tree (ancestor search). subscriptions cost $9.99 per month, but you are charged for the entire year at the time of purchase. there is a one-year minimum term when you sign up for the service. once purchased, subscriptions are set to renew automatically unless the subscriber cancels them. when a membership renews, it renews for a one-year term and again you are charged for the entire year. there are no variable costs associated with providing this service to an individual customer, but genie does engage in customer relationship activities that they believe will increase customer retention. these customer relationship activities cost genie about $10 per year per customer. based on a sample of 1000 customers that joined genie five years ago, near the time when the company was founded, they were able to determine how many of those customers remained subscribers in the second year, third year etc. based on this information, genie calculated the average annual retention rate to be 20%. genie uses an annual discount rate of 8%. a. last year, genie spent $10,000 placing advertisements on google. genie management believes that these advertisements were responsible for about 300 new subscribers. would you recommend to genie management that they purchase more google ads? b. suppose a newly-introduced loyalty program increases the number of customers that remained to 30%. does this new data change your answer to 9.a? c. do you have any hesitations or concerns about making recommendations to management based on your above estimate of customer lifetime value?

Gwen, a manager at exude apparels inc., received a message from a customer requesting a replacement for a purchased pair of shoes. exude apparels has a clearly stated no-return policy. gwen responded to the customer denying the request in a tactful and clear manner. despite this, the customer submitted a second request. in this scenario, which of the following is an appropriate response to the second request?

The school cafeteria can make pizza for approximately $0.30 a slice. the cost of kitchen use and cafeteria staff runs about $200 per day. the pizza den nearby will deliver whole pizzas for $9.00 each. the cafeteria staff cuts the pizza into eight slices and serves them in the usual cafeteria line. with no cooking duties, the staff can be reduced by half, for a fixed cost of $75 per day. should the school cafeteria make or buy its pizzas?