Report Writing: Recommendations

A customer visits your company and talks to a salesperson. The salesperson is new, and lacks product knowledge, so sells the customer an unsuitable product. Later the customer discovers that the product is unsuitable, and therefore he returns the product, complains, and asks for his money back. Example Recommendations
5. Recommendations Due to the customer complaint and the lack of guidelines to prevent untrained sales staff from serving customers, the following recommendations are made concerning compensating the customer, staff training, monitoring new staff, and revising the guidelines. 5.1 Compensation Given that the customer has justifiably complained, we should give him his money back, and, to maintain goodwill, give him a single-use voucher worth 5% of the price of the original goods to encourage him to continue his relationship with our company. 5.2 Staff Training In the light of the customer's complaint that our salesperson recommended the wrong product to him, we should ensure that all sales staff complete their product training before serving customers. This guideline should be in our staff manuals and procedures. 5.3 Monitoring New Staff In order to reduce the possibility of new salespeople making incorrect recommendations to customers, they should always be accompanied by an experienced salesperson for the first month of their service. This guideline should also be in our staff manuals and procedures.

Content
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Cost / benefit analysis For each recommendation you should think about how much it will cost and how much money it will save your organisation. For example, in the above scenario you should not recommend a training course for all staff on communication skills, because such a training course would be very expensive. It would be much cheaper to give the customer his money back, and to maintain goodwill, give the customer a voucher for a future purchase.

Opportunity cost For each recommendation you should think about whether it would use the facilities, staff or money (in business terms: land, labour and capital) in the most profitable way. For example: If your suggestion would only make a profit of 2% on the money that you need to spend on it, it would be better to save the money in the bank, and get more interest. If you recommend sending staff on a training course, you must convince your readers about why this would be more profitable than the staff doing their normal work and saving the cost of the course. If the cost of the problems is less than the cost of the training course, it is not worth doing the training. If you recommend moving a factory to a cheaper location, you need to persuade your readers that after a few years you would save more money than if you remained in the existing location.

Problem Analysis To solve a problem, your recommendations can solve both the results of the problem (the symptoms) and the root cause of the problem. To find the root cause you can use a method called the '5 Whys' method. This method involves asking 'Why', and then for each answer, asking 'Why' again. Here is an example using the scenario above. 1. Why did the customer complain? Because the salesman sold him an unsuitable product. 2. Why did the salesman sell the customer an unsuitable product? Because the salesman did not know that the product was unsuitable. 3. Why didn't the salesman know that the product was unsuitable? Because he hadn't finished his product familiarisation training. 4. Why was a salesman who hadn't finished his product familiarisation training serving a customer? Because our guidelines do not forbid it. 5. Why don't the guidelines forbid it? Because we hadn't had this problem before, and we cannot predict every problem. Therefore, the solution is to change the guidelines.

SMART Recommendations Recommendations, like Objectives, should be SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Result-oriented and Time-bound: Specific: You should state the method for implementing your recommendation. Bad examples: We should increase sales. We should take appropriate measures to increase staff satisfaction so as to increase morale. Good examples: We should increase sales through a marketing campaign. We should improve staff morale by setting up a suggestion scheme, then rewarding and implementing good suggestions. Measurable: Although some things in business are difficult to measure, such as reputation, goodwill, knowledge and quality, your recommendations will be more persuasive if they are measurable. Bad examples: We should increase sales. We should take appropriate measures to increase staff satisfaction so as to increase morale. Good examples: We should increase sales by spending 10% more on advertising. According to our experience with our recent advertising campaigns, this will generate an extra 15% in sales. We should improve staff morale by increasing the pay increment for each additional year of service. This would discourage staff from leaving. Although this would cost more, we would save money overall by doing less recruitment and training for new staff. Achievable: Recommendations should not involve too little time, or too much money, labour, facilities or risk. Bad examples: We should re-train all sales staff. We should offer the customer a 20% discount on all future orders.

Good examples: We should re-train sales staff who consistently do not meet sales targets. We should offer the customer a single-use voucher worth 5% of the price of the faulty goods. Result-oriented: The recommendation should provide good results for stakeholders: Bad example from the scenario above: We should fire the salesperson. (This would not solve the underlying problem of allowing untrained staff to serve customers.) Good example: We should set up procedures so that new salespeople are not allowed to serve customers until they have finished their training, and new salespeople should always be accompanied by an experienced sales person for the first month of their service. Time-bound: The recommendation should set realistic deadlines for completion of suggestions. Bad example from the scenario above: The salesperson should not serve customers. Good example: Salespeople should not serve customers until they have finished their training.

Grammar
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Recommendations often use modal verbs such as should and could, followed by an infinitive verb. Should is for recommendations that you are sure about, but could is for ones that you are less sure about. e.g. 'Sales staff should have completed their training before they serve customers.' e.g. 'Experienced sales staff could be requested to monitor new staff.' Should and could can also be in a clause, for example: I suggest that we should change our procedures. It is suggested that we should change our procedures. It is wrong to use I recommend to change our procedures; use I recommend changing our procedures or I recommend that we change our procedures.

To describe the results of your recommendations, use would or will if you are very confident; e.g. ' This would prevent this problem from happening again.' or ' This will increase sales.' would and will can be part of conditional sentences; e.g. ' If we increase advertising, sales will increase.' or ' If we increased advertising, sales would increase.'