Retailers are interacting with customers via an ever-increasing number of touchpoints. The addition of social media and mobile devices to the traditional physical and virtual retail platforms has created an evolving consumer practice of using several such "touchpoints" in the course of a single purchase (the "omni-channel”). The difficulty of providing high levels of customer service has increased with the necessity of managing multiple channels under the retailer’s control and coordinating formally or informally with touchpoints not directly within the retailer’s own operations. Multiple sources of potentially conflicting information (e.g., order fulfillment) can lead to miscommunication, and thus poor service experience for customers. The purpose of this paper is to describe two preliminary studies that explore how well retailers are prepared for this increasing complexity via a content analysis of retailer website language regarding customer service policies. Implications of our findings and recommendations for further research are then discussed.

Background: Teams are a basic way of organizing work in many professional and personal settings. However, misunderstandings among team members can lead to poor performance, hurt feelings, and lack of motivation to attack subsequent tasks. A common source of such misunderstandings is miscommunication caused by differences in how people interpret everyday words and phrases. Team members might interpret these differences as a natural occurrence of group work, if they notice them at all. Research questions: We seek to answer two research questions regarding miscommunication within teams: (1) Can a communication exercise create awareness among team members of the danger of miscommunication? (2) What benefits do team members gain from the exercise? Situating the case: We describe a classroom exercise that relies on an integrative model for improving communication within teams. We also present evidence of the exercise's effectiveness in raising awareness and fostering accommodation and social learning among team members. Our approach is similar to that used in other cases. How this case was studied: We used 13 teams from three classes during the course of a regular semester. A communication exercise we have used for many years was conducted as part of team formation activities early in the semester. Team discussions regarding exercise results formed the basis for team members to analyze their communication during the semester. About the case: A significant variance of understanding among people as to the meaning of several of the focal terms can lead to suboptimal outcomes for any given work the team is tasked to achieve. In this case, we describe a study designed to improve communication among team members and, thus, lessen the likelihood of such a negative outcome. Results: Team members reported better awareness of communication issues and improved team functioning as a result of having completed the exercise. Conclusion: We find that a shared understanding of terminology is an important part of training leaders and managers to help teams reduce common miscommunication problems in the workplace.

We communicate via many forms every day. When what we say or write is misunderstood, the fault may lie with either party. One source of miscommunication is the different meaning people place on commonly used words and phrases. In this article, the authors report preliminary results from a study on such miscommunication and lay out an agenda for research on improving business communication based on the Integrative Model of Levels of Analysis of “Miscommunication,” developed by Coupland, Wiemann, and Giles.