Business Conversation 22

Interviewer (Ms Hanford): (opens door, shakes hands) Good morning…
Job Applicant (Mr. Anderson): Good morning, Joe Anderson, it’s a pleasure to meet you Ms Hanford.

Hanford: How do you do? Please take a seat. (Joe sits) It’s quite the rainy day outside, isn’t it?
Anderson: Yes, luckily, you have a nice underground parking lot that helped me avoid the worst of it. I must say this is an impressive building.

Hanford: Thank you, we like working here… Now, let’s see. You’ve come to interview for the position of e-commerce manager, haven’t you?
Anderson: Yes, Peter Smith encouraged me to apply, and I think I’d be ideal for the position.

Hanford: Oh. Peter… he’s a great sysadmin, we like him a lot … Let’s go over your resume. Could you begin by telling me about your qualifications?
Anderson: Certainly. I’ve been working as the regional assistant director of marketing at Simpco Northwest for the past year.

Hanford: And what did you do before that?
Anderson: Before that, I was a Simpco local branch manager in Tacoma.

Hanford: Well, I see you have done well at Simpco. Can you give me some more detail about your responsibilities as assistant director?
Anderson: Yes, I’ve been in charge of in-house personnel training for our Internet customer service reps over the past six months.

Hanford: Can you tell me a little bit about what you’ve been doing in your training?
Anderson: We’ve been working on improving customer satisfaction through an innovative e-commerce solution which provides real-time chat service help to visitors to the site.

Hanford: Interesting. Is there anything in particular you feel would be useful here at Sanders Co.?
Anderson: I understand that you have been expanding your e-commerce to include social networking features.

Hanford: Yes, that’s correct.
Anderson: I think that my experience in customer relations via the Internet in real-time puts me in the unique position of understanding what works and what doesn’t.

Hanford: Yes, that does sound useful. What difficulties and challenges do you think we might run into?
Anderson: Well, I think we’ll continue to see consumers spend more of the shopping dollars online. I’ve been studying how sales directly relates to customer satisfaction with online services.

Hanford: Would you mind giving me a bit more detail on that?
Anderson: Sure … if customers aren’t satisfied with the service they receive online, they won’t come back. It’s much easier to lose customers online. That’s why you need to make sure that you get it right the first time round.

Hanford: I can see you’ve learnt quite a lot in the short time you’ve been working in e-commerce.
Anderson: Yes, it’s an exciting field to be working in …