托福听力_考前小试牛刀（四）

Professor

That's a good question, and well I don't want to pretend that W… MBWA is some sort of, um, replacement for other methods of customer research. Now, the market research data definitely can give you a good idea of, um, of the big picture, but MBWA is really useful kind of filling in the blanks, you know, getting a good underground sense of how you products you use, and how people need respond to them, and Yes, the numbers of opinion you get is small so you do need to be careful, but, good business managers will tell you that the big fear they have an.. .and one of the most frequent problems they come across is well becoming out of touch with what their customers really want and need, you know surveys and market research stuff like that, they can only tell you so much about what the customers actually want in their day-to-day lives. Managing by wandering around on the other hand, that get you in there give you a good sense about what customers needs so. So when use combination then, MBWA and market research were the powerful tools. Oh, here is another example for you, um, see you executive for a clothing manufacture. It was, um, Lken, Lken jeans you know, they went in work in the store for a few days, selling Lken's cloths. Now that give them a very different idea about their product, they saw how people responded to it; they could go up to customers in the store asked questions about it, yes Mike?

Student B

Well, I would think that a lot of customers will be bothered by, you know, if I'm shopping, I don't know if I want some business representatives coming up to me and asking me questions, it's.. It's like when I got phone call at home from marketing researchers, I just hang up them

Professor

Oh, well, it's certainly true that well no one likes getting calls at home from market researchers or people like that, but I will tell you something. Most customers have exact opposite reaction when they comes to MBWA. Now, don't ask me why, because I really have no idea, but the fact is that customers tend to respond really well to MBWA, which is the key reason for a success.

In fact, the techniques of MBWA works so well, they have actually been extended to all kinds of different contacts like politics for instance, Um, a few years back, the major of Botamore, Um.. I can guess its name is Shapher or something like that. Anyway, he decided that the best way to serve the people of the city, of his city, was actually get out there in it and experience the things that they experienced, so he right around the city in, you know, all parts of it, and he see all the prattles; he see how the trash was sometimes, um, not pick up but off side the street and then they go back to the office and they write these memos, and these memos to stuff about the problems he had seen, and how they needed to be fixed, you know that sort of thing, but the thing is he got all the information just by going around and seeing the different Botamore neighborhoods and talking to the people in them, and he called it--- small politics, we'd call it MBWA, or just, playing good customer service.

Conversation 2

Narrator

Listen to a conversation between a student and a Department Secretary.

Student

Hi. Miss Andrics.

Secretary

Hi Bret, how are you?

Student

I’m fine; except I have a question about my paycheck.

Secretary

Sure. What’ up?

Student

Well it’s already been several weeks at the end of the semester my check was supposed to go directly into my bank account but there haven’t been any deposits.

Secretary

That’s odd.

Student

Yea, I thought graduate teaching a system for automatically put on the payroll at the beginning of the semester.

Secretary

They are. Let’s see did you complete all the forms for the payroll?

Student

I filled in whatever they sent me, and I returned like the end of August.

Secretary

Hum, well, you definitely should have been paid by now. At least two pay periods have passed since then

Student

I asked the bank and they didn’t know anything. Who should I talk to about this, payroll?

Secretary

I’m going to contact them for you. There was a problem in processing some of the graduate students’ payroll paper work. ‘Cause their computer program crashed after all the information was processed. And some people’s information couldn’t be retrieved.

Student

Hum. But why didn’t any one let me know?

Secretary

I don’t know how they work over there, ‘cause they couldn’t even figure out whose information was missing. And this isn’t the first time, seems like something like this happens every semester.

Student

So how do I find out if my information was lost?

Secretary

I will contact them tomorrow morning to see if you’re in the system. But you’re probably not.

Student

What then will let me to do?

Secretary

Sorry but you will need to fill out those forms again and then I will fax them over the payroll office.

Student

And then what… Well, what I really need to know is how long till I get the money, I’m already a month behind my bills and my tuitions due soon.

Secretary

That’ll get you into the system the same day they receive your paper works. So if you do that tomorrow, you’ll get paid next Friday.

Student

That’s a long time from now. Will that pay checking include all the money I am owed?

Secretary

It should. I will double check with the payroll department.

Student

And another thing, Is there any way I could get paid sooner, I have been teaching all these weeks…

Secretary

I know that’s not fair but I don’t think they can do anything; all the checks are computed automatically in the system. They can’t just write checks.

Student

But there is another one to make mistakes. They’ve never told me!

Woman

I understand how you feel and if I were you, I’d be upset too. I’ll tell you what: when I call them, I will explain the situation and ask them if there is any way you can be paid sooner. But I have to tell you that base on past experiences you shouldn’t count on it.

Student

(Sigh) I understand thanks. I know it’s’ not your fault and that you’re doing everything you can.

Secretary

Well, what I CAN do is make sure that your first check for total amount the university owes you.

Student

That’ll be great! Thank you. I will be on campus about 10 tomorrow morning and I will come back to see you then.