Communication Plan Initial Proposal

Answer

As you are aware, Best Game Productions, one of the largest game companies, is soon releasing their latest video game. For many weeks now, the marketing department has been working tirelessly to promote sales and generate hype.  Nonetheless, during beta testing, a virus in the software was detected that lowers the quality of the game. As such, the Big Game Productions must decide on whether to postpone the release date to address the issues or release the game by ignoring the fact that the quality is poor. Postponing the release date will hinder the projected sales volumes as consumers will be forced to buy holiday gifts from rivals. However, releasing the game with known virus will lower customer satisfaction that could potentially influence customer loyalty. Therefore, the purpose of this communication plan is to outline the necessary communication, the audience for each communication and the basic message for each communication.

The Audience for Each Communication

            Best Game Productions has the necessary resources and capability to inform the external and internal stakeholders of the technical challenges and advise them on the workaround in a bid to satisfy customers. Intuitively, communication is not only a critical element of these recent organizational changes but proper communication can be viewed as the basis for the modern organizations (Akilandeswari, Kumar, Freeda & Kumar, 2015). Recently, the company has designed its outline of the communication plan in which it has been established that every manager for each department should be engaged. Therefore, I suggest that the team should work together on the specific information that will need to be communicated to, as well as, the first line workers who will need to deal with the virus in the video game. Moreover, the communication must be conveyed to workers promptly. Given that the proposal is to ensure that a mass memorandum is distributed through the company’s intranet to alert the workers. Having released the communication, the communication should be conveyed to merchants, customers, as well as, shareholders concerning the free patch that will be delivered in the future. Precisely, the cost effective communication to outside stakeholders would be convey this solution through news and social media.

            Similarly, the leaders of the organization should be ready to receive feedback from employees and customers as a result of the already identified technical challenges. As such, Team B suggests to design a team capable of answering any concern or questions concerning the situation and being capable of expressing their views confidently to the solutions being presented. Essentially, this will reduce the number of calls that go into the customer call center.

Communication Channels

            As you are already aware, Best Games Production has a well-publicized quality concern that must be handled and communicated to both external and internal stakeholders. Therefore, there is need to select appropriate communication channel to convey the quality concern of the game that is yet to be released. There are myriad of communication channels that can be selected including group delivery, face to face, mass media, organizational channels, community channels or communication of these channels. Moreover, these channels can be grouped as mechanic channels, or physical medium. Physical channels as contended by Brandler and Roman (2015) encompass video conferencing, face to face meetings while mechanic channels encompass emails, internet and internal memos among others.

            Interestingly, there is no single channel that the organization can use to communicate with both the external and internal stakeholders at Best Game Productions. However, various channels can be adopted to suit different stakeholders. Essentially, Best Game Productions intends to use mass media channels and organizational communication channels. The internal stakeholders entail developers, programmers, the quality assurance, the marketing team, as well as, the public relations. These individuals will be notified through organizational channels such as face to face meeting, email and memos. Similarly, external stakeholders will be communicated to through mass media channels that include press conferences, press releases, as well as, public message such as the use of social networking sites.

Conclusion

            Best Game Production faces dilemma that ultimately will affect both its external and internal stakeholders because of a technical challenge found in the newest game that is yet to be released. Undoubtedly, businesses usually face myriad of challenges and setbacks such as the case of Best Game Productions. However, being able to point out the stakeholders and come up with communication plan is essential to a competent and a leader within the industry. While the proposed solution will not satisfy all the stakeholders completely, the solution offered will provide the Best Game Productions to release its promise and release the game on time, maintaining the integrity to both the external and internal stakeholders.