新托福考试必备：新托福TPO（1-24）听力原文文本TPO12

　　Professor
　　Ok, as we’ve talked about a key aspect of running a successful business is
　　knowing, um, getting a good sense of what the customer actually wants, and
　　how they perceive your product. So with that in mind, I want to describe a very
　　simple method of researching customer preference, and it is becoming
　　increasingly common, it's called----MBWA----which stands for managing by
　　wandering around. Now, MBWA, that's not the most technical sounding name
　　you've ever heard, but it describes the process pretty accurately. Here is how it
　　works.

　　Basically, Um, the idea is that business owners or business managers just go
　　out and actually talk to their customers, and learn more about how well the
　　business is serving their needs, and try to see what the customer experiences,
　　because that's a great way to discover for yourself, how your product is
　　perceived, what the strengths and weaknesses are, you know, how to you can
　　improved it that sort of thing, you know Dortans, they make soup and can
　　vegetables and such. Well, the head of the company, had Dortans’ topped
　　executives walk around supermarkets, um, asking shoppers what they thought
　　of Dortans’ soup, and he use the data to make changes to the company's
　　product, I mean, when Dortans of all the companies, embraces something as
　　radical as MBWA, it really show you how popular the theory has become, yes,
　　Lisa?

　　Student A
　　But this is dangerous to base decisions on information from a small sample of
　　people? Is it large scale market research safer getting data on a lot of people?

　　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.