COM 220 Module 2 Audience, Purpose and Channel Example

One Change, Four Audiences: Matching Purpose and Channel When an Apartment Company Moves Online

Student Name

Business Administration Program, Aspen University

COM 220: Management Communication

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

One Change, Four Audiences: Matching Purpose and Channel When an Apartment Company Moves Online

Harborline Property Management is moving all forty of its apartment communities from paper rent checks, a maintenance phone line and drop boxes to a single online portal and phone app. Residents will pay rent, submit maintenance requests with photos and track repairs online. Staff will receive requests on tablets. The change will save money and speed repairs, but only if people use it. Tasha Greene, the regional manager introduced in Module 1, must plan how her nine communities will communicate the change. This paper plans those messages.

The Audiences

The portal touches four groups, and no single message will serve them all. Community managers must understand the system, explain it to residents and handle complaints, and some worry it will reduce their contact with residents. Maintenance technicians must learn to use tablets, and several are uneasy with technology. Residents must learn a new way to pay and request repairs; most will welcome it, but older residents and those without reliable internet may not. Property owners care about rent collection and costs.

Rich and Lean Channels

Daft and Lengel (1986) proposed that organizations process information to reduce uncertainty, a lack of information, and equivocality, ambiguity about what information means. They ranked media by richness, defined by the capacity for immediate feedback, the number of cues carried, language variety and personal focus. At the top of their ranking sat talking in person, then the telephone, then personal letters and memos, with formal numerical reports at the bottom. Rich media suit equivocal messages, where people need to interpret and discuss; lean media suit clear, routine ones.

For community managers and technicians, the change is equivocal: it alters how they work and raises concerns. In-person meetings let them ask questions and voice worries. For owners, the message is mostly clear information, which suits a written brief.

Conveying and Converging

Dennis et al. (2008) argued that richness alone does not explain channel choice. They distinguished two communication processes. Conveyance is the transmission of new information, which benefits from channels that let receivers take time to process it, such as documents. Convergence is reaching shared understanding, which benefits from synchronous channels, such as meetings, where people can respond immediately. Most tasks involve both.

This supports a combination for residents: a printed letter and email convey the details, which residents can read at their own pace, and in-office help sessions provide convergence for those who are confused.

How Written Messages Are Misread

Kruger et al. (2005) studied whether people communicate tone over email as well as they think. In their studies, senders expected that readers would correctly identify the tone of their messages, such as sarcasm or seriousness, about 78% of the time, but readers did so only about 56% of the time, little better than chance. Senders overestimated because they heard their own intended tone when they reread their messages.

Harborline's resident letter must therefore avoid phrases that could be read as pressure, such as "all residents must," and should be tested on a few residents before it is sent.

Writing the Resident Letter

The letter follows the order residents care about. It opens with what changes for them and when: from a named date, rent can be paid and repairs requested online or in the app. It then explains how: a three-step setup with a picture of the app's home screen. It explains where to get help: office hours, help sessions and a phone number. Only then does it explain why: faster repairs and a record of every request. The letter avoids terms like "portal migration" and is written at about a sixth-grade reading level. Before it is sent, three residents at one community, including one older resident, will read it and say in their own words what it asks them to do.

Residents Who Are Not Online

About one in ten residents at Tasha's communities pay rent by paper check, and some have no home internet. For them, the plan keeps a paper option at the community office for at least six months and offers to set up the app on a resident's phone during a help session. Community managers will call residents who have not set up an account by week five, rather than relying on another letter.

Answering Questions Consistently

Before residents hear about the change, every community manager receives a one-page sheet of answers to the twelve questions most likely to be asked, from fees to data privacy. Consistent answers prevent rumors from forming when two offices say different things.

The Sequence

In week one, community managers attend the meeting. In week two, technicians are trained. In week three, residents receive the letter and email, and posters go up. Weeks four and five offer help sessions twice a week. Paper checks end in week six. Owners receive their brief in week two.

Checking Results

Each community tracks the share of residents using the portal weekly. Communities below half by week six get extra help sessions. Community managers also log the questions residents ask most, and the answer sheet is updated weekly, so that later messages respond to real confusion rather than guessed confusion. A short survey in week eight asks residents whether the change was explained clearly and whether repairs feel faster, and the results go to Tasha and to the owners in their next brief.

Conclusion

Daft and Lengel and Dennis, Fuller and Valacich guide the choice of channels for each audience, and Kruger and colleagues warn that written messages may not carry the intended tone. Matching purpose and channel to each audience, and sequencing messages so staff hear first, gives the change its best chance.

References

Daft, R. L., & Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design. Management Science, 32(5), 554-571. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.32.5.554

Dennis, A. R., Fuller, R. M., & Valacich, J. S. (2008). Media, tasks, and communication processes: A theory of media synchronicity. MIS Quarterly, 32(3), 575-600. https://doi.org/10.2307/25148857

Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J., & Ng, Z.-W. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we communicate as well as we think? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(6), 925-936. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.925