Situation: You have been hired as the Marketing Manager for Facility Services Inc. a Midwest based janitorial & facility service firm specializing in commercial/industrial business. You report to President Bob and you lead a small staff of 5 marketing professionals. Your firm has locations in Indianapolis, Evansville, Fort Wayne, St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Madison, Wisconsin. Your firm's customer base includes over 5,000 business customers with slightly more than 35% located in Indiana. FSI provides cleaning services, facility service products for rent, limited recycling collection services, and office paper document shredding services utilizing its team of 15,000 service technicians, sales reps, and customer service personnel. You currently offer no products for sale such as cleaning supplies, mops, mats, hand soap, or other related products.
Problem: Financial performance in FY 2015 was confusing to the management team of FSI and its investors. Revenue growth seems to have stalled. New business sales improved 2% over the prior year; a price increase of 2.5% helped the revenue picture last year but overall prices are now slightly above those of the national brands, and customers are defecting at a rate of 18% per year. Due to higher labor costs management thought the price increase was long overdue! The company invested in a new route management and CRM system in late 2014 but acceptance by the service and sales teams is spotty at best. We are not sure if the customers even know this exists and how it help them. Customer satisfaction appears to be holding steady with an ASCI rating of 67. This is considered marginal at best.
President Bob has requested that you identify the strategic marketing issues and provide the senior executives and investors a general brief that describes how your team will assess the issues facing the company. He is not asking for a list of recommendations at this time. However, because this is your first assignment Bob wants to understand how you will go about diagnosing the problems. Bob's guidelines are very loose but he encouraged a thoughtful, comprehensive approach devoid of marketing definitions and theory. He wants a brief three to four page report. He also encouraged you to tell him about any alternatives or models you feel may be a waste of time or money at this time.