Rubrics Key
This key is only meant to guide the judge in the Oral event. As a team and with your Series Director, discuss
various scenarios and, as a consensus, decide on a model to follow.
TTDM Answer Key
PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
1. Identify the company’s unique selling proposition.
A Unique Selling Proposition refers to a company’s unique proposition to its customers to make them
switch brands. For Century Cruises their unique position is their overall appeal of elegance.
2. Explain the use of descriptive statistics in marketing decision making.
Descriptive statistics are quantities such as mean, median and mode that summarize important aspects of
a set of data (in this case, the mean satisfaction of men/women for each question). Participants should
describe the benefits/disadvantages of these numbers and how they can contribute to changes to be
made on the cruise ship.
3. Handle customer/client complaints.
Customer complaints should be handled as follows:
 quickly and completely
 listening carefully to the customer
 empathize with the situation and offer practical solutions
 if you cannot solve the problem, find someone who can
4. Explain the nature of positive customer relations.
Throughout the role play, the participant can demonstrate ideas behind positive customer relations by
identifying some of the following:
 positive relations involves
5. Demonstrate a customer-service mindset.
The participants should demonstrate this throughout the role play by mentioning some of the following:
 customer-service mindset means putting the customer first
 employees should make customers feel welcome
 employees should be willing to answer questions or find solutions to customer problems
6. Analyze company resources to ascertain policies and procedures.
7. Discuss the nature of customer relationship management.
Customer relationship management involves finding customers and keeping them satisfied through a
variety of means. It is useful for developing and maintaining customer relationships. This is especially
important for Century Cruises since its target market is experienced cruisers.
During the course of the role-play, these questions are to be asked:
1. Over the years only 58% of passengers have completed the guest satisfaction survey. What can we do to
increase that percentage?
Participants should understand and demonstrate that a voluntary survey will always produce a smaller
sample, especially when no incentive is offered. Suggestions could include (but are not limited to):
 providing a more convenient way to complete the survey (eg. tablets in a main area instead of paper)
 providing an incentive – free drink, $5 off at the gift shop, etc.
 make the survey more interesting to complete
2. Should the formal dining room offer continuous service beginning at 5:00 p.m. and eliminate two
separate seatings? Please explain.
Answers will vary among participants, however all teams should provide an insightful, detailed response
about how changing/keeping the seating will impact the ship. A sample answer could be:
Changing the seating to continuous service will allow for a larger number of guests to make use of the
Crystal Ballroom, especially since the seating is either quite early or quite late. This may, however, result in
longer wait times for guests and decreased service.