| Course | BUS 496 Adv. Experiential Learning for Business |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 7 |
| Paper type | undergraduate final client report with findings and recommendations |
| Length | About 1,050 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Southern New Hampshire University |
| Program | BS Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BUS 496 Module 7
Winning More Quotes: Findings and Recommendations
[Student Name]
Southern New Hampshire University
BUS 496: Adv. Experiential Learning for Business
Final Client Report
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.
Winning More Quotes: Findings and Recommendations
Summary
The company loses online bookings mainly because quotes take too long and often require follow-up questions before they can be sent. Customers frequently send the same request to several companies and book the first reasonable quote. Five changes, costing about $34,000 in the first year, should raise conversion from about 14 percent to about 20 percent, adding roughly 115 bookings and $330,000 in revenue a year. The most important change is a promise to quote within four business hours, made possible by a part-time quote coordinator and a calculator that cuts quote preparation time.
Findings
The analysis matched 1,912 online quote requests from January to November 2025 to booking records and included calls to sixty customers who did not book. Four findings stand out. First, speed: quotes sent within four business hours booked 27 percent of the time, compared with 7 percent for quotes sent after two days, and the median response was thirty-one hours. The gap appeared within school groups, weddings, sports teams and corporate clients alike. Second, incomplete requests: more than a third arrived missing one of the three details a quote needs, forcing an email exchange, and only about one in eleven of those booked. Third, airport transfers booked only 6 percent of the time, because customers book these small trips online within minutes. Fourth, of the lost customers called, 41 percent booked elsewhere because another company quoted first, while 27 percent cited price.
Zeithaml et al. (1996) found that customers' perceptions of service quality, including responsiveness, shape whether they buy and return. These findings suggest that, for this company, responsiveness is the main lever.
Recommendation One
The company should promise, on its website and in an automatic acknowledgment, a quote within four business hours. To make this possible without overloading the office manager, it should hire a part-time quote coordinator for about twenty hours a week, covering mornings, at about $28,000 a year. The office manager would handle complex multi-day quotes and train the coordinator.
Recommendation Two
The website form should make its three essential questions, when, how many and from where, mandatory, with optional fields for flexibility. This removes the email exchange that delays 38 percent of quotes. The cost is about $1,500 for the web developer who maintains the site.
Recommendation Three
Quotes now take about twenty minutes each because mileage, driver hours and overnight costs are calculated by hand. A spreadsheet calculator using the company's rates, built with the office manager's input, would cut routine quotes to about seven minutes. The calculator was drafted during the project and needs only testing, costing about $2,000 in staff time.
Recommendation Four
Quotes should be followed up by email after forty-eight hours and by phone after five days if no answer has come. Several lost customers said they would have booked if the company had checked back before they chose another. The coordinator would handle follow-ups within existing hours.
Recommendation Five
Airport transfers take as long to quote as larger trips but rarely book. The company should refer them, through the website, to a local car service that pays a referral fee, freeing quote time for higher-value trips. The cost is negligible and the referral fee may offset some of the coordinator's pay.
Costs and Expected Benefits
Estimated first-year costs and benefits
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Part-time quote coordinator | $28,000 |
| Form changes | $1,500 |
| Calculator testing and training | $2,000 |
| Follow-up email setup | $2,500 |
| Total first-year cost | $34,000 |
| Additional bookings, about 115 at $2,850 | About $330,000 revenue |
| Contribution after driver, fuel and vehicle costs, about 35% | About $115,000 |
The estimate assumes that faster quotes move the company's response-time profile so that most quotes arrive within twenty-four hours, with conversion rising to about 20 percent. Kotler and Keller (2016) note that service improvements pay back through both new sales and repeat business, so the estimate is conservative.
Rollout
In the first month, the office manager and the student will test the calculator on twenty live quotes, the developer will add the required fields and the owner will post the coordinator role. In the second month, the coordinator will start and be trained, and the four-hour promise will go live on the website. In the third month, the follow-up schedule and airport referral will begin. The owner will review results at the end of each month.
Measures
The owner should track four numbers monthly: median quote response time, the share of quotes sent within four business hours, conversion of quote requests to bookings and the share of requests arriving complete. Targets for the first six months are a median under four hours, at least 70 percent of quotes within four hours, conversion of at least 18 percent and 90 percent complete requests.
Risks
Three risks could reduce the benefit. The coordinator role may be hard to fill in a tight local labor market; the office manager could cover the four-hour promise for routine quotes in the meantime using the calculator. Faster quotes may win more trips in the busiest weeks than the fleet can serve; the company should watch for weeks when it turns away business and, if they become common, consider whether a twenty-third coach would pay. And competitors may speed up their own quotes once customers expect it; the four-hour promise is an advantage now but may become the norm, which is a reason to adopt it early.
Alternatives Considered
Two other approaches were considered. Cutting prices would address the 27 percent of lost customers who cited price but would reduce revenue on the many customers who book anyway. Spending more on advertising would bring more quote requests into a process that already loses most of them. Fixing the process first makes any later pricing or advertising decision more effective.
Acknowledgment
The office manager's explanation of how quotes are prepared, and her design of the calculator, shaped these recommendations. Block (2011) observes that recommendations are adopted when the people who must carry them out help create them, and her involvement makes this plan more likely to succeed.
Conclusion
The company does not need to cut prices or spend more on advertising to win more of the customers already asking for quotes. It needs to answer them faster and with fewer questions. The five changes above cost about $34,000 and should return several times that in the first year.
References
Block, P. (2011). Flawless consulting: A guide to getting your expertise used (3rd ed.). Pfeiffer.
Kotler, P., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Marketing management (15th ed.). Pearson.
Zeithaml, V. A., Berry, L. L., & Parasuraman, A. (1996). The behavioral consequences of service quality. Journal of Marketing, 60(2), 31-46. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299606000203
What the BUS 496 Module 7 instructions ask for
The final client report in BUS 496 presents the results of your applied project to the organization, usually alongside a presentation. It should answer the question agreed in the proposal, summarize the evidence, make recommendations the client can carry out, estimate their costs and benefits, and explain how to implement and monitor them. Strong reports lead with the recommendations, keep the analysis summary short with detail in appendices, write in the client's language rather than academic terms and respect the client's constraints on staff, money and systems. They also acknowledge the people whose work the recommendations affect. Many versions also ask for alternatives considered and the risks of the recommended plan.
How this BUS 496 Module 7 final client report example is built
A single summary page comes first: the company loses bookings mainly because quotes are slow and often need follow-up questions, and five changes could raise conversion from about 14 to about 20 percent. The findings section summarizes the evidence: quotes sent within four hours booked at 27 percent against 7 percent after two days, the pattern held in every customer type, incomplete requests converted at 9 percent and 41 percent of lost customers booked with a faster competitor. The recommendations are a four-hour quote promise supported by a part-time coordinator, required form fields, a calculator for mileage and driver hours, a follow-up schedule and referring airport transfers to a partner. Costs, expected gains and a ninety-day rollout follow.
Where the BUS 496 Module 7 rubric puts the points
The rubric for the final client report usually considers whether the report answers the agreed question, the quality of evidence, the feasibility and specificity of recommendations, cost and benefit estimates, the implementation plan, attention to the client's constraints and people, and professional presentation. High-scoring reports lead with clear recommendations, connect each to a finding, estimate costs and effects with stated assumptions and give the client a plan with owners and dates. Reports lose credit for academic tone, for recommendations the client cannot afford or staff, for missing costs and for ignoring the people who will carry out the changes. Graders also look for a short section on alternatives and risks, which shows the recommendations were chosen rather than assumed.
BUS 496 Module 7 help: the mistakes that cost points
Final client reports often reproduce the analysis report with recommendations added at the end. Turn that around: start with what the client should do, then show why. Cost every recommendation, even roughly, and estimate what it will return, because owners decide on value. Check feasibility against the client's real limits; a recommendation to hire a full-time salesperson is useless if the company cannot afford one. Acknowledge the staff whose work is affected, and involve them in the plan. Keep detailed tables in an appendix. Name the alternatives the client might expect, such as cutting prices, and explain why you did not recommend them.
Get BUS 496 Module 7 written to your instructions
Send the BUS 496 final report guidelines and your project's findings. The report will lead with recommendations, tie each to evidence, cost it, estimate its effect and lay out a rollout the client can follow. About two days; your first report is free. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Southern New Hampshire University document.
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BUS 496 Module 7 questions, answered
Where can I find a free BUS 496 Module 7 Final Client Report sample?
This page includes the complete BUS 496 final client report for a charter bus company's quote conversion project.
What should a final client report include?
A summary of recommendations, the key findings and evidence, each recommendation with its cost and expected effect, an implementation plan with owners and dates, and measures to track results.
How do you estimate the benefit of a recommendation?
By linking it to a measured relationship, such as conversion by response time, and calculating the likely change in outcomes under stated assumptions.
Why lead with recommendations in a client report?
Because clients read reports to decide what to do; putting recommendations first respects their time and frames the evidence that follows.
How should a report treat staff whose work it affects?
With respect: describe problems as features of the process, credit staff insights and involve them in implementing the changes.