A salesperson says, "For the money, you will find no better water reclamation system anywhere!" The customer thinks the salesperson has just told him that his product is cheaply made and only fairly successful at cleaning the water so it can be reused. Part of the miscommunication is caused by the customer's secretary who comes in during the presentation and asks the customer to sign a letter. In terms of the communication process, the salesperson is __, the customer is _, and the secretary creates __.

The process of communication, in any given situation, or environment, is a pretty complicated one mostly because human beings seldom know how to conduct good communication between them. To communicate, we use words and gestures that represent our thoughts and ideas, and the person who received those words and gestures must listen and see attentively in order to correctly get the message being communicated. However, there are various factors that can prevent this correct passage of information (verbal and non-verbal) from one person to another.

In this case, we have a salesperson who is the one delivering the message to a customer. Since he is the one transforming his thoughts and ideas into words, he is the person doing what is known as encoding. Now the customer, who receives the message from the salesperson will interpret and understand the message received from the other person´s words and gestures. This customer is going through the process of decoding. Finally, a secretary comes in, and interrupts the flow of communication by taking the customer´s attention away from what the salesperson is saying. This person is causing an interruption that is noise.

Therefore, the answer is: In terms of the communication process, the salesperson is ENCODING, the customer is DECODING, and the secretary creates NOISE or INTERRUPTION.