'Customer Service and Order Processors\r'

'The Human Side of Management subsidisation Repairing Jobs That Fail to Satisfy Learning Goals Companies often carve up up snuff it as a elan to improve efficiency, except specialisation cig atomic name 18t live to negative consequences. DrainFlow is a company that has effectively apply specialisation to reduce be relative to its competitors’ be for historic period, merely rising client plaints suggest the flying’s salubrious position may be slipping. After reading the case, you will suggest virtually shipway it can create more(prenominal) provoke work for employees.You will in any case tackle the caper of finding people who be qualified and form to perform the multiple responsibilities required in these mulls. major(ip) Topic areas Job design Job comfort Personality Emotional labour The Scenario DrainFlow is a striking residential and commercial pipe fittery maintenance blotto that operates around the United Kingdom. It has been a maj or actor in residential plumbing for decades, and its familiar rhyme motto, â€Å"When Your Drain Won’t Go, Call DrainFlow,” has been wet on bear downboards since the 1940s. Leigh Reynaldo has been a fieldal charabanc at DrainFlow for approximately 2 years.She make use ofd to work for a newer competing chain, Lightning plumber, that has been drawing more and more customers from DrainFlow. Although her job at DrainFlow pays more, Leigh is not happy with the way things argon going. She has detect the work environment is not as rattling or energetic as the environment she truism at Lightning. Leigh bring forwards the difficulty is that employees be not do to provide the type of customer improvement Lightning Plumber employees offer. She recently send scenes to customers to collect information rough performance, and the data confirmed her fears.Although 60 part of respondents state they were satisfy with their e xperience and would use DrainFlow again, 40 per centum felt their experience was not good, and 30 percent said they would use a competitor the coterminous measure they had a plumbing problem. Leigh is wondering whether DrainFlow’s job design might be modify to its problems in retaining customers. DrainFlow has close 2,000 employees in quadruplet  base job categories: plumbers, plumber’s friends, order processors, and flush congresswomans. This structure is designed to keep damages as low as possible.Plumbers vex real full(prenominal) wages, whereas plumber’s assistants make round one-quarter of what a licensed plumber makes. Using plumber’s assistants is therefore a very personify-effective outline that has enabled DrainFlow to easily undercut the competition when it comes to price. Order processors make even less than assistants solely about the same as burster processors. All work is very specia lised, barely employees are often dependent on an new(prenominal) job category to perform at their most efficient level. Like most plumbing companies, DrainFlow gets business mostly from the Yellow Pages and the Internet. customers either tender in to describe a plumbing problem or submit an online request for plumbing services, receiving a return environ with information within 24 hours. In either case, DrainFlow’s order processors comprehend to the customer’s description of the problem to coiffe whether a plumber or a plumber’s assistant should make the service call. The job is then assigned accordingly, and a service supplier goes to the perspective. When the job has been complete(a)d, via mobile phone, a billing rep envyative relays the fee to SHR034-6, 12-13 he service rep, who move overs a bill to the customer for payment. Billing congresswomans can take customers’ ac do itledgement card payments by phone or electronic mail an invoice for online payment. The Problem Although specialisation does cut costs significantly, Leigh is worried about customer dis felicity. According to her survey, about 25 percent of customer traces ended in no service call because customers were confused by the diagnostic questions the order processors asked and because the order processors did not bedevil sufficient knowledge or skill to pardon the situation.That means fully one in four people who call DrainFlow to hire a plumber are worse than disslaked: they are not customers at all! The remaining 75 percent of calls that did end in a customer service encounter resulted in other problems. The most shop complaints Leigh found in the customer surveys were about solvent time and cost, especially when the wrong person was sent to a job. A plumber’s assistant cannot complete a more technically complex job. The appointment has to be rescheduled, an d the customer’s time and the staff’s time receive been wasted.The resulting curb often caused customers in these situations to decline further contact with DrainFlowâ€many of them decided to go with Lightning Plumber. â€Å"When I do at a job I can’t take care of,” says plumber’s assistant Jim Larson, â€Å"the customer gets annoyed. They thought they were getting a licensed plumber, since they were calling for a plumber. Telling them they stomach to have someone else come out doesn’t go over well. ”  On the other hand, when a plumber responds to a job easily handled by a plumber’s assistant, the customer is dummy up charged at the plumber’s high pay rate.Licensed plumber Luis Berger also does not standardised being in the position of giving customers good-for-nothing news. â€Å"If I get called out to do something handle snake a drain, the customer isn’t expecting a hefty bill. I’m caught in a difficult situationâ€I don’t set the rates or make the appointments, but I’m the one who gets it from the customer. ” Plumbers also resent being sent to do such plain work. Obi Ani is one of DrainFlow’s order processors. She is disappointed too when the wrong person is sent to a job but feels she and the other order processors are doing the best they can. We have a survey we’re supposed to follow with the calls to find out what the problem is and who needs to take the job,” she explains. â€Å"The customers don’t know that we have a standard form, so they think we can answer all their questions. Most of us don’t know any more about plumbing than the caller. If they don’t use the terms on the survey, we don’t go out what they’re talking about. A plumber would, but we’re not plumbers; we just take the calls. â₠¬Â Customer service issues also involve the billing representatives. They are the ones who have to keep contacting customers about payment. It’s not my fault the wrong guy was sent,” says Elisabeth King. â€Å"If two guys went out, that’s two trips. If a plumber did the work, you pay plumber rates. Some of these customers don’t get that I didn’t take their first call, and so I get yelled at. ” The billing representatives also complain that they see only the tail end of the process, so they don’t know what the original call entailed. The job is fairly impersonal, and much of the work is arranging customer complaints. Rememberâ€40 percent of customers are not convenient, and it is the billing representatives who take the brunt of their negative reactions on the phone.As you can probably tell, all employees have to affiance in emotional labour, as described in your textbook, and many lack the skills or personality traits to complete the customer interaction component of their jobs. They are not trained to provide customer service, and they see their work mostly in technical, or mechanical, terms. Quite a few are actually anxious about speaking directly with customers. The office staff (order processors and billing representatives) realise customer service is part of their job, but they also find dealing with negative feedback from customers and co-workers stressful.Two years ago, a management consulting company was hired to survey DrainFlow worker attitudes. The results showed they were less satisfied than workers in other comparable jobs. The following table provides a partitioning of respondent propitiation levels across a number of categories:    SHR034-6, 12-13 DrainFlow Plumbers DrainFlow Plumber Assistants DrainFlow Office Workers second-rate Plumber Average Office Worker I am satisfied with the work I am asked to do. 3. 7 2. 5 2. 5 4. 3 3. 5 I am satisfied with my working conditions. 3. 8 2. 4 3. 7 4. 1 4. 2 I am satisfied with my interactions with o-workers. 3. 5 3. 2 2. 7 3. 8 3. 9 I am satisfied with my interactions with my supervisor 2. 5 2. 3 2. 2 3. 5 3. 4 The information about average plumbers and average office workers is interpreted from the management consulting company’s records of other companies. They are not exactly surprising, given some of the complaints DrainFlow employees have make. Top management is worried about these results, but they have not been able to formulate a solution. The traditional DrainFlow culture has been focused on cost containment, and the â€Å"soft areas” like employee satisfaction has not been a major issue.The Proposed Solution The company is in trouble, and as revenues shrink and the cost savings that were supposed to be achieved by dividing up work fail to materialise, a change seems to be in order. Leigh is proposing using gold advantages to improve performance among employees. She thinks if employees were paid found on work outcomes, they would work harder to satisfy customers. Because it is not effortless to measure how satisfied people are with the initial call-in, Leigh would like to give the order processors a minuscular proceeds for every 20 calls successfully completed.For the active work, she would like to have each billing representative collect information about customer satisfaction for each completed call. If no complaints are made and the job is handled promptly, a moderate cash reward would be given to the plumber or plumber’s assistant. If the customer indicates real satisfaction with the service, a  prodigiousr cash reward would be provided. Leigh also wants to find people who are a improve fit with the company’s new goals. modern hiring procedure relies on unstructured interviews with each locationâ⠂¬â„¢s general manager, and little consistency is found in the way these managers choose employees.Most lack gentility in customer service and organisational behaviour. Leigh thinks it would be give away if hiring methods were standardised across all branches in her region to suspensor managers identify recruits who can actually succeed in the job. Your Assignment Your task is to prepare a persuasive report for Leigh on the potential  enduringness of her cash reward and structured interview programmes. run into certain it is in the form of a  schoolmaster business document that you would give to an experienced manager at this level of a fairly large corporation.Leigh is very smart when it comes to managing finances and running a plumbing business, but she will not unavoidably know about the organisational behaviour principles you are describing. As any new proposals must be passed by top management, you should also address their co ncerns about cost containment. You will need to make a strong evidence-based financial case that changing the management title will benefit the company. When you write, make sure you opinion on the following points:   SHR034-6, 12-13 1.Although it is clear employees are not especially satisfied with their work, do you think this is a reason for concern? Does research suggest satisfied workers are actually better at their jobs? Are any other behavioural outcomes associated with job satisfaction? 2. Using job characteristics theory, explain why the present remains of job design may be contributing to employee dissatisfaction. Describe some ways you could help employees feel more satisfied with their work by redesigning their jobs. 3. Leigh has a somewhat vague idea about how to implement the cash rewards system.Describe some of the specific ways you would make the reward system work better, based on the case. 4. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of using financial incentives in a program of this nature. What, if any, potential problems might hoist if people are given money for achieving customer satisfaction goals? What other types of incentives might be considered? 5. clear a specific plan to assess whether the reward system is working. What are the dependent variables that should change if the system works? How will you go about measuring rod success?\r\n'