Review & Questions - Case Study Example

Every unit in an organization should perform its responsibilities effectively for an overall favorable outcome. CCT’s customer service agents include one administrative assistant, seven Customer Service Representatives (CSR’s), and the Customer Service Director. These make up the department’s call center. Current customer complaints show that the team is underperforming. This may be due to bad organizational culture or lack of professionalism among workers. The article reveals that the call center may be having too much work to handle.

For instance, current high demands for CCT’s services exceed the sustainable capacity that the call center can serve. This is especially in peak periods that have the heaviest call volumes. In a recent internal report, thirty percent of customers who abandoned their call did not call CCT back. Instead, they were lost to competitors (Roberts, 2011, P.3). Hence, it is mandatory for the CCT CEO to find an effective solution to this problem before it gets out of hand. If the call center continues to underperform, the best case scenario is that the majority of its customer base will shift to another organization with better services.

This is because the competitors are likely to take advantage of this situation and offer attractive ideas aimed at showing customers, the inefficiency of CCT indirectly. In addition, the worst case scenario is that CCT may face permanent dissolution in the future. If this happens, research shows that it is ultimately impossible for the company to attain the same level of success even if it re-enters the market base. This is especially due to the recession that started in 2008. Thus, the size of this problem is huge.

Approaches to quality improvement are diverse. In CCT, the Customer Service department maintains a website that describes its services and the promotional offers that come from time to time. It refers all customers to the call center unit. Furthermore, the call center has an Automated Call Distributor (ACD) machine automatically shares incoming calls among the unit’s nine agents. These features prove that the CEO, Syme, was right in concluding that the staff may be ignoring the waiting calls.

The other problem was that the company’s organizational framework was not clear. For instance, call center agents did not know if they should log off or not if they had a special project. Alternatives to the problem As an alternative, Customer Care could modify the website such that customers have direct access to the services that they require. This will require upgrading the computer software to a more advanced system with the capacity of sustaining a large database. An example is the customer relationship management software.

The advantage is that it will decrease the number of incoming phone calls to the call center. Hence, calling customers will experience lesser time-waits or none at all. It will also ensure that the staff at the call center is not overworked. Hence, customers will experience better service delivery and satisfaction. The disadvantage is that the system upgrade will lead to increased operational costs. It is because online hosting services in the U.S are expensive (Bullen, 2012, P.76). Increased reliance on the website means that the company will have to pay for more data charges than accustomed.

Another alternative would be to abolish the website system and implement another way of service