A Business to Increase Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction - Research Proposal Example

West Coast Health Care Centre A Business Proposal to increase efficiency and satisfaction Prepared for Aston Leonard Senior Vice President, West Coast Health Care Centre Prepared by A committee headed by Morgan Fox Vice President, Public Relations West Coast Health Care Centre February 25, 2015 Proposal Number West Coast Health Care Centre A Business Proposal to increase efficiency and customer satisfaction Executive Summary Background West coast health care Centre is an institution with over 700 staff members including professional doctors. Over the past few decades, the centre has grown tremendously. The rapid development can be attributed to the center’s high standards of customer services and care. West coast health care Centre employs the services of the state of the art technology that guarantees fast and reliable access to vital information concerning their clients. With the increasing development in the healthcare sector, it has become important to provide the best available care to patients. The growing expectations of patients along with procuring guidance from other industries have led to increased focus on teamwork and the chemistry between team members. In healthcare sector, a team is an assembly of health professionals who remain committed to planning and providing patient care. For proper collaboration between health professionals who form a team in healthcare sector there needs to be three criteria, which are clarity of team’s functions, shared goals, and individual responsibilities (Ezziane et al., 2012, p.429). The following section will focus on importance of teamwork in other sectors like aviation, auto racing, and military and the lessons that healthcare industry can learn. A scrutiny of the nature of the interdisciplinary work done by workers in healthcare centers shows a need of cooperation. Teamwork is very essential for ensuring patient safety. In the workforce and composition of teams, fewer mistakes are made compared to individuals working alone. Teams in health sectors are especially productive when each member of the team is aware of their responsibilities as well as those of fellow team members Teamwork is extremely important for any sector that is highly reliant on human performance. In a team two aspects are equally important – task work and teamwork. While the former means the skills needed by the members to execute their tasks, the latter means the approach needed by the members to complete the tasks. In aviation, both of these are required. The importance of effective task performance by crewmembers in the cockpit cannot be denied. At the same time, there should be strong teamwork for harmonization and communication between the crewmembers. Records have shown that 68 percent of air mishaps occur due to poor coordination between aircrew (Salas & Maurino, 2010, p.254). According to Salas et al. (2005), there are five requirements for a team’s efficiency. First, strong leadership since it is through a team leader’s guidance the members can perform in a coordinated manner. Second, members need to monitor the activities of each other to keep track of errors or lapses to ensure perfection in overall performance. Third, backup behavior like members with less workload should share the burden of those who have excessive workload. Fourth, adaptability, which means members, should be able to adjust their work in case of unexpected difficulties. Fifth, team orientation indicates that each person should have compatible approach to work with other individuals. All the five elements are required in aviation in order to handle any emergency in the cockpit. In auto racing, teamwork between pit crew and race is considered as exemplary. The process-underlying auto racing itself requires high level of teamwork, and it is said that no other industry promotes teamwork as highly as auto racing. There are various stages – first assembling of car, then drawing of the appropriate parts, then making the parts, and finally testing by mechanics and engineers. Therefore, the importance of teamwork is undeniable even before the car reaches the first race (Pritchett, 1992, p.7). In military, teamwork significance is even more enhanced. Teams in military are based on complete trust, allegiance, and surrender all of which are instilled in soldiers during their intense training period. Although these elements are valued even in civilian life, the experiences of soldiers as team in military are rarely found among civilians (Zayfert & DeViva, 2011, p.191). From the above discussion, it can be concluded that teamwork is essential in many sectors since in all the above sectors interdependency, mutual trust and commitment are necessary traits. These values cannot be undermined in the healthcare sector where the objective is to extend care to the sick and save lives of critically ill patients. Hence, healthcare sector can learn the virtues of intense teamwork from other sectors. There are several organizational processes critical to problem solving; these strategies when employed in a teamwork scenario as learnt from other industries provide solutions. The first organizational process is identifying the right problem to be solved. The second move is to define the problem precisely. The third process is to analyze the defined problem to see its limits and boundaries. The forth process involves developing the possible solutions followed by selecting the best possible solution. After selection of the best solution, one precedes to implementation. Due to increased frequency of inquiry by the centre’s clients, who are the trusted its patients. Circumstances have deemed it necessary for the centre to come up with a strategy to handle the volume of calls made to the centre. This is because the volume of called have doubled over the past one year. In a move to improve the level of efficiency and customer satisfaction, the Centre will inject some amount of funds and blend it with a strategic use of teamwork. Objective West Coast health care Centre is in need of a working teamwork strategy along with addition of the available funds. The funds will improve its telephone infrastructure while the teamwork strategy will ensure reliable reception of all calls and inquiries made. Through task sharing and specialization of individual team members at various tasks and responsibilities, the teams are expected to improve the quality of services offered at reception point. Better quality of services is expected to be effected by team coordination of tasks, information, and provision of intellect in events where some members might face challenging queries. Goals Through team coordination and systems, upgrade aims to respond to every call made to the centre, giving each client adequate time on air to make enquiries, place complaints or other forms of communication through our customer care telephone infrastructure. It aims to make customer services very satisfactory to add on the good image it has created over the past few decades. The strategy aims at providing enough personnel at reception points while the teamwork will ensure provision of reliable information through coordination of activities with respect to the query in question. The teams will act as a form of a web linked to strategic points of interest with regard to the information and processes of the call centre reception points Methods The Centre will employ the expertise and the well-trained professional counselors to our teams who will provide counsel of the strategy best suited to keep the current situation in check. The professionals will provide insights of the vital practices that the available staff can embrace to handle the traffic of calls made. The teams will work towards harmonization of operations at the call centre; this is by way of interlinking different aspects of the reception centre to form a common pool of information. The formation of a unified system of information retrieval, which is based on every team member taking up a section of relevant information and being responsible of relying it, will consequently speed up the rate of information retrieval and reliance to the client. The technological upgrade will improve and enable faster real time the communication between the team members and consequently improve the level of coordination. With better coordination and faster information retrieval strategies, the call centre with highly increase the quality of service and efficiency given to the client. Costs The following table presents an initial estimate of costs. Table of Estimated Costs ______________________________________________________________________________ Teams counseling and training Total Cost ($) $3,700 __________________________________________________________________________ Telephone infrastructure Hardware Total Cost ($) $9,000 ______________________________________________________________________________ Installation and system upgrade Expenses Total Cost ($) $7,300 ______________________________________________________________________________ Total Project Costs $20,000 ______________________________________________________________________________ Market Forecast West Coast Health Care Centre A Business Proposal to increase efficiency and customer satisfaction Introduction In response to the request made on December 27th 2014 to come up with a business proposal on how West Coast Health Care Centre would increase its efficiency and customer satisfaction, we went on an eight weeks research and study. The study was aimed to come up with a working strategy that could solve a growing strain in the centre that involved high traffic of calls in the call centre. This was due to increased number of calls that as reported had doubled over the past one year. We the appointed committee that were commissioned to research and compile the business proposal are pleased to present the following business proposal. Background The comprehensive analysis of the situation revealed a number of the possible causes of the increased traffic and means to reduce and at the same time meet the needs of the clients. Majority of the calls made are inquiries made to confirm the progress of the admitted patients. The calls last for six minutes and thirty-seven seconds on average. Such calls strain the work force as very few personnel are charged with the task of answering call, which comes in bulk. A study also shows that only 78% of the total calls made are received and the callers satisfied by the reception and the information they want. If there existed a work, team commissioned with the strategic reception of calls, through task sharing there would be more reliable and satisfactory customer care. Proposed Action It is highly recommended that the Centre form a teamwork that would provide a coordinated workforce. This way the call centre will never have inadequate personnel in service. This is an important move because in the case of a team, as one member is answering the phone the other could be availing the information the client is interested to have. Another thing is the installation and upgrade of the telephone infrastructure where the little funds available will be used to install more receivers and automated phone services on the phone. Such Automated services are cases like the phone automatically giving the address of the centre without the need for someone to answer the phone. More receivers will also improve the coordination and reliance of information as team member will communicate in real time basis. Costs The following table presents an initial estimate of costs. Table of Estimated Costs ______________________________________________________________________________ Teams training and Total Cost ($) Counseling Writing and reference materials $1000 Expert’s payments $1700 Practical’s expenses $1000 ______________________________________________________________________________ Subtotal: $3,700 ______________________________________________________________________________ Telephone Infrastructure Total Cost ($) Hardware Telephone receivers $4,500 Automated systems $3,000 Telephone cables $1,500 ______________________________________________________________________________ Subtotal: $9,000 ______________________________________________________________________________ Installation Expenses Total Cost ($) Configuration cost $6,300 Inspection and certification $1,000 Subtotal: $7,300 ______________________________________________________________________________ Total Project Costs $20,000 ______________________________________________________________________________ Note: The above estimate includes the financial information based on an initial review of West Coast Health Care centre. It is based on information on the current state of call centre and the state of its telephone infrastructure. The actual financial requirements may vary depending on the market trends and price fluctuations. As a cost-saving option, the services and equipment listed above should be purchased as soon as possible or as-needed basis in case of financial strains. Closing Sincerely, Morgan fox Morgan Fox Vice President, Public Relations West Coast Health Care Centre Accepted for West Coast Health Care centre by Name: ___________________________________________ Signature: ___________________________________________ Date: ______ References Ezziane, Z., et al. (2012) Building Effective Clinical Teams in Healthcare. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 26(4), 428-436 Pritcett, P. (1992) The team member handbook for teamwork, Pritchett Salas, E. & Maurino, D. (2010) Human Factors in Aviation, Academic Press Salas, E., Sims, D.E. & Burke, C.S. (2005) Is there a “big five” in teamwork? Small Group Research, 36(5), 555-599 Zayfert, C. & DeViva, J.C. (2011) When Someone You Love Suffers from Posttraumatic Stress: What to uExpect and What You Can Do, NY: Guilford Press Read More