Customer Service Management of Rogers Cable Inc of Canada - Essay Example

Management Case Analysis Table of Contents Executive Summary The following report is a business case analysis that throws light on the customer service management of Rogers Cable Inc of Canada. The report describes the prime challenges the company is about to face in future. It explains the obstacles the company has go through in order to win over the challenges. The report thoroughly analyses the cause of the obstacle and recommends the solutions. The solutions are then revised to justify its effectiveness. The case study ends with the justifications of the proposed solution to the given scenario of Rogers Cable Inc. Case Report Introduction For years the Canadian telecommunication industry was ruled by the Rogers Cable Inc. The telecommunication market of Canada had a market size of $ 31 billion with RCI's market share being approximately one-third. The wide diversity of RCI made it the greatest media and communication giant in Canada. In the media RCI made some remarkable milestones by launching the first FM radio station in Canada. Roger's Cable television network happened to be the most enormous one with 2.3 million subscribers and almost 500000 cable internet subscribers. RCI had equal foothold in the communication industry. It was a leader in the Canadian wireless industry covering 93% of the population. The company remained a monopolistic firm capturing the largest market share. Being the only player in the market RCI had the discretion to fix the price that is far beyond the socially optimum level. Key Challenges The deregulation of the media and communication industry brought the major challenge before the monopolistic RCI. The Canadian Telecommunication Act of 1993 was governed by three principles; the universal service, fair treatment of the customers and interconnectivity of networks. This marked the arrival of a competitive market in the industry. There was a need for RCI to survive among the potential competitors like Bell Canada (Canada's largest telephone company). As the customers of RCI will be thrown open to various options, there was an urgent need to retain them. Consequently the customer service of RCI was facing a severe test. Hence the company conducted a refined analysis in regard to its customer service. The analysis revealed the critical condition about RCI's service issue. Cause of Poor Customer Service The analysis produced that there was a significant number of repeat service calls after the installation. An in-depth analysis conducted on a sample of 100 customers confirmed that 20% of them had a repeat work. After considering the historical data it was observed that 16% of the repeat works were done in the houses which had a new (within the previous 30 days) installation. This called for the need to revise the prevailing customer service system which threw light on the cause of such considerable repeat work. The prevailing system, which was followed by RCI in fixing the technical problems in households, involved outsourcing of service technicians. Since the demand for service technicians is seasonal, RCI opted for outsourcing. Among all the technicians only 18 % constituted RCI's cable employees. This caused a communication gap between the Cable technical Support area of RCI and the outsourced technicians. Due to this communication gap the technicians were unaware of the urgency of fixing the problem in the customer's house. The company lacked a central system that will connect the outsourced companies for technicians with RCI. While focusing on the outsourced technicians a major fault was noticed in their skill set and tools for problem fixing. The technicians were not educated about the new Roger products and didn't have sufficient technical tools to carry out a successful problem fixing. Solution to the Problem The company after analyzing the problem initiated a program across the organization named FTR (First Time Right). The objective of the program was to spread quality awareness about RCI. Trial The program was experimented over a team of six technicians. The technicians were sufficiently informed about the Roger's products and their uses. They were informed about the rework issue and were kept under constant supervision for a month. The technicians were also ordered to make sure about the completion of installation procedure before leaving a customer's house. The outcome of the experiment was an effective servicing. Practical Implementation The company introduced a scorecard system on the performance of the technicians. According to the scores obtained the technicians were categorized as high and low. The company employed local technical trainer for every region. These trainers were given the charge to thoroughly train the technicians within that locality about the setting up of the products and their usage. A sophisticated inventory management was introduced by the company. This management system was responsible to keep track about the inventory level that is available with the technicians. In case there is inventory insufficiency the requirement was quickly met. Justification The company studied the market thoroughly which made them realize that customer service is the main issue that needs to be addressed. Since there is an initial high cost of entering the market, RCI was running in the cost advantage compared to its competitors. To gain a competitive edge, the company needed to focus on those issues where the competitors will have a comparative advantage. Hence, the customer service was the prime area of focus. The aforementioned practical implications had significant effectiveness associated with it. The scorecard facility categorized the technicians according to their performance. This infused a beacon of hope among them regarding the incentives. And consequently this will raise the overall level of perform significantly. Moreover the technicians had prior information of the rework issue; hence they will definitely be proactive in solving the problem. Employing of local trainers in every region will surely prove effective for improving the customer service. This will provide a seamless education among all the Roger technicians. But to make this effort successful the training program was required to follow with a final test. The inventory management system will surely be an effective measure to reduce the rework issue. This measure will significantly be helpful for the company as the technicians will be furnished with proper tools to address to every installation. Read More