Customer-Support Service in the Relationship Perspective - Assignment Example

Name: Tutor: Course: Semester: Date: 1. Discuss the four main ‘people’ issues that Sarah had to deal with. Make reference to negative aspects for employees working on Help Desks or in Call Centres (include the concept of ‘churnover’) Hostility and competition When Sarah was appointed to head the help desk, she was facing a kind of hostility and resentment from Mick. Mick was a supervisor who believed that he was the one who was supposed to take the job and not Sarah. This meant that Sarah was likely to have a hard time working with Mick who already had resentment towards her. It is very common in the workplaces to have employees who have hostile relationships with others out of the promotion choices the management takes. Some employees feel they have enough experience than the ones who have been chosen. Others feel they are more qualified and actually don’t give support to the newly promoted. As result the productivity of the affected department goes down due to lack of support to the new authority (Invernizzi & Rometi, 2012; Farler & broady, 2012). Sarah had to find a way of getting Mick into her side and actually work with hey to change the help desk. It involved showing him that this does not make him any less qualified and Sarah actually needed his support and experience to achieve her objectives. Absenteeism When Sarah reported, Ron had already become used to being absent from his work and probably at home with a reason which was not really a convincing reason for anybody who loves their work. This shows Ron is not at all happy with his workplace. According to Farler & broady (2012) it maybe that he is feeling the job is not very rewarding to him or it’s either taking a toll on him. Ron seemed the kind of person who needed bigger challenges in the work place to feel that he has achieved and Sarah had to develop a strategy of getting him back to loving his job by looking for amore challenging job for him. She visited him to discus her strategy for him. When he was back, Sarah already had a project for Ron. It is very important that human resource function design jobs that are satisfying to the employees in terms of challenge level and magnitude of accomplishment. Lack of team spirit The help desk was totally in shambles in terms of organizational effectiveness. The team of six people could not agree on a method of working through the main objectives and targets of the department as a team. Sam had already designed his own job and was actually working with his own goals. Tim and Jean were very hardworking and knowledgeable but their efforts could not have an impact on the performance of the help desk despite them solving 80 % of the issues presented to the help desk. Susan was partly in the team, she had already issue her notification to quit. Essentially the team spirit was not there as everybody was engaging in personal objectives and failing to realize the main goals the department had. Sarah had to bring the team to work together by giving everybody duties to perform as part of the team. The team eventually gets together and they achieve success together through coordination. They own the success as a team and the management is happy with the performance. Val, Fuentes, & dobon (2012) contend that in such a situation a manager can only be able to achieve organizational effectiveness by showing great leadership skills of understanding the individual strengths of his/her team and utilize the strengths to have the team deliver on its goals. Lack of motivation The help desk showed every sign of lack of motivation among the workers. Tim and Jean felt it was not their problem that the department was not performing. The duo was knowledgeable but actually didn’t bother with the problems of the productivity of the department. They lacked the motivation to see the department succeeding and achieving its goals. They would rather be buried in their computer world and wait for their salaries. Susan had actually had enough of it; she was quitting and had actually issued a notification. This shows that she was not motivated at all by her job and thus the reason she wanted to leave. She gave her many reasons of dissatisfaction to Sarah when they met. Sam didn’t actually want to be sucked into the whole mess and preferred to do things his own way and didn’t mind about the goals of the help desk but his job. Ron didn’t actually have a reason to be at the work place. He came up with excuses to miss his job regularly. This shows the whole team is not motivated at all towards any goal and Sarah had to engage in getting them to believe they have a common objective and actually she managed to show them that management is happy with the small transformation they had made in two weeks and the team was really motivated and every body was willing to give his/her best to see the team achieves even more. All these people issues at the help desk meant that the overall mandate of the help desk was not going to be achieved if the team did not stick together. According to Edvardsson (2008) the result of this would be high customer churn-over as their issues remain unaddressed. The customers would prefer to go to places where their issues are addressed effectively and in time to their satisfaction and this is the major challenge that Sarah had to overcome by getting every body to understand the goals of the helpdesk and thus be committed. 2. Explain three important actions that Sarah should take in future to make sure the team continues to work well and the Help Desk functions effectively Enhance team work In future Sarah might want to enhance team working spirit in the team to ensure the team sticks together in its mandate to perform as an important part of the organization. As teams experience success it gets to a point where individual goals and ambitions come into the way as people seek personal recognition for the success being enjoyed by the team. It is very problematic as it can slow down the productivity of a team that was already performing very well. Sarah should therefore give this factor its due attention to prevent its occurrence (Rumbles & Rees, 2013). It will be essential for her to have team bonding sessions probably outside the working environment where the team can strengthen their bonds and leadership and creativity traits can be discovered. Sarah will therefore delegate duties to those who show leadership traits to ensure the team can deliver and the members have a sense of responsibility to what they are doing. Performance goals setting Sarah will have to set both qualitative and quantitative goals for the team. Both are effective in checking progress. When the team sets goals for itself that are carefully thought out, it can get them very motivated and encouraged to set even higher goals. This is basically how productive teams beat deadlines and targets; by setting performance goals (Edvardsson, 2008). Sarah will therefore be helping the team to ensure productivity that can be measured as opposed to just being present in the company and nobody really recognizes their importance. Members will also feel obligated to participate in the teams targets whenever they know there is a target to meet. Quality assurance Sarah will for a matter of fact check the quality of the work the team is doing by checking the feedback the team is getting. It is very important that Sarah gets to know how clients are appreciating the kind of help they are receiving from Sarah’s team. She can achieve this by asking clients to rate the quality of service being offered by the team. Once they rate it she can then be checking to see how the satisfaction rate is progressing as the team delivers on its objectives and targets. The satisfaction rates will also work to motivate the team as they will know their efforts are being appreciated by the clients they are serving. Ensuring quality also goes a long way in building a culture in the department that can be emulated by another team or management that comes into the helpdesk (Knapp, 2010). 3. Discuss the qualities of an effective Customer Service or Help Desk or Call Centre team member Team working ability A quality customer service member has to have strong team work skills like effective interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence (Knapp, 2010). The team working ability will ensure that the customer service member will be able to engage and work hand in hand will colleagues at the customer service to explore problems given to him by a client so that he can give a speedy solution or answer to the client. The team work ability will also ensure that customers who call get all their issues responded to by cooperating will team members to have the work all coordinated and goals are achieved. If everybody in the team pursued his own agenda or engaged in personal activities like in the case study, then the team is likely to lose focus of its overall mandate as a critical function of a company and will therefore fail to perform due to lack of organizational effectiveness. Result oriented Members of help desk team have to be internally driven to see that they achieve results for this particular function of the company. It is a very important function of the company just like any other function. If the customers don’t get solutions to their problems when they call then the company is likely to lose the customers to the rival business that treats them well. It is therefore important that team members in help desks be highly result oriented and motivated by the fact that many customers rate the help they get very highly and the department is always being recognized as a top performer in the company. This means the team members should be able to set high but realizable goals for themselves and every quality team member commits to the top goal of the help desk and eventually the whole team will own the success (Edvardsson, 2008). Creative A quality team member in the help desk should be very creative in confronting unique problems in the work place that have not been encountered before. Creativity is one of the critical success factors in the business and management world. Creative people tend to be highly dynamic and able to offer solutions in times when everybody feels there is no solution. In the help desk there are all manner of problems by clients since they believe the help desk has every answer to what they are looking for. It takes creativity to find a way to help the customers and also to get the team to work together. Without a carefully thought out work plan then it will be impossible for the team to hit its targets and ensure the clients are satisfied by the quality of service they are getting from the help desk (Edvardsson, 2008; Knapp, 2010). Patience The help desk members are supposed to be people with a very high level of tolerance and restraint. It is at the help desk where some clients feel they should bring all their grievances and express them in the most uncivilized manner and they feel they have to do it like so. The customer support officer may feel insulted by the client and hit back at him or her in the same manner that the client has approached the customer service. However, the job of the customer support is to cast the image of the organization in good light. This means one has to show composure and resilience even when customers show anger and should be able to convince them that they are at the right place where they are being heard and they should actually come down and articulate the issue they have. One should take great acre not to lose composure and engage in verbal wars with the client (Edvardsson, 2008). 4. Describe the metrics Sarah can use to analyse Help Desk operations – include both quantitative and qualitative metrics. Qualitative Customer loyalty Sarah should conduct a customer survey where she would ask the customer questions like do they intend to buy the company’s products again? Can they recommend the brand to friend? These questions will show customer loyalty to the brand or the company in general. If these questions are answered negatively then it should get the customer support thinking where they are not getting things right (Knapp, 2010). Post-incident survey After an interaction, a customer maybe asked whether they felt the agent was helpful in terms of technical knowledge, solution offered and response time. This should show how competent and effective the agent is and if they need training (Knapp, 2010). Quantitative Incident handling time This should be monitored and averaged for every body to see who spends more time with clients and how do clients rate the agent’s help. If there is much time spent and many repeat tickets, then it means the agent might need more training to be effective (Knapp, 2010). Hold time and abandonment rate This is the average of customers who hang up or leave queues before reaching customer support. This shows the customer support is spending a lot of time with clients and others in waiting are finding the process tedious and thus abandon it all together. It should be monitored to ensure customers are willing to wait and are attended to in time (Knapp, 2010). References Edvardsson, I.,2008. Customer-support service in the relationship perspective. Manging service quality, 18(1) , pp.34-48. Farler, L., & broady, J.,2012. Workplace stress in libraries: a case study. Aslib proceedings: New information perspectives, 64(3) , pp.225-240. Invernizzi, E., & Rometi, S.,2012. Identity, communication and change management in Ferrari. Corprate communication: An International Journal, 17(4) , pp.483-497. Knapp, D., 2010. A guide to customer srvice skills for the service desk professional. Cengage Learning . Rumbles, S., & Rees, G., 2013. Continuous Changes, Organisational Burnout and the implications for HRD. Research paper . Val, M. P., Fuentes, C. M., & dobon, S. R., 2012. Participative management and its influence on organisational change. Management Decision, 50(10) , pp.1843-1860. Read More