Discussion 1

The third-quarter quality figures for the customer call center you manage have been posted. Although your numbers look good, you quickly notice that, compared to other call centers in the company, your ratings for customer service are below average. Given that part of your bonus is tied to these figures, you are obviously concerned and very motivated to fix the problem. You call your counterparts in other call centers to see what they’ve been doing recently and to generate some ideas that might influence customer service. One manager said she instituted a new game called “Answer the Call for Baseball,” where the top 10 customer service representatives get to take off work for a midday baseball game. Another manager in a successful call center has increased his monitoring of reps on the phone and is intervening immediately when a rep doesn’t perform well. A third manager hasn’t done much of anything innovative and said, “I guess my customers are easier to handle than yours.” You sit back in your chair, perplexed to say the least. What is the problem here? What other information would be useful? How would you begin to improve your customer service quality rating? Is the problem definitely with your reps, or could it be something else?