Martin Lee
Yasuhisa Kato
ED 333a
Aug. 4, 1999
Revised solutions of Case 1
Overview
Company is having problem with its current Integrated Customer Services. The problem has been identified as a problem of coordination of functional organizations in the company. As an solution, a merge of the customer services division has been adopted and this new policy requires an intensive training to be in progress for all customer service representatives disregarding their previous role under its functional and organizational structure. Thus, the consecutive problem raised by the solution is how to perform this intensive training in a cost-effective and time-effective fashion. The design of a new learning curriculum become a problem for the company since the existing corporate training organization is also based on the existing functional and structured system.
The goal of the new training curriculum is to prepare all customer service representatives, no matter what functional division they were working in, to be able to perform customer services in all three fields—billing affairs, technical support, and sales of supply.
Problems
Building a new integrated customer services requires many changes, which need huge investment. Budget and time will have to be considered. The reorganization will not only impact the customer service department but also the entire organization. These changes can include structural, financial, organizational, administrative modification, policy, and other transformation. Company has to be aware of any negative consequences and associated risk. A detailed risk analysis with an emergency backup plan should be developed to prevent any catastrophes during the transition period.
Design issues
The design of the training solution should focus on minimizing the impact to the current system, minimizing the time required for off the job training, minimizing the associate cost in money, time and human resources, and maximizing the effectiveness of the learning.The most important three issues in the design are: organization, IT development, and training.
Organization:
As can bee seen from fig. 1, we organize this call center into three levels and four categories.
Specialist:
We select some highly experienced and knowledgeable people to be senior specialists from each of the three fields--billing, technical support, and sales of supply. We will offer training to enforce their knowledge in their field.
Generalist:
We will select people, who has been working or has been transferring between these three fields and who supposedly have good understanding of the function of each field. They all should be good in problem solving. We will offer intensive technical training in each field and general classes in problem solving, teamwork relationship, system functions, and organizational learning. After training they will be technically proficient in all three field. They will also have a solid understanding about how the new system works and their function in this new system. They will all have a very good sense of the meaning,the purpose of the merge, and the functional integration of three different fields. The curriculum originally proposed in the case will serve as a reference for the design of this training.
General Customer Support Representatives:
All customer support representatives from the three fields will became general customer support representative who will be able to answer and handle all general issues related to all three field. All of them will be able to answer technical questions, handle billing problems, and sell supplies to their customers. Short trainings and workshops will be offered.
Organizational Work Flow:
Senior Specialists have their office and work closely with Generalists. All Generalist will be sharing a common area where they can work closely each other. General Customer Representatives will be organized into teams. Each team consists of people from different fields. In another words, we can find knowledgeable people of each field in each team. Each team will be sharing a common area to be able to work closely each other. The design of the sharing area can be seen from fig. 2. It shows that each team has seven members and is working in a closed octagon area. In the center of the octagon, there is a shared space, which is used for daily meetings and formal and informal information sharing. Then, three octagons are concatenated at each side, and a total of three teams share one big common space. This space is used for joint meeting, lunch meeting, and other formal and informal activities in these six teams. These three teams are organized as one group.
Each member in the team will be wearing two hats. Although their current title is General Customer Support Representative, we still want them to keep their old hat, which represents their previous specialty. The title is associated with responsibility, so the rational of having double titles is to specify each member’s responsibility toward his customers and toward his fellow workers. More specifically, each member is responsible for serving their customers as a general representative and for assistinghis teammates with his specialty.
Example --- What happens when acustomer’s call comes in:
Any representatives should take any callsince they are now all wearing the hat of General Customer Services Representative. For example, a call has been picked up by a representative whose second hat is technical support and the customer made the following questions:
Technical questions: Customer began with some technical questions about some problems frequently appeared on the machine. The representative, since his second hat is technical support, was knowledgeable enough to answer all questions and the customer was satisfied.
Supply questions: after solving the technical problems on the machine, customer wanted to know about supplies. The representative was able to answer most of the question such as what items wore out quicker and which item should be ordered rather than others. Then customer asked some complicated questions about each item including its packing and shipping details that the representative was not familiar with yet. Obviously external knowledge was needed to answer the question. The first thing the representative did is to consult the knowledge base system and try to get the answer. However, because of the unfamiliarity, he failed to get the right answer. The second thing he did is to ask the customer to wait for a minute and he turned his neck back to look for his fellow team members who wear the second hat of supplies. If that kind of member was available at the time, he would receive immediate help from the team member to solve the problem. If that member was busy, then he would establish an online broadcasting request using the IT system we have designed for all general representatives who wear that second hat. Quickly, he was chatting with other representative who was knowledgeable about the supplies to answer all questions. If the questions were really too technical and nobody can help, he would establish online contact with a Senior Supply Specialist who definitely knew everything about supplies. After getting the help from the senior supply specialist, the representative would be able to give a satisfying answer to the customer.
Billing question: The customer, after ordering some supplies from the representative, he raised some questions about billing. The representative was not good at billing, so he used the same procedure as described above and answered all question quickly. However, customer now wanted to know about the warranty, and service agreement, shipping date in relation to billing date, refund policy, and in what case would be considered as defects. Unfortunately some of these cross-departmental issues were really hard for any of the double hats representative to answer. Under this circumstance, he established an online connection to a Generalist and the Generalist accessed the same customer profile where the representative have already recorded all the questions. The generalist typed all answers into that profile, which was shared with the representative and the he could be answering the question while seeing words appearing on the screen. If some of this cross- departmental question included highly technical details, the General representative would consult each other by visually finding one of his fellow members for help or in some cases he would have to establish another online connection to consult a Senior Specialist of the specific field. Eventually the answers were composed by the knowledge to all and the customer was happy in having an accurate information right at the time with one call and with one representative.
Call Analysis:
The representative obtained all knowledge from peer and specialists answer the questions and at the same time he learns how to handle some of those questions. He will be able to answer those similar questions all by himself in the next call.
Training
We design training for each group: Specialists, Generalists, General Representatives.
Specialist: First we have to train three special expert groups using intensive training program. In this program, traditional lecture-style teaching, computer-based training, and on-line courses are integrated with hands-on training. They master and deepen their knowledge of expertise. They have responsibility for their own field and update their knowledge if new products, new technology, new policies come up. They also have to learn how to add knowledge to knowledge base system and maintain knowledge base updated.
Generalists: Second, generalists should be trained. They are required to have a wide knowledge of the products themselves, billing, and supplying, and other needed expertise. They also master communication skills to communicate with specialist and representatives properly. They all should be good at problem solving. We will offer intensive technical training in each field and general classes in problem solving, teamwork relationship, system functions, and organizational learning. After finishing this intensive program, they will be technically proficient in all three fields and basic knowledge and skills. They will also have a solid understanding about how the new system works and their function in this new system. They will all have a very good understaffing of the conceptual meaning of this call center system,the purpose of the merge, and the functional integration of three different fields. The curriculum originally proposed in the case will serve as a reference for the design of this training.
General Representatives: General representative members should first learn a big picture of this company, this calling center organization, and its process. One-day normal lecture is held for this purpose.After the lecture, general representatives are divided into some groups and teams according to their background knowledge. Each team member should come from different field. To have an effective learning environment, Complex Instruction method is used: it is based on peer to peer learning, and it promotes teamwork. It gives each team responsibility and accountability in the team. Each team give each individual his responsibility and accountability. It needs right environment, right roles, and right technology. They can learn by one another in a team. Next training is to learn a methodology of Complex Instruction (CI). They can learn how CI works in this working environment, how to behave and act as a team member, and how to acquire knowledge through this CI method. This is a two-day workshop, and first day is basically about the method, and how the method is applied to the real learning environment. Learners can watch several videos as a variety of case studies. The second day is based on a simulation, and a role playing. The same working environment: desk, chair, table, telephone, and other facilities, is set up in the learning center. General representatives are organized to a different group from their work. They experience how to learn by CI method in the morning. Then they learn the basics of how to respond to customer calls in the afternoon at the same calling center settings. After finishing these training, they start to work as a team member. Their very first task is to debriefing the initial lecture of big picture and the second CI workshop. They can share the concrete image of the company’s big picture and the whole process of the calling center systems as well as how CI works in this team and how they act as a team member. They also learn about the usage of IT systems such as knowledge base system. A half-day workshop is provided to get acquainted with these IT systems.
To keep the customer service quality, Quality Control (QC) activities are used in this working place. There will be several short breaks during the day of the working hours. Team members can exchange their knowledge by providing solutions to today’s problems or just problems not to be solved. Each team has its own problem and will present a solution proposal during a certain amount of period. After that there will have a presentation competition and rewards are given to teams, which provides effective solutions. This activity repeats every quarter. This rewarding and bottom up approach promote the motivation of general representatives.
Rational
The rational of this design is based on the education theory of Complex Instructions and active learning.
Complex Instruction:
Complex Instruction is a refinement and extension of cooperative learning developed by Professor Elizabeth Cohen, Director of the Program on Complex Instruction at Stanford. The goal of this approach is to integrate academically low-status students more fully into classroom instruction, especially in untracked or heterogeneous classrooms. Such students come disproportionately from lower socioeconomic groups, from some ethnic, racial, religious or linguistic minority communities, and from other groups that are often subordinated in American society.
This multiple abilities approach addresses the difficulties many such students experience with the primarily linguistic and narrative learning tasks that dominate the 'traditional curriculum, often resulting in low expectations for competence and low academic status. Such students need frequent opportunities to succeed academically using intellectual abilities which they often possess but have little chance to use -- or further develop -- in school. To accomplish this instructionally, students rotate, in small groups, through a series of one- or two-day learning activities. Each activity is connected to a large concept or question and each one requires that students use different abilities -- artistic, musical, dramatic, visual perception, graphic design, spatial relations, computational, etc. -- to successfully complete the task. With each activity "rotation," the students also play a different role in their small group -- facilitator, materials manager, resource person, recorder, reporter, etc., thus ensuring that they receive explicit practice in performing different tasks required to build effective teams. When the students have been held collectively accountable for understanding the curriculum content, they then complete a group assignment or task that demonstrates their understanding. This product of their work, usually in the form of posters, skits, songs, poems, charts, graphs, pictures, political cartoons, newspaper editorials, physical models, etc., is then presented to their classmates and critiqued by teacher and students alike. For personal accountability, students have an additional, individual assignment related to each activity.
We apply this Complex Instruction to the training of general representatives. There are heterogeneous environments, not experienced representatives. Those situations have good fits to Complex Instruction.
Activity Theory
Activity theory derives from the work of Vygotsky and was devleoped by Leont’ev. They argued that the mind emerges through the interaction with the environment. In other words, people learn through their activities. The following features constitute a basic setting in the theory of active learner. It has the technology as the right tools, online discussion and real world simulation as the form of community, and the role of each team and each individual has individual function in a community. A setting where tools, community, and individual’s role in the community were well identified, it becomes one of the most promising environments for activity theory.
IT System Development:
The solution we proposed here is characterized by a Human Expert System supported by an Information Technology infrastructure composed by many different systems that includes Knowledge Base, Data Base, Online Communication, Data Sharing, Customer Profile Sharing, Auto Archive, and Information Indexing. The functions of the core systems are: