Question

Misha Enterprises, a rapidly growing call center in Northeast Michigan, services clients across the United States. Businesses contract with Misha to provide external outbound calls in the following areas: customer satisfaction surveys, marketing research surveys, and fundraising for non-profit organizations. Misha was established in 1992 by Anela Ainsley, who founded the business in her basement. It expanded rapidly and moved to its current location in 1997. Fortunately, because of its niche market and responsiveness to its customer base, Misha has not been negatively impacted by the current trend of outsourcing call center activities to international companies.

Middle Management Turnover

Misha uses a part-time, multi-shift hourly workforce for outbound calling. Misha has had good success hiring its hourly workforce. Both name recognition and its status as one of a handful of employers in the area has created a candidate pool of hourly workers who have a tendency to remain in their positions for a long time.

But Misha has not been as successful hiring call center managers. The company requires its managers to be degreed professionals with call center experience, but the nearest university is 150 miles away. As a result, Misha usually recruits candidates from larger cities who desire a rural lifestyle, as well as Misha employees who left the area to complete a bachelors degree and have since returned to the area.

The call center is managed by Chauncey LaBrad, the general manager, who is skilled at selling contracts and gaining new business. He's also responsible for all profit and loss and cash flow for Misha, as well as overseeing operations. He reports directly to the owner, Anela, with whom he has worked for more than 10 years.

The two call center managers, Helen Kenjor and Linda Kamis, report directly to Chauncey. Turnover is high for this call center management position. Chauncey has told Anela that he thinks the requirements for a bachelors degree and call center experience are unnecessary for the position. In fact, he has told Anela, “If I knew Helen was working on her MBA, I never would have hired her.”

Anela has decided to enter into other business ventures and dedicate more of her time to racing horses, so she is frequently out of the office. She founded the organization on the principals of providing a high level of service to clients while remaining profitable, and when she was in the office daily, Misha retained a growth of 10% per year. Under Chauncey’s direction, however,

Misha is growing at just 2% per year. Worse yet, in addition to having trouble retaining call center managers, Chauncey also is unable to retain sales employees.

Skill Disparities

Over the years, Misha has had to hire additional employees as the organization has grown. In addition to hiring more help, the company has invested in technology with predictive dialers and a sales database that is both a customer service management tool for tracking contacts and preferences, and a statistical reporting tool. While Misha’s managers can operate the sales software, some of its tenured employees struggle with it. Admittedly, Misha brought the software when it was recruiting a new call center manager, so the training was not as thorough as originally planned. As a result, the tenured employees have exceptional customer service experience but are unable to log information in the database accurately. They remember client preferences and characteristics by making personal, handwritten notes.

This customer information is not shared with other employees, which has been problematic, but not disastrous. The tenured employees have a tendency to share their notes with each other, but do not share with employees who were hired within the past three years. This occurs because they simply have not formed strong relationships with the newer employees. Because they remain connected to a headset all day, talking to clients, they have little time to socialize with their colleagues like they did back in the day when they were manually dialing the phone.

The newly hired employees are more technically savvy and have taken ownership of learning the database software. They see the value in the software and keep all of their notes in the database. They are able to pull reports to help them manage their time and can calculate their bonus potential on a real-time basis, which keeps them motivated. These employees have established an instantaneous competency in system utilization despite the fact that they have had no training. But while these employees have exceptional software competencies, they lack customer service experience.

An example of their deficient customer service skills was recently brought to light when a newly- hired employee, who was soliciting donations, told a telemarketing prospect:

Unfortunately, I do not have the time to listen to the story about your child’s first day of school. I have to make more calls because my job is on the line if I do not make 50 calls by the end of the evening. I am sure you understand. Did you want to renew your contribution of $100 from last year?

While this employee received appropriate disciplinary action, the exchange is indicative of the type of customer service problems that exist among the employees who were hired during the past three years.

Write a letter in block format or a memo (select the correct format, per BCOM) and address it to Anela Ainsley. (This should not be a recap of your team meeting or a letter to me.) In the document, provide a brief description of the problems. Identify the facts and discuss the key problems. Consider the following before making recommendations:

· How should Anela Ainsley handle the managerial employee turnover problem? On what do you base this suggestion?

· How would you design training, and how would you test whether the training was successful, considering the disparity of skills in the workforce?

· What can be done to help the employees build rapport so the “tenured” vs. “newly hired” divisions are less obvious?

In the closing cite the benefits of your recommendations in a succinct, truthful and tactful manner. Also keep in mind that since you are consulting, you wish to land future business from Misha Enterprises. So be sure to establish your credibility for future projects through your skillful analysis and solutions.

Answer 1

To,

Anita Ansely,Head,

Misha Enterprises.

The managerial turnover can be solved in a number of ways like understanding the way of working of your employees, understanding the demands and needs of your employees,analysis of the work schedule of employees, ending of the communication gap between employer and employees, bonus salary incentives should be provided to employees for the good work provided by them leading to profits in the organization,regular meetings should be organized between employer and employees with the analysis of their work performance reports,employer should remove the mindset of thinking the worker as an ordinary person with only a schooling educational status, every year a statistical survey should be analysed on the number of employees working in the organization with the assessment of their skills through intelligence tests, the infrastructure and working environment should be according to the latest quality control standards without the occurence of stagnancy and redundancy in the organization, the employer should be keen to update the employees about the new softwares and schemes necessary for the improvement of the oragnization with provision of proper facilities and chamber rooms with tables and networking computer for the employees, the employees should be encouraged to improve their communication skills and way of handling work projects according to rules and regulations and demands of the organization.The employer should not be extravagant and should not be involved in gambling behavior rather one should concentrate of money profit and investments in the form of shares and equity funds with market partnerships with various firms according to the rules and obligations of partnership investments.

The senior employers should regularly interact with the new workers and carefully analyse the working potential,communication and interests of the new workers and their problems should be shared by the employer as when the employer is available.The employer should not develop the mindset of just working in the organization just for the purpose of running a company because of initial investment but should regularly take care of the environment of the oragnization with regular visits to the campus, should be keen to renovate the building as and when required, should be keen to invest again in the development of civic amenities like toilets, washrooms,canteens ,caferia and recreational facilities for employees with a reduction in investments in bad capital income incentives in the form of gambling.The employer should regularly interact with auditor, chartered accountant, lawyer and business dealers and market analysts with the necessary input of ideas needed for money invetsment and profit of the organization.The employer should not be involved in bad invetsmnets leading to debt and loses in the firm , rather a small freedom should be given by the employer to the employees with happiness and good gesture so that the employees feel satisifed and a family type of environment should be developed.The employer should not cut the salaries of the employees under any circumstances of loss which should be be evident to the employees as they are just middle class working professionals for the firm and no tax should be deducted from their regular earnings.The money deducted in taxes can easily be returned to the employer in the for of market invetsments or regular earnings from the marketing and selling of projects in the firm which is easy way to maintain profit without any share investments also.The work investment scenario should be shown back to middle class employers as it termed as a bad behavior with poor organizational skills and is detrimental for the working schedule of the organization.