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Throughout the years they have had tremendous issues with the customer service at the various locations and it had resulted in downward sales and affected the bottom line drastically. Currently there is not a focused training program that addresses standards of customer service skills from center to center. The purpose of this study is to develop specific customer service training for staff in order to improve customer relationships and establish a standard behavior level for customer service. An established standard of behavior will provide management with an assessment form for employment evaluations.
Successful customer service relies on creative innovation; simply put a company goes not need to apply a lot of money or technical resources to achieve desired goals. Research done over the past 10 years shows an accumulation of poor habits in customer service leads to disastrous ends. Therefore by developing customer service training it can improve service and develop standards of performance above just meeting statistical goals. Also, by creating an organizational behavior standard of customer service, management avoids the affects of poor relationship management.
The development of customer service training will lead to stronger client loyalty, referrals, and lower costs of service. However, in a more in depth look at the organizational behavior of leadership, it was one of a more passive attitude towards the staff and lack of attention to employee relationships within the work environment. Now, when I mention this, I mean to say that they had a very good casual relationship with their staff. However, when it came to the more strategic nature of forming and cultivating a motivational and communication and reward system, this is where the underlying problem clearly existed.
As mentioned in the introduction, this company is a retail goods environment which houses, groceries, lumber and housing materials, white goods and electronics. This business unit is so vast in their variety of products and services that it makes for a specialty business infrastructure. They have had a tremendous amount of turnover with not only employees, but also customers. With the employees, the problem exists that they are unable to deal with customers when they get irate and frustrated during a customer service resolution scenario and thus the working environment becomes very stressful and hostile.
From a Leadership and Organizational behavioral perspective, there seems to be a cultural behavior pattern being harvested in- souse amongst management and employee relations, which is causing the same action between staff to customer relationship. One is reflecting the other. The leadership has not provided adequate training tools (with relation to customer service best practices), nor implemented reward systems which could encourage employee motivation and gain confidence amongst staff.
All of these factors being ignored have led to the following identifiable components, which was making it a difficult working environment and breaking down the organization as a whole. The way leaders react to crises says a lot about the organization’s values, norms ND culture. Crises, by their nature, bring out the organization’s underlying core values. Often, this is where rhetoric becomes apparent. Reactions to crises are normally highly visible, because everyone’s attention is focused on the incident or situation. Disconnects between actions and words will usually be apparent, and actions always speak louder than words.
Additionally, a crisis not only brings a great deal of attention, it also generates a great deal of emotional involvement on the part of those associated with the organization, particularly if the crisis threatens the organization’s survival. This increases the potential for either reinforcing the existing culture, or leading to a change in the culture. Such a crisis can provide an opportunity for a leader to influence the organization’s culture in either a positive or a negative way. How can the communication aspect between employer and employee be improved? Communication is what the employees need from their employers.
Employees look for organizations where communication and process are transparent. [1]The model below shows the flow of communication in a systematic format. [pick As defined by the above representational model, there are 3 categories f employees: A: Who will leave their current employer in 3 years of their employment? B: Who have a probability of leaving their current employer in next 3 years? C: Who will stay with their current employer in the next 3 years? Category A: These are the employees who lack communication with their employers. Category C: These are the employees who have proper, well- structured communication with their employers.
Communication is also the way to win the employees trust in the organization. Employees trust the employers who are friendly and open to them. This trust leads to employee loyalty and finally retention. Employers also feel that the immediate supervisors are the most authenticated and trusted source of information for them. So the organizations should hire managers who are active communicators. Communication mediums Open door policy: Organizations should support open door policies so that the employees feel comfortable and are able to express their doubts and feeling to their employers.
With respect to open door policy a clearer understanding of communication by way of this medium is vividly explained like this: [2]”The business owner must also communicate the performance measures or yardsticks or implementation of the Organizational Behavior principles. For example, if a company wishes to adopt an “Open Door Policy”, the organizational behavior communication must mention measures for this principle. The business owner could mention the number of times an employee approaches the Manager of the department with issues as a yardstick to measure.
This may also prove to be counter productive in some cases, but in most cases where issues persist, this is one of the significant measures taken to see if the issues are being discussed or not. ” Frequent meetings and Social gatherings – Weekly updates, daily briefings, family UN days, company retreats, etc Emails, Newsletters, Intranet and many more Team Management and success factors One of the implementations in which I suggested when it came to effective organizational behavior and managing effectively, was to introduce a “team initiative” by which team leaders are delegated. Id this because the operation of managing several locations would have been a difficult task for upper management to control given the mapping of the locations. In doing this it would achieve and incorporate a set of competencies that would complement the skills for developing leadership. Such as; 1) Coaching and managing performance without traditional forms of feedback. 2) Using electronic communication and collaboration technologies. 3) Leading in a cross-cultural environment. ) Helping to develop team members. 5) Building and maintaining trust. 6) Networking across hierarchical and organizational boundaries. 7) Developing and adapting organizational processes to meet the demands of the team. 8) Using interpersonal awareness. Over time, most people can develop the competencies that are needed to work independently. Adequate training, education, and leadership support and dieback can speed development, retain employees and promote a healthy working environment.
Rewards system implementation The consequences of behavior-what behavior is rewarded and what is punished- can significantly influence culture and once culture is affected, employees lack confidence and it filters into they’re day to day job duties – namely, interaction with customers and even those of they’re peers. This is why reward systems in environments such as the retail industry, is, imperative and almost a ‘must have. ‘ If it is one things employees like is a ‘pat on the back’ and to be recognized verbally or monetarily) when they have done a good job or gone above and beyond.
Given this, we sought to put together an employee recognition program, comprising of several different components, like – employee appreciation day, most outstanding CAR on a monthly basis, etc. Criteria for recruitment, selection, promotion, retirement One of the powerful ways of changing an organization’s cultural behavior is through the type of people brought into, retained, and advanced in the organization. You should be able to establish a desired culture base in an organization by bringing in and advancing individuals with the values you want, ND eliminating those with undesired value bases.
That is what this organization began to do when we proposed tightening up admissions standards to screen out undesirables. This strategy is consistent with the belief that the problems experienced by the organization result from, in addition to all other things mentioned, a few “bad apples. ” The following scholar article refers to this type of recruitment, selection, promotion and retirement process as being important because; [3]”Recruitment is the process of identifying that the organization needs to employ someone up to the point at which application forms for the post have arrived at the organization.
Selection then consists of the processes involved in choosing from applicants a suitable candidate to fill a post. Training consists of a range of processes involved in making sure that job holders have the right skills, knowledge and attitudes required to help the organization to achieve its objectives. ” Accountability This in particular was an area in which the stakes were very low for the expectation of accountability when it came to the running of the department.
Not only after careful analysis did we find that the accountability factor had been issuing, however, we realized that there was no formality in place by way of a hierarchical chain of accountability throughout the company. Therefore, through implementation of structured accountability it became a widespread policy in place, which was filtered throughout the entire organization. We recognized that by implementing this tool it helps leaders to better understand, measure, celebrate and build accountability.
The benefits in which it brought to the organization are; a) Reduction in legal and financial liabilities: by establishing and enforcing airmailed policies and procedures and financial checks and balances b) By building confidence in the ability of the organization to demonstrate tangible results through sound strategic direction c) Manage conflicting demands: Not only in the area of customer service but as a company with internal and external conflicting demands. ) Build staff morale: by sharing ownership for results and focusing energies on what really matters It leads the leadership team to: 1) Gain a shared understanding of the key success factors that need to be in place to ensure the organization is highly accountable; ) Arrive at a consensus about your strengths and areas that need improvement 3) Generate practical and targeted strategies for strengthening accountability throughout the organization 4) Demonstrate to key stakeholders that the organization is committed to being accountable.
Solutions in which I suggested as a fix in the organizational behavior are; – Hire and train dedicated customer representatives – This mechanism should be put in place between the customer service manager and the human resources department – Customer Service infrastructures be implemented in each location – I was efficient and successful in caring out this implementation, after conducting critical analysis of what structure executive management wanted the department to take on to synergies with the patterns of familiar departments within the organizational units.
By implementing pockets of leaders within the sub units, I was able to control the customer service environment, which in turn helped promote a healthy operation for both internal and external customers. – Customer service technology and resources be upgraded via IT methods – By meeting with the IT department and the Directors of Retail, we were able to come p with a system which would aid in a quicker channel of communication to filter customer relation issues or compliments given on a particular store or point of sale transaction. Live with the given injection of the above solutions, leadership will be better able to control their customer service environment, they would not have a high turnover rate with employees because there would be a dedicated infrastructure in place to handle these queries and the problems currently being experienced with the bottom line in sales would be fixed through these resolutions, thereby outing profits back in their financial portfolio.
Literature Review The six scholarly articles used which aided in my research of this assignment were; 1) Studying organizational change and development – Challenges for future research 2) Human resources and the resource based view of the firm-from off. Brim Wright, B Dumbfound… Journal of Management, 2001 3) How to make the office a work place not a war zone – Financial Adviser, March 8, 2007, 4) Cultivating work culture – Northern Territory News (Australia), September 5, 2007 5) Internal marketing and organizational behavior: a partnership in developing customer-conscious employees at every level -WAR George – Journal of Business Research, 1990- 6) Leader positive mood and group performance – The case of customer service JAM George – Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1995 In my review and research of the above scholarly articles, it brought together a combination of understanding Organizational behavior and leadership from a different perspective. Meaning that even though from the top levels of building and cultivating organizational behavior and developing a universal style of business to be filtered throughout the organization, it is at the same very time ere important to treat every aspect of the business with the same level of importance as it relates to the implementation of leadership techniques used in the sub units of the business.
I would like to share some quotes with you that would have caught my attention in the reading of some of these articles: the widespread interest in the topic of organizational citizenship behaviors (Sobs), little empirical research has tested the fundamental assumption that these forms of behavior improve the effectiveness of work groups or organizations. This article examines the assumption that Sobs improve the effectiveness of work groups or organizations in which they are exhibited. First, several theoretical and conceptual explanations of why Sobs may improve organizational effectiveness are provided. Following this, a review of the available empirical evidence is provided. The results of this review indicate that Sobs make important contributions to the variance in organizational effectiveness, although helping behavior tends to have more system- attic effects than either sportsmanship or civic virtue.
Finally, the implications of these findings for future research are discussed. ” 5]”Theoretical justification for viewing proboscis behavior and voluntary turnover at the group level of analysis is provided. It was hypothesized that group cohesiveness and leaders’ positive mood would be positively related to the incidence of proboscis behavior in work groups and negatively related to the groups’ voluntary turnover rates. In addition, the emphasis placed on proboscis behavior during initial colonization into groups was expected to be positively related to the occurrence of proboscis behavior in groups. A potential consequence of proboscis behavior in a service context also was explored.
More specifically, the form of proboscis behavior investigated, customer service, was hypothesized to be positively related to group sales performance. In general, the hypotheses were supported by data from a sample of 33 stores belonging to a national retail organization. ” Therefore, in the insistence of this case, where the problem surrounded and commenced with the customer service and disorientation of the level of service being provided by staff to customers, we learned after close analysis that within the organization itself, leadership fell short in creating a solid organization behavior pattern, which if recognized and implemented would have assisted in correcting the root of the problem, which surfaced at the frontline of the organization.
Reflection Personal would say upon reflection anything which challenges you, in addition stretches you beyond your limits. So, just when I thought that I could not get through this assignment and began to get frustrated, I had to take a minute to self-reflect and understand that I was being taken to the next level by way of stretching my intelligence. Academic My reflection of the academic components which made up this assignment was to one of the tradition, “study the book” and recite the information in a book review and test of knowledge type of assignment. This took us beyond the book and into the real world of work to apply the academic knowledge and this made the assignment exciting and practical.
Professional It put me in the setting of before and after. Prior to my learning the formal academic concepts, I had already been applying them unconsciously, just by using my common sense. However, now that I am aware of the in depth systems of Organizational behavior and Leadership concepts and structures, I can come a more effective and informative leader. Leadership and managerial development As stated above, learning the more in depth concepts and new systems and ways in which one can incorporate new and innovative techniques to add a unique organizational culture, through applied methodology is what has been exhibited in this course project assignment.