Globally Distributed Work
Prepared this case study for Service Marketing Management assignment in 2007. The case is based on real life experience of working in a 24*7 support project.
1. The case study
Paramjeet opened his eyes to the beep of the pager at 6:00 am, saw the message and again pulled the cover over himself. It was the offshore to onsite transition reminder and the official responsibility to handle any issues in the systems was upon him from now. Another hour passed by and just as he was about to start from his home to the Santa Clara office of his client, he received another pager. A business-to-business transaction (B2B) system has just failed and required his immediate attention. He opened his laptop and connected to the intranet. It’s a high priority system and its failure would affect transactions all over the world. He had to respond with the issue within next 30 minutes and solve it within the next 2 hours. He first sent out an email communication to a global mailing list consisting of IT managers, Business Managers and vendors all over the world that the B2B system has failed and he was looking into it. He checked into the routine places and most of it looked ok. Time was flying by and he felt the pressure as he realized that the client might be loosing millions of dollars if he is unable to solve it in time. Finding one of his Indian colleagues online in the official internal messenger system, he messaged him. It was 7:30 pm in India and Sudarshan was about to leave when he got the message from Paramjeet. He was asking him to check if he could find any issue. Paramjeet said that he needed to open a bridge so as to involve other stakeholders in the Supply Chain operations as the problem did not seem very apparent. It was one hour since the problem had started and various people had already mailed him asking about the status. On the worldwide telecom bridge, he asked the operator to message the IT engineer at Australia and the IT manager at Britain to come up on the bridge.
It was 11:30 pm in Brisbane and Mark was about to go to bed when he got the page that one of the major systems had failed. He quickly joined the bridge and checked the application from his laptop. There did not seem much problem and all the Australian systems seemed to be working well.
4 pm in London and Angelina was busy checking into some issues in the vendor IT systems due to which they were not able to do any transaction for the last 1 hour. It was a busy day and there were huge number of transactions just before the business closed for the day. She suddenly got the page to join the bridge. She realised that the problem might not be isolated to this single vendor alone. Just as she joined the Bridge, she noticed the huge array of mails of other vendors in Europe complaining that they were unable to transact. She saw Paramjeet’s communication too.
At the bridge, even as the IT engineers Angelina, Mark and Paramjeet went about checking and discussing various possible issues, the Business Manager of the Eastern region of America joined the bridge. It was 11:00 am in New York and the vendors were reporting that they were unable to process orders. The engineers discussed and requested the database administrator at UK and server administrator in US to join the bridge.
Each individual business manager of APAC, EMEA and Americas communicated to their vendors and suppliers to not to process or ship any orders so as to avoid any errors and duplication after the system came back up.
On the need of the moment, a virtual team was formed distributed across the globe to solve the problem at hand. At the back of his mind, Paramjeet had a hunch that this might be another long day.
The Team:
Paramjeet was one of the two engineers who have been working at the client premises in US for the last 4 months. The other engineer Suhail worked from the East Coast while he worked from the West Coast. The Indian team (offshore) consisted of 6 other members.
The onsite team was primarily responsible for handling high priority issues during US business hours. But it may not be limited to that as Australia, Japan and East Asia which is few hours ahead of India needs support till Indian team start work at 8 am. On the other hand, the Indian team has an overlap with APAC and EMEA and hence handle technical issues of the customers in those regions. Additionally, the Indian team take up on software development work from US and closely coordinates with onsite to provide long-term solutions to pending issues.
Paramjeet was one of the two engineers who have been working at the client premises in US for the last 4 months. The other engineer Suhail worked from the East Coast while he worked from the West Coast. The Indian team (offshore) consisted of 6 other members.
The onsite team was primarily responsible for handling high priority issues during US business hours. But it may not be limited to that as Australia, Japan and East Asia which is few hours ahead of India needs support till Indian team start work at 8 am. On the other hand, the Indian team has an overlap with APAC and EMEA and hence handle technical issues of the customers in those regions. Additionally, the Indian team take up on software development work from US and closely coordinates with onsite to provide long-term solutions to pending issues.
The team has been working on this project for the last two years and support over 50 applications in various technologies like java, oracle, perl, cgi, unix. Initially, the offshore team worked in 3 shifts (8am to 5pm, 11am to 8pm, 3pm to 11pm) and 1 onsite shift (See Exhibit 1). The team members were rotated around the shifts. However, this caused major issues as people found it hard to adjust to the biological cycle. The team overlap was just 2 hours and there was hardly a time when they could all meet to discuss common issues and resolve problems faster. Sometimes, they had to stay back to serve the customer on a particular issue. As the team members were rotated, it was difficult to establish relationship with customers. The customer satisfaction was low as the regular customers often found variability in support from different people (See Exhibit 2). Some of them would personally message individuals to help them out on personal issues. So, some team members were always busy as they were responding to urgent customer needs keeping their regular work pending. Technical expertise, client handling capability, experience level varied across the team which made it difficult for the team manger to evaluate the team on a common set of objective parameters.
The new team members at offshore might have never met or worked with the onsite counterparts making it a bit difficult to connect and understand the working styles in the initial phase. The same was true with onsite members true and they were not very sure if they could fully rely on their offshore counterparts. Same was true with customers who had to work continuously with people whom they have never met personally making it hard to trust them with important issues.
Cultural issues arose during festivals. While everybody wanted to take off during important festivals like Diwali and Onam, customer commitments required someone to stay on during the holiday season (See Exhibit 3 & Exhibit 4). The client’s located all over the world celebrated different festivals and took breaks during different periods of time causing variability of work load. The manager was faced with the problem of resource utilization during such periods. The onsite and offshore team also had to work on urgent issues over the weekend including deployments which could not be done during regular business hours. System maintenance would often take place during Friday/Saturday nights requiring onsite engineers to stay awake for most of the night.
The Customer:
The customer is a fortune 500 company having a global supply chain. It has developed a robust system to handle its sourcing and supply to customers. Considering the high cost of maintaining and supporting the applications and systems in US, it has outsourced considerable part of the work to an Indian vendor. However, it had kept key people in strategic locations like Australia, Japan, UK and US to manage and streamline the operations across the chain. It has its own set of IT managers for APAC (Mark Dew) and EMEA (Angelina Jones) who worked with outsourced vendors to ensure system stability. It also had business managers In America, UK, Australia and Japan who interacted with vendors and suppliers ensuring smooth flow of goods, information and money.
It has leveraged technology to create a well networked team across the globe consisting of business teams, IT teams, supplier/vendor IT and business teams, outsource service provider teams. Hence for both products and service it is able to source from regions where it is most cost efficient and supplies to areas where it is able to provide maximum benefits to its customers.
Technology:
The customer invested heavily on technology, creating a network across the globe. It also invested in hardware and software at its vendor, supplier and outsource vendor premises. It installed Voice over IP phones across the globe which enabled people to talk freely. Other communication devices like internal messenger and email for all (see Exhibit 5). The onsite team members’ each carried a pager and laptop while the offshore team had one pager and no laptops. They were required to come to office for work while the onsite team could work from office, home or any place where they could connect to the internet. They also had Virtual Private Network enabled to connect to the client’s network from anywhere. Technology enabled people to even share their desktops and allow others to control remotely (Netmeeting). Video conference facility was available at strategic places to minimize travel and save time and cost. It also invested heavily in security systems to prevent data piracy and information leakage.
The customer maintained a database of all employees, vendors, consultants and contractors along with their photo, work address, work phone number, subordinates and superior information. Through this people would be able to connect well in a distributed work environment.
Further, there was a global hotline number where any person on the supply chain network could dial in and report issues and relevant people across the globe could be summoned to work on resolving the issue.
The customer is a fortune 500 company having a global supply chain. It has developed a robust system to handle its sourcing and supply to customers. Considering the high cost of maintaining and supporting the applications and systems in US, it has outsourced considerable part of the work to an Indian vendor. However, it had kept key people in strategic locations like Australia, Japan, UK and US to manage and streamline the operations across the chain. It has its own set of IT managers for APAC (Mark Dew) and EMEA (Angelina Jones) who worked with outsourced vendors to ensure system stability. It also had business managers In America, UK, Australia and Japan who interacted with vendors and suppliers ensuring smooth flow of goods, information and money.
It has leveraged technology to create a well networked team across the globe consisting of business teams, IT teams, supplier/vendor IT and business teams, outsource service provider teams. Hence for both products and service it is able to source from regions where it is most cost efficient and supplies to areas where it is able to provide maximum benefits to its customers.
Technology:
The customer invested heavily on technology, creating a network across the globe. It also invested in hardware and software at its vendor, supplier and outsource vendor premises. It installed Voice over IP phones across the globe which enabled people to talk freely. Other communication devices like internal messenger and email for all (see Exhibit 5). The onsite team members’ each carried a pager and laptop while the offshore team had one pager and no laptops. They were required to come to office for work while the onsite team could work from office, home or any place where they could connect to the internet. They also had Virtual Private Network enabled to connect to the client’s network from anywhere. Technology enabled people to even share their desktops and allow others to control remotely (Netmeeting). Video conference facility was available at strategic places to minimize travel and save time and cost. It also invested heavily in security systems to prevent data piracy and information leakage.
The customer maintained a database of all employees, vendors, consultants and contractors along with their photo, work address, work phone number, subordinates and superior information. Through this people would be able to connect well in a distributed work environment.
Further, there was a global hotline number where any person on the supply chain network could dial in and report issues and relevant people across the globe could be summoned to work on resolving the issue.
The Process:
The team performed support and enhancement for the 50 odd applications for the customers. The customers opened service requests through a software application with different priorities – P1, P2, P3 and P4 which was required to be solved in 2, 4, 6 and 8 hours respectively. On occurrence of high priority issues (P1 & P2), the engineers received a page from the system. The business had identified the high priority applications, which required monitoring and running for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week failing which page would be sent to the various stakeholders.
The offshore team voluntarily took up the cases that they wanted to solve but in case that did not happen, the project manager would assign the cases. After initial investigation, the engineer might be able to resolve the case or send a mail to customer for more information. If the customer did not respond within a couple of days, the assignee would send a reminder or try to message the customer. Talking over phone would be the third level of communication when the engineer wanted to understand the problem better. Sometimes, when he was not able to replicate the problem, the customer would show the problem via Netmeeting. Finally, on successfully completing the work as, the engineer would set the case to resolve. The customer would receive an auto-generated mail to respond to survey containing 5 questions about the level of service received. The engineer would receive his/her feedback on the work and receive a net score from the customer.
Raman joined the team at offshore a year earlier. This was his first assignment in the new company. Within a month of joining he was having problems connecting with the offshore and onsite team. His first problem was to getting used to working on the new means of communication using technology. He was mostly used to communicating by email. But he soon found that people often did not respond to email. Messenger was the next best means and people could communicate a little more informally and he often got his answer immediately rather than the delay due to email communication. Again he found that some people would not respond to messenger communication or would never be online. It was then he used the VoIP phone to call the person. However, before calling anyone, he would first check the time and would greet the other person accordingly. Mostly, he would be hesitant to make unplanned phone calls and would often apologize first so as to be on the safe side. Others in team also felt afraid to call as they may not understand the accent. Raman realised that he could resolve issues faster if he could effectively use the technologies. However, technology adoption took quite time in this globally distributed work.
Post Novermber 2003, there was long pending queue of cases. Raman came during the second shift (11 am to 8 pm), work and customer interactions kept him back till 12 to 1 am almost everyday. He was not the only person around; almost the entire team seemed to be staying late and working till late night. There was however one good practise, everyday, the team met informally over coffee at 3 pm on a nearby verandah. This was at that moment that people often opened up and spelled the real issues. There were serious motivation issues in the team as the team-members who are essentially graduates with engineering degree compared this work to call-centre work. They felt that this would not help them in their career advancements. Once a week, during formal team meeting, the project manager would often complain of huge backlog of cases, low customer satisfaction. During once such meeting, the members complained on long hours having toll on their work-life balance. The shift system was not going well too. There were two onsite members who were working from the west coast in client’s office.
It was then that Raman was given the task of verifying if the shift system was effective and if some alternate arrangement could be done. So, based on 6 months of data, Raman provided an analysis on the number of high priority (P1-P2) cases and inflow of regular (P3-P4) cases opened during the period 7 – 11 PM IST (6:30 am to 10:30 am Pacific Time in USA).
The numbers were startling, there was about 10 high priority cases opened during that time of which 7 were solved by onsite team as it overlapped during their working hours. Secondly, the inflow of low priority cases was not many and the offshore team members could resolve it the next day without affecting the Service Level Agreements. However, the next hurdle was to convince the customer with these numbers and a new arrangement.
The team performed support and enhancement for the 50 odd applications for the customers. The customers opened service requests through a software application with different priorities – P1, P2, P3 and P4 which was required to be solved in 2, 4, 6 and 8 hours respectively. On occurrence of high priority issues (P1 & P2), the engineers received a page from the system. The business had identified the high priority applications, which required monitoring and running for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week failing which page would be sent to the various stakeholders.
The offshore team voluntarily took up the cases that they wanted to solve but in case that did not happen, the project manager would assign the cases. After initial investigation, the engineer might be able to resolve the case or send a mail to customer for more information. If the customer did not respond within a couple of days, the assignee would send a reminder or try to message the customer. Talking over phone would be the third level of communication when the engineer wanted to understand the problem better. Sometimes, when he was not able to replicate the problem, the customer would show the problem via Netmeeting. Finally, on successfully completing the work as, the engineer would set the case to resolve. The customer would receive an auto-generated mail to respond to survey containing 5 questions about the level of service received. The engineer would receive his/her feedback on the work and receive a net score from the customer.
Raman joined the team at offshore a year earlier. This was his first assignment in the new company. Within a month of joining he was having problems connecting with the offshore and onsite team. His first problem was to getting used to working on the new means of communication using technology. He was mostly used to communicating by email. But he soon found that people often did not respond to email. Messenger was the next best means and people could communicate a little more informally and he often got his answer immediately rather than the delay due to email communication. Again he found that some people would not respond to messenger communication or would never be online. It was then he used the VoIP phone to call the person. However, before calling anyone, he would first check the time and would greet the other person accordingly. Mostly, he would be hesitant to make unplanned phone calls and would often apologize first so as to be on the safe side. Others in team also felt afraid to call as they may not understand the accent. Raman realised that he could resolve issues faster if he could effectively use the technologies. However, technology adoption took quite time in this globally distributed work.
Post Novermber 2003, there was long pending queue of cases. Raman came during the second shift (11 am to 8 pm), work and customer interactions kept him back till 12 to 1 am almost everyday. He was not the only person around; almost the entire team seemed to be staying late and working till late night. There was however one good practise, everyday, the team met informally over coffee at 3 pm on a nearby verandah. This was at that moment that people often opened up and spelled the real issues. There were serious motivation issues in the team as the team-members who are essentially graduates with engineering degree compared this work to call-centre work. They felt that this would not help them in their career advancements. Once a week, during formal team meeting, the project manager would often complain of huge backlog of cases, low customer satisfaction. During once such meeting, the members complained on long hours having toll on their work-life balance. The shift system was not going well too. There were two onsite members who were working from the west coast in client’s office.
It was then that Raman was given the task of verifying if the shift system was effective and if some alternate arrangement could be done. So, based on 6 months of data, Raman provided an analysis on the number of high priority (P1-P2) cases and inflow of regular (P3-P4) cases opened during the period 7 – 11 PM IST (6:30 am to 10:30 am Pacific Time in USA).
The numbers were startling, there was about 10 high priority cases opened during that time of which 7 were solved by onsite team as it overlapped during their working hours. Secondly, the inflow of low priority cases was not many and the offshore team members could resolve it the next day without affecting the Service Level Agreements. However, the next hurdle was to convince the customer with these numbers and a new arrangement.
The proposal was as follows:
1). Instead of two onsite Engineers working from West coast, there would be 1 person in client’s East Coast office and the other West Coast office. The advantage is that East Coast is 3 hours ahead of West Coast and hence 7 pm in India would be 9:30 am in EST. So that would resolve issues on shift.
2). The offshore would be working in 2 shifts 8 am to 5 pm and 11 am to 8 pm. This was just to ensure that good overlap happened between offshore and onsite wherein offshore can inform onsite to talk to customer if need so arises. The offshore would also be flexible to accommodate emergencies.
3). Thirdly, inspite of shifts going away, offshore would work to ensure high level of customer satisfactions. Standard mail templates were developed to respond to customer requests including closing long pending cases where reply was not imminent (See Exhibit 6).
4). Onsite team was the primary contact for customer interactions and offshore would be involved in doing detailed research, trouble-shooting or testing for all issues opened by customers. Raman was identified as offshore contact for customer interactions with APAC and EMEA.
5). Onsite team took upon to work on high priority issues during major Indian holidays while offshore would take upon to support them during long holiday weekends in US.
6). It was decided to have video-conferencing with key clients, onsite and offshore team every 3 months. This would give an opportunity for client’s and team members to interact in virtual face-to-face and help build confidence and trust.
It was 9:30 pm in India and two hours after the problem started, the global team of engineers have been able to track down the cause of the issue. Sudarshan left in the last operated company vehicle while Paramjeet went about putting the solution and clearing the backlog of orders.
2). The offshore would be working in 2 shifts 8 am to 5 pm and 11 am to 8 pm. This was just to ensure that good overlap happened between offshore and onsite wherein offshore can inform onsite to talk to customer if need so arises. The offshore would also be flexible to accommodate emergencies.
3). Thirdly, inspite of shifts going away, offshore would work to ensure high level of customer satisfactions. Standard mail templates were developed to respond to customer requests including closing long pending cases where reply was not imminent (See Exhibit 6).
4). Onsite team was the primary contact for customer interactions and offshore would be involved in doing detailed research, trouble-shooting or testing for all issues opened by customers. Raman was identified as offshore contact for customer interactions with APAC and EMEA.
5). Onsite team took upon to work on high priority issues during major Indian holidays while offshore would take upon to support them during long holiday weekends in US.
6). It was decided to have video-conferencing with key clients, onsite and offshore team every 3 months. This would give an opportunity for client’s and team members to interact in virtual face-to-face and help build confidence and trust.
It was 9:30 pm in India and two hours after the problem started, the global team of engineers have been able to track down the cause of the issue. Sudarshan left in the last operated company vehicle while Paramjeet went about putting the solution and clearing the backlog of orders.
Next day, 8 am IST when Raman came into office, he saw the huge list of mails and also the root cause analysis from Paramjeet (See Exhibit 7). He called Paramjeet and discussed the issues. Paramjeet explained the action items for offshore. The system required to be monitored every hour and old orders should be processed. All in all they need to maintain stability and smooth functioning for all customers in APAC and EMEA till US wakes up next day.
2. Exhibits
Removed them for confidentiality purpose.
Removed them for confidentiality purpose.
3. Analysis
3-D Model:
Analysis of the job required to be performed by the team members can be done along 3 lines:
1). Customisation vs standardisation: Most of the cases created were complex and required in depth understanding of the system and business. However, there were some regular standard cases too. Hence, there was more customisation than standardisation
2). High labour intensity vs low labour intensity – its more of high tech nature of job so it was low labour intensity
3). Judgement by frontline staff – Production support required frontline staff to exercise their judgement
Hence overall this can be said to lie in the 7th quadrant ie High tech Professional service.
3-D Model:
Analysis of the job required to be performed by the team members can be done along 3 lines:
1). Customisation vs standardisation: Most of the cases created were complex and required in depth understanding of the system and business. However, there were some regular standard cases too. Hence, there was more customisation than standardisation
2). High labour intensity vs low labour intensity – its more of high tech nature of job so it was low labour intensity
3). Judgement by frontline staff – Production support required frontline staff to exercise their judgement
Hence overall this can be said to lie in the 7th quadrant ie High tech Professional service.
Service Delivery System:
The important and interesting aspect of the service delivery system is the technology. In this case the customer has invested in technology for vendors to use such that the external customers of the client see a boundaryless organisation across the supply chain. The customer can use the global hotline number to raise any issue from anywhere in the world and within minutes the team will be summoned to respond to the problem as exemplified in the case where Paramjeet gets help from IT managers in Britain, Australia along with other system administrators to resolve the issue. This is an important moment of truth.
Also, as we may note the timely/hourly communication from Paramjeet keeps people informed of the progress. In the end, once the issue is resolved, Parmajeet sends a root cause analysis to all stakeholders along with short-term and long-term solution. This also brings out the ownership process in place whereas Paramjeet owns the issue and is responsible for getting it solved if necessary with help from other people. Not only that , he ensures that he hands-over the ownership to off-shore team Raman to take care of the system during his night-time. This ensures customers get a seamless experience and do not find a gap in service round the clock. These processes for emergency/high priority issues have been well planned and are important service delivery elements.
Thirdly, as we see in Exhibit 6, meeting SLA’s is an important aspect of the team performance measurement with the client affecting the overall CSAT scores. For this also, clear processes has been laid out in terms of standard mailing template, designed from the perspective of the customer which all team members can use and thus reduce variability of service.
Fourthly, we may note that there is mention of a basket of knowledge (boK) in Exhibit 6 which team-members can refer to provide quick solutions to customers. The solution system would increase efficiency and productivity. However, these solutions were not available to customers. If that is done then customers can resolve some of the standard problems they face and then customers themselves could be used as a productive resource.
Fifthly, the feedback is provided for each case solved. Feedback analysis is done in the next section.
The important and interesting aspect of the service delivery system is the technology. In this case the customer has invested in technology for vendors to use such that the external customers of the client see a boundaryless organisation across the supply chain. The customer can use the global hotline number to raise any issue from anywhere in the world and within minutes the team will be summoned to respond to the problem as exemplified in the case where Paramjeet gets help from IT managers in Britain, Australia along with other system administrators to resolve the issue. This is an important moment of truth.
Also, as we may note the timely/hourly communication from Paramjeet keeps people informed of the progress. In the end, once the issue is resolved, Parmajeet sends a root cause analysis to all stakeholders along with short-term and long-term solution. This also brings out the ownership process in place whereas Paramjeet owns the issue and is responsible for getting it solved if necessary with help from other people. Not only that , he ensures that he hands-over the ownership to off-shore team Raman to take care of the system during his night-time. This ensures customers get a seamless experience and do not find a gap in service round the clock. These processes for emergency/high priority issues have been well planned and are important service delivery elements.
Thirdly, as we see in Exhibit 6, meeting SLA’s is an important aspect of the team performance measurement with the client affecting the overall CSAT scores. For this also, clear processes has been laid out in terms of standard mailing template, designed from the perspective of the customer which all team members can use and thus reduce variability of service.
Fourthly, we may note that there is mention of a basket of knowledge (boK) in Exhibit 6 which team-members can refer to provide quick solutions to customers. The solution system would increase efficiency and productivity. However, these solutions were not available to customers. If that is done then customers can resolve some of the standard problems they face and then customers themselves could be used as a productive resource.
Fifthly, the feedback is provided for each case solved. Feedback analysis is done in the next section.
Feedback Analysis:
For every case solved by the engineer, the case opener gets an automated feedback form to fill (Exhibit 2). Though, we do not have data to analyse the number of feedbacks received versus cases closed or the overall satisfaction figures, it is apparent that most of the customers are not satisfied by the overall support. Many of the regular customers have been able to identify the better engineers from the rest and always look forward to their help. Hence, this implies a big service delivery issue where the service becomes person dependent.
The survey itself is quite short and simple. It is divided into feedback on actual problem solving and personnel feedback section. As we may note communication, timeliness, effectiveness is captured along with Engineer's technical expertise and courteous service. Based on the scores for each item, the system calculates the overall score of the service provided. There again there might be some issues as the system does simple average of all the values but in reality some issues might require higher weight age for items in the CSAT. There is space for providing qualitative feedback also.
However, in case the case opener does not provide feedback, there is no way either manually or through the system one can send a reminder for filling the feedback. This is a big drawback and hence makes it difficult to gather feedback from neutral participants. The feedback comes directly to the person who solves the case rather than to his/her superior. So, the action on the feedback can happen only at the end of the month or later when all the scores are collated. That may be a little too late for the Project Manager to act on the feedback. This is especially important for non-routine jobs where the team required to go out of their way to provide a solution or otherwise. In short, the feedback does not capture the complexity of the issue in hand. Hence, these are some drawbacks of the feedback system.
Managing People in Services
This case brings out important people issues in services.
Job design: As we may note, this role required both technical knowledge and soft skills in talking to customers, interacting over email and messenger. Also, people are required to have working knowledge of numerous technologies and business knowledge of supply chain applications. Since the primary clients were business users of the client organization, the team had to be able to talk and understand their language. However, the team consisted essentially of engineers who were high on technical knowledge but low on business, communication skills. Hence, the job-design, role requirement did not fully meet the candidates aptitude. This was a source of potential conflict.
Person vs Role: As we may note, initially all the team members were required to be boundary spanners that required extensive interaction with both internal and external constituents of the client organisation. As mentioned in case, people were just comfortable sending emails but this role required going beyond that and use messenger, phone extensively to quickly resolve customer problems. When it came to making phone calls people, people compared it to call centre operation which came out during the coffee-break discussion. Call-centre operation is considered inferior to these engineers and clearly they may not want to do support work as a career. Hence, this caused motivation issues within the team. Also, many of the team members were not matured and experienced to handle client conversation and emotional labour.
Conflicts: There were some onsite-offshore conflicts as mentioned in case. Some of the team-members had never met, yet they are required to work together as a team. Working styles differed and it has hard to trust. This would directly affect customer satisfaction. Since, the team required to do 24*7 support, some people were required to be in office during such times as detailed in Exhibit 1, 3, 4. For most times, onsite had to take onus if offshore failed as they were in direct contact with customer. This also caused issues within the onsite-offshore team. Questions would come how to handle issues like if Sudarshan left without helping Paramjeet at that crucial juncture as it was already 7:30 pm for him and he would be further late to go back home if he stayed back. Also, how do they ensure transition is proper between Paramjeet and Raman. Did Pramejeet inform all that he did to resolve the issue? Will the offshore team be able to resolve the issue if it re-occurred?
Stress: As we may note, the shift system caused major stress issues with the team. Even though people were required to be for fixed time, they had to stay back to clear backlog of cases. Their personal relationships were affected because of the shift. Many a times, the offshore team members did not meet because of the shift. Some of them were compulsorily required to be present during important festivals and thus caused family related stress as many stayed away from their hom. This further affected motivation levels within the team.
For every case solved by the engineer, the case opener gets an automated feedback form to fill (Exhibit 2). Though, we do not have data to analyse the number of feedbacks received versus cases closed or the overall satisfaction figures, it is apparent that most of the customers are not satisfied by the overall support. Many of the regular customers have been able to identify the better engineers from the rest and always look forward to their help. Hence, this implies a big service delivery issue where the service becomes person dependent.
The survey itself is quite short and simple. It is divided into feedback on actual problem solving and personnel feedback section. As we may note communication, timeliness, effectiveness is captured along with Engineer's technical expertise and courteous service. Based on the scores for each item, the system calculates the overall score of the service provided. There again there might be some issues as the system does simple average of all the values but in reality some issues might require higher weight age for items in the CSAT. There is space for providing qualitative feedback also.
However, in case the case opener does not provide feedback, there is no way either manually or through the system one can send a reminder for filling the feedback. This is a big drawback and hence makes it difficult to gather feedback from neutral participants. The feedback comes directly to the person who solves the case rather than to his/her superior. So, the action on the feedback can happen only at the end of the month or later when all the scores are collated. That may be a little too late for the Project Manager to act on the feedback. This is especially important for non-routine jobs where the team required to go out of their way to provide a solution or otherwise. In short, the feedback does not capture the complexity of the issue in hand. Hence, these are some drawbacks of the feedback system.
Managing People in Services
This case brings out important people issues in services.
Job design: As we may note, this role required both technical knowledge and soft skills in talking to customers, interacting over email and messenger. Also, people are required to have working knowledge of numerous technologies and business knowledge of supply chain applications. Since the primary clients were business users of the client organization, the team had to be able to talk and understand their language. However, the team consisted essentially of engineers who were high on technical knowledge but low on business, communication skills. Hence, the job-design, role requirement did not fully meet the candidates aptitude. This was a source of potential conflict.
Person vs Role: As we may note, initially all the team members were required to be boundary spanners that required extensive interaction with both internal and external constituents of the client organisation. As mentioned in case, people were just comfortable sending emails but this role required going beyond that and use messenger, phone extensively to quickly resolve customer problems. When it came to making phone calls people, people compared it to call centre operation which came out during the coffee-break discussion. Call-centre operation is considered inferior to these engineers and clearly they may not want to do support work as a career. Hence, this caused motivation issues within the team. Also, many of the team members were not matured and experienced to handle client conversation and emotional labour.
Conflicts: There were some onsite-offshore conflicts as mentioned in case. Some of the team-members had never met, yet they are required to work together as a team. Working styles differed and it has hard to trust. This would directly affect customer satisfaction. Since, the team required to do 24*7 support, some people were required to be in office during such times as detailed in Exhibit 1, 3, 4. For most times, onsite had to take onus if offshore failed as they were in direct contact with customer. This also caused issues within the onsite-offshore team. Questions would come how to handle issues like if Sudarshan left without helping Paramjeet at that crucial juncture as it was already 7:30 pm for him and he would be further late to go back home if he stayed back. Also, how do they ensure transition is proper between Paramjeet and Raman. Did Pramejeet inform all that he did to resolve the issue? Will the offshore team be able to resolve the issue if it re-occurred?
Stress: As we may note, the shift system caused major stress issues with the team. Even though people were required to be for fixed time, they had to stay back to clear backlog of cases. Their personal relationships were affected because of the shift. Many a times, the offshore team members did not meet because of the shift. Some of them were compulsorily required to be present during important festivals and thus caused family related stress as many stayed away from their hom. This further affected motivation levels within the team.
Leadership issues: In this situation, leadership would play an important role to bring out the importance of the role the team members are currently performing and also eaise the levels of intrinsic motivation. This is a huge challenge as we may note from this case that the team considered the work was not potentially enjoyable. As we may note from Exhibit 3, the tone of the email is quite autocratic in nature. It connotes the following – work is painful, so people would try to avoid it, hence they must be pushed, so supervisors must command and control. This is definitely damaging and will again further lower motivation levels of team who will come to work in office during important festival time.
Again, we see that the team met once during the week during which the project manager brought out the issues related to case backlog, SLA, customer satisfaction and urged team-member to work on them. This was again a commanding kind of approach o leadership.
Listening and customer interaction issues: An important aspect of this customer support work is the listening aspect. As we may note that the team-members were dissatisfied that they had to talk to customers like call-centre employees but little did they realise the important dimension of their work was being able to ask the right questions, listen and respond assertively. There would be problems with accent, knowledge level of the employees handling the customer and sometimes demanding and difficult customers to deal with. Hence, one has to be prudent and answer assertively, set the right expectations and not over commit. Again, customer satisfaction level depended much on the front line employees who should appear reliable and show empathy and assurance. They should be able to generate trust within customers that they would help them resolve their problems. With low motivation levels, such an attitude was probably missing.
So, the people responsible for direct verbal interaction with clients were identified as the 2 onsite contacts and 1 senior offshore member. This enabled only the empowered members to deal directly with the customer and ensure speedy, effective customer response and complaint handling.
Again, we see that the team met once during the week during which the project manager brought out the issues related to case backlog, SLA, customer satisfaction and urged team-member to work on them. This was again a commanding kind of approach o leadership.
Listening and customer interaction issues: An important aspect of this customer support work is the listening aspect. As we may note that the team-members were dissatisfied that they had to talk to customers like call-centre employees but little did they realise the important dimension of their work was being able to ask the right questions, listen and respond assertively. There would be problems with accent, knowledge level of the employees handling the customer and sometimes demanding and difficult customers to deal with. Hence, one has to be prudent and answer assertively, set the right expectations and not over commit. Again, customer satisfaction level depended much on the front line employees who should appear reliable and show empathy and assurance. They should be able to generate trust within customers that they would help them resolve their problems. With low motivation levels, such an attitude was probably missing.
So, the people responsible for direct verbal interaction with clients were identified as the 2 onsite contacts and 1 senior offshore member. This enabled only the empowered members to deal directly with the customer and ensure speedy, effective customer response and complaint handling.
4. Recommendations
Analysis of the case based on the principles of “Cycle of Success” would help us compare what the team could do better and suggest recommendations for success.
While this team is not at the forefront of sales in their own organisation, they are still a window of the client organisation. Even though they are an outsourced team, they are part of client’s extended IT team whose clients are the business users and the third party logistics vendors. So, that brings in several key aspects that the team needs to understand in terms of responsibility and expectation.
Analysis of the case based on the principles of “Cycle of Success” would help us compare what the team could do better and suggest recommendations for success.
While this team is not at the forefront of sales in their own organisation, they are still a window of the client organisation. Even though they are an outsourced team, they are part of client’s extended IT team whose clients are the business users and the third party logistics vendors. So, that brings in several key aspects that the team needs to understand in terms of responsibility and expectation.
1). Training: As our analysis showed, that this work required a combination of technical skills, business knowledge and communication skills. Hence, the Project Manager (PM) must ensure that the team-members are equipped well on these attributes and also provide necessary training. While most of the team members might have good technical skills what they lack is business knowledge and communication skills which need to be enhanced. While Raman has been identified as offshore contact for client interaction, the PM must ensure Client interfacing skills training is imparted to effectively handle that role. This would also improve productivity, help meet SLAs and improve CSAT.
2). Improving motivation: As we noted that the motivation levels of the team members were affected because of various types of conflict, role-person issues, stress and leadership issues. The stress issues related to shift were changed based on Raman’s analysis as detailed in case. Secondly, team-building sessions with the entire team and possibly with onsite members too would help build trust and improve productivity within the team. Having video-conferencing sessions with key clients in one step in the right direction to increase familiarity and enable people to interact at slightly informal level.
Thirdly, leadership training for project manager and team leaders is required to bring in sensitivity, educate them about the inverted pyramid structure and help them understand new democratic style of leadership. A change in work paradigm is required to be brought about by supervisors where they learn to create conditions for intrinsic motivation with the team. The leaders should inform the team-member of the importance of their work to the client organisation and how much people are benefiting from that. That would make people be proud of their work and not feel demotivated.
Thirdly, leadership training for project manager and team leaders is required to bring in sensitivity, educate them about the inverted pyramid structure and help them understand new democratic style of leadership. A change in work paradigm is required to be brought about by supervisors where they learn to create conditions for intrinsic motivation with the team. The leaders should inform the team-member of the importance of their work to the client organisation and how much people are benefiting from that. That would make people be proud of their work and not feel demotivated.
Fourthly, from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, recognition is another aspect that can help enthuse and motivate team members. Team leaders should communicate success to team members and thank them. As mentioned in cycle of success principle, they should also identify and recognize ‘service champions’ and ‘champion service teams’ through healthy, peer assessment systems and celebrate team victories achieved by onsite-offshore-client IT staff jointly. Ensuring fair share of credit of every team-member would help improve moral/motivation and performance of staff. This would also ensure improved customer satisfaction and reduced defection.
3). The authority and responsibility lines require to be clearly identified. A step to that effect has already been taken wherein Raman has been identified for offshore client contact. However, backup to him must also be there. Also, responsibility during Indian and US holidays has been clearly specified. These are clearly steps in the positive direction. The whole team must be trained for listening to customer requests properly and act accordingly. Customer orientation for the whole team would ensure service is not person dependent and bring in a change in attitude. This would also help resolve problems faster and thus improve customer satisfaction.
4). As far as the feedback and correction loop, there is little that the team or project manager can do as the feedback is auto generated by the system.
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