Case Study Question

The Caribbean Team Vibes or Not: Another Day in the Life of a Call Centre

In a rare moment alone in her office, Jennifer Ames reflected on the past $10$ years of her career at Gerber

Goodstart Corporation $($GGC$)$ She could easily chart her successes: She had taken on challenges and

produced results where her colleagues had failed; she had increased the diversity of the work force in every

unit she had led; she had successfully launched new products and developed several new markets. In fact,

just a few months before, Ames had been part of a team that had led a highly successful launch of several

GGC product lines into the Latin American market. That success and the ensuing demand for its products

drove GGC to centralize customer support in a call center in Kingston, Jamaicaand to create Amess

new position: senior director for global customer support. Ames had studied other call$-$center models and

created a team of four as a prototype for customer support. She had a goal of scaling up as the business

expanded.

But as she sat in her office, looking at the latest financials and mentally reviewing the events of a disturbing

meeting earlier that morning, she saw the failure of her prototype looming large. The call response times

were on an upward trajectory that would quickly plunge her budget into the red if the trend continued. Even

worse, only one short month into her new position, Ames was worried that her team was stonewalling her.

She was deeply troubled by the interaction she had just observed: there was friction among her staff

members that was dividing them along Jamaican$-$versus$-$non$-$Jamaican lines.

The team consisted of three Jamaicans from the Kingston, Jamaica, headquarters and one Costa Rican

from the Central American sales office. The three Jamaicans, already thinking about customer support,

had spent the past few months working with product developers to create the web$-$based training videos

that provided step$-$by$-$step product use information, as well as testing competitor products. The employee

from Costa Rica had also spent time with the product development team and had been an outstanding sales

representative. She had transferred from the Central American sales office to join the Kingston call center.

The problem was that the Jamaicans were angry about the work habits of the Costa Rican member whose

call times were longer than theirs, so they accused her of effectively lowering their pay. During that

mornings meeting, things had deteriorated into a verbal onslaught that culminated in one of the Jamaican

members calling the Costa Rican member a chatty Latina. After that, the conflict got personal and highly

emotional. Was this the cultural iceberg shed heard so much about? And what exactly should she do to

steer the team away from it$?$

Products in the Baby Space

When Ames had joined GGC $10$ years earlier, it was a small U$.$S$.$ company selling baby formula. Since

then, it had expanded to sell various maternal and infant$-$care products. Aside from baby formula, GGCs

most profitable product lines included phototherapy devices for the treatment of jaundice $($often called light

boxes$)$ and a sophisticated line of neonatal heart and breathing monitors. GGCs institutional customers

included hospitals and nongovernmental organizations that cared for at$-$risk populations. The company

also sold smaller versions of the phototherapy devices and baby monitors to families at home and for

midwives to use. All manufacturing and distribution took place in the United States.

By $2011,$ GGC executives were ready to expand sales of phototherapy and monitoring devices into Latin

American markets. The decision was based largely on the regions lack of competitors in the maternal and

infant$-$care product segments and a low entry barrier. Ames had been part of the team that executed the

launch. They had decided to hire locals in each of their markets to create a Latin American sales unit and

to focus on direct$-$marketing distribution channels to institutional customers $($hospitals and NGOs$).$

The channel choice was important because many international organizations, such as UNICEF and the

World Health Organization$($WHO$),$ had international codes of responsible marketing that GGC had

decided were in line with its values. The codes, which primarily targeted food and milk$-$substitute products,

were not law in the United States, but they offered guidelines that GGC considered good business

practices; they would be used to guide executive decisions, avoid bad press $($there were many international

watchdogs in the baby product space$),$ ensure the correct use of GGC products, and avoid international

lawsuits. Following these codes meant adopting practices such as never marketing directly to mothers or

families, training retailers and asking them to provide a point$-$of$-$purchase demonstration of the equipment, and having customer support available after the point of purchase to provide training and consistent and

objective advice, and further informationincluding information about the potential benefits of competing

products.

The product rollout to institutional customers in Latin America was a huge success. Within a year, GGC

had established ten sales units: two in Mexico, three in Central America, and five in South America. During

the first few months of the expansion, the sales representatives were able to provide some degree of

customer support because their clients tended to be large hospitals sales representatives would train a

few hospital employees who, in turn, would be the support people in their hospitals $($a train$-$the$-$trainers

model$).$

By the end of that year, however, the management team realized that it did not have the infrastructure to

provide customer support for all of the sales it was generating. As customer volume grew, the sales force

was too busy to provide reliable customer support. The sales force was paid on commission, so was less

interested in providing adequate customer support and was not necessarily made up of the best people to

do so$.$ Employees in the manufacturing plant were more privy to company information about competitors

and infant$-$care guidelines as well as warranty and care information. Instead of relying on its sales force,

the management team decided to provide customer support via call centers and, after much discussion, to

establish these call centers in$-$house instead relying on outsourcing. During GGCs original market

research, potential Latin American customers made it clear that being able to speak directly to the

companyto talk to the same two or three people about their case rather than having to rely on retailers

or third$-$party support would make them more likely to buy GGC products. Given that the consistency

and accuracy of information from customer service was essential to follow code and avoid lawsuits and

high insurance premiums, GGC decided to first establish Jamaican$-$based call center supplemented by

web $-$based video training. The company did this for two reasons. First, the management team wanted to

closely monitor the calls to be able to communicate quickly with quality control in order to provide onsite

training that was updated on a monthly basis. Second, it wanted to build trust with its customers. Ames

was in charge of making this happen. She immediately pulled four people, who spoke fluent Spanish, from

the sales side of the organization to serve as customer support representatives in the call center.

Differences in the Call Center Team

As with most call centers, the team was rewarded based on how many calls it handled. In light of their large

and growing customer base, the team found itself with high call volume. Ames believed it was important to

keep calls short for two reasons. First, it was important to avoid long customer hold times in order to create

greater ease for customers. Second, she had been given a fixed percentage of company profit to devote to

call$-$center compensation. She did extensive analysis over a six$-$month period about realistic estimates of

the length of time that her team of four could spend with each customer. She had the sales team document

the time spent on customer support, used new customer forecasts and did a handful of scenarios with

existing customers to get an average time estimate for a typical call. She then divided the amount of money

she had to spend by the number of customers she anticipated would call each day, and determined that she

could afford to have representatives spend about seven minutes with each customer. This number was

roughly the same as her event$-$by$-$event scenario trials.

In order to stay within her budget, she decided that each representatives pay would be docked by $$1\mathrm{.}00$

per minute after seven minutes of conversation with a customer. While the representatives were

compensated with an annual salary, which was paid to them in monthly pay periods, she decided to make

their monthly pay contingent on the team maintaining a daily seven minute call average. So the team

members monthly pay was calculated as their salary minus $$1\mathrm{.}00$ for each minute of each day that the

team average was over seven minutes. She believed this would encourage the call$-$center members to

collaborate $($rather than compete$)$ with one another about the best strategies for quick and helpful service. Ames was discouraged that, at the end of their first month of working together, the team members call

response average was a little over two minutes off target.

She was also getting complaints from the three Jamaican team members. They calculated that together the

three spent an average of five and a half minutes with each customer; when customers wanted further

information, the employees referred them to the training videos. In contrast, they observed that the Costa

Rican member, Maria Enriquez, spent about $15$ minutes with each customer, often walking the customer

through the videos over the phone. These longer calls were affecting the compensation of all members, and

the Jamaicans were angry.

At the most recent weekly team meeting, the tension had been palpable. The Jamaicans on the team

understood Enriquezs point about the need for customer satisfaction, but they believed that helping

customers solve problems and referring them to the training video was good enough. The complaints in

the meeting went like this:

Jill Henley: This goes beyond being annoyed about how much Maria talks, it now affects my payits being

docked. When she does a call, it goes way past product information; she carries on about family, gets

wrapped up in their problems, laughs and jokesbut the thing that really put me over the edge was when

she told someone shed put the kids who used our equipment on her prayer list! Maria acts like a therapist

instead of providing technical support. For the love of Pete, we sell medical equipment! The less you talk,

the more you listen, and the better you do your job.

Jordan Burton: Maria talks so much that my mouth hurtsand Im being penalized because of it$.$ There is

no off switch. She thinks her approach is a success. So$,$ she builds relationships with her customers, but

were here to provide information. We have training videos for a reasonand she needs to refer customers

to those videos, not watch the things with the caller while shes got them on the phone!

Jeff Garvey: I find myself increasingly angry at Maria for prioritizing her need to talk over any work that

needs to get done. She couldnt care less that our pay is being reduced because of her. She has it in her

head that any conversation under $15$ minutes is rude and to cut calls shorter is bad manners. Callers dont

need to feel special; they need information to solve their problem, and that takes five minutes tops for all

the rest of us$.$ We are helping solve problems and providing good care too.

Maria Enriquez: We dont do things that way in my country. You should have studied my culture before

you joined this team. This is serious business. The lives of many children

depend upon our equipment, and their caregivers need to know our company cares about them. We have

to build trust that we arent going to sell them something and then hit the road. No one else on this team

takes the time to earn health care providers respect. We need to make them feel confident in their decision

to buy our monitors and not someone elses. But dont take my word for ithave a look at the how

customers have rated me: my satisfaction scores are exponentially higher than anyone elses on this team.

Ames worried that both she and the team were at a breaking point.

After reading the case, use your knowledge based on the information you have studied in units $1,2$ and $3$

and answer the question below:

Question

$2.$ Evaluate, using appropriate theories $($units $1-3),$ the main approaches to motivation that can be Deployed by the Ames at Gerber Goodstart Corporation to address team problems and get the Most out of the new team