Telbus is an American telecommunications company that provides voice, video, data, internet communications and professional services to businesses, consumers and government agencies. During its long history, TelBus set up operations in international locations in Europe, Asia and Australia. Central Call centre operations for the Australian division were located in Melbourne. The call centre was devoted to inbound calls, which meant that customers could phone in and make a bill or service-related enquiries. Although staff of call centre was required to keep call times within an acceptable range, their primary role was to make sure that customers had their questions answered and to create a sense that customers had been listened to respectfully. TelBus also ran a number of out-bound 'cold call' campaigns where the purpose was to phone existing customers or potential new clients and provide information about new products and services with a view to increasing the sales and market share. These calls were outsourced to another call centre in Sydney that specialised in sales and the arrangement worked quite well.
During routine call monitoring at the Melbourne in-bound call centre, it was noted that there were quite a number of opportunities for the call centre operators to sell new products to customers. Despite call centre operator efforts to provide some information about upgrades and new products, it became clear to senior management that calls centre operators did not push through and close the sale. In response, senior management re-thought the divide between in-bound and out-bound calls and decided to place a greater emphasis on selling as part of the normal in-bound calls taken by the Melbourne call centre operators. Effectively, this meant that each inbound call became a potential sale. Even though customers did not phone up to enquire about new products, it became part of the operators' responsibility to finish the call with information about the latest telecommunications offering and to make suggestions to customers that could result in a sale.
In response to the change in operator responsibilities, new performance criteria were designed and put in place. Previously, operators had been required to keep calls within a ten-minute window, but the changed expectations led to much tighter controls on time, as well as on-target quotas. The new criteria included sales targets, dollars logged per hour, average talk time, adherence to scheduled breaks, and sales call quality. A number of staffs left, and management observed that that "their exit was probably in everybody's best interest". Senior management did recognize the morale problem, however, and decided to invest more heavily in the training of the team leaders. The call centre had always been organized into groups and the team leaders had held a central role in maintaining staff morale and in providing development and training for new members. The training for the team leaders focused on team morale management, but a key objective was also to assist team leaders in getting more out of the team so that sales targets could be met.
A number of team leaders began to question the intention of the training and pointed out that morale was already low and that call centre operators did not need further pressure from the team leader. Eventually, stories of worker stress and two cases of severe bullying were leaked to the media. The union became active in representing the case and the senior management were asked to account for the negative outcomes at the call centre.
Case Analysis Work Sheet
i. What are the key issues or the problems of the case?
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3) ------------------------------------------------ iii. Is it necessary to identify the cause of the problem?
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v. Evaluate the options
Option Advantages Disadvantages
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