Identify a way in which the servant leader stays in touch with the challenges and problems of others

The two teams spent the next couple of hours testing their countermeasure. However, it quickly became obvious that if this process was going to work, the call-routing process needed some changes. Terry and Andrea had been told not to alter their daily routines in any way, which meant they were away from their desks attending to customers or in the garage receiving status updates more than they were at their desks. The first three calls rolled over to the receptionist, because the service agents were either on the phone or away from their desks. When the receptionist answered a service request intake call, that tied her up as well. Frustrated, the team decided to call an emergency meeting to discuss the results they had observed.

Rick pointed out that, to make this countermeasure work, the team would have to make an immediate change in how the phone system worked. Customer calls were bouncing all over the place, and there was no rhyme or reason as to how they got answered. The team had identified this as a countermeasure but had prioritized it lower than the process itself, deeming it something of a “cart before the horse” thing. Rick added, “I think to realize the importance of the call routing issue, we needed to have a process in hand to test. I look at it as part of the feedback and learning cycle you talked to us about, Nancy.”

“That is a great attitude to take,” Nancy replied, “because if you had looked at it as a failure or missing the mark, you would have also missed the feedback and learning part. So good for you! And yes, I thought that might be the case. But like you said, who really knows until we test it out. So what are you proposing?”

Rick walked over to the process diagram and took out a marker. He inserted several new steps, adjusting the process so that the receptionist now answered all of the incoming calls. With this change, a customer’s call would be correctly routed and assigned to the appropriate service agent. The result is shown in .

Rick noted that it would take tech support only about 15 minutes to turn off the auto-response system and that he would discuss the process change with Gail, the dealership’s receptionist, as well. He pointed out that they needed to remove her from the queue of folks that do intake, since answering calls and routing them would become a full-time job.

An hour later, Rick had everything switched over, and Gail began to answer all incoming calls in the service department. If it was an existing customer, she began to ask if they knew the name of their service agent. Surprisingly, most did or gave the name of the last service agent they had contact with at the dealership. As the calls began to funnel in, the teams were able to observe the service agents using the new process. Since Gail could enter this information into the service intake system, Nancy would now be able to monitor their workloads, ensuring customers were evenly distributed across the six service agents.

The next major hurdle the team encountered was the service request intake system itself. Since it was now mandatory to enter all service requests into the system and generate a service ticket, it quickly became painfully obvious that the majority of the service agents had no idea how to use the system. Upon observing them struggling with the system, Gail pulled Jannie aside and said, “I think I’m the one who knows that system the best, since I think I’m the only one using it. I could do a quick tutorial with Terry and Andrea to get them up to speed. If you could answer the phone, that would free me up to work with them. Just hold their calls for now.”

Jannie agreed, and Gail spent about 30 minutes walking Terry and Andrea through the system, with the team observing the process as well. “Jannie,” she said, “please route the next service call to Terry.”

The next call came in, and Jannie routed it to Terry. Gail sat next to him with the customer on the speakerphone, as Terry filled out the electronic form in the system. Terry was a little overwhelmed with the new process and system, but he handled it well and was able to get through the call. The team observed Terry, taking a lot of notes as he worked through the process.

The next call that came in went to Andrea. Having the benefit of both the training and observing Terry, she was able to pick up the pace a little and finished the call a couple of minutes sooner than he did. As she hung up, the team gave each other high fives for successfully getting through their first two calls.

Randy had timed Terry and Andrea on each step so that the team would have a benchmark to track the improvements. The total average time from start to finish was about 20 minutes for Terry and 19 for Andrea, giving an average of 19.5 minutes. The team decided it would be useful to track their times through the process and see what their average was consistently.

The team spent another hour with Terry and Andrea; then it was time to regroup with Nancy in the war room. When they arrived, she was already there with Jim. Sensing the team was a little surprised by his presence, she explained that she had invited Jim to listen to their feedback so that he could help make any decisions they might need as to next steps.

The team spent the next 15 minutes with Nancy and Jim, briefing them on the results from the experiments they performed with the Service Request Intake process. Jannie wrote their conclusions on the board:

1. The call-routing system is impersonal, and the routing algorithm does not fit the business outcome of personalized service from a luxury, high-end auto manufacturer.

2. The service agents lacked the training needed to enter tickets into the service request intake system.

3. The system was slow, and the agents spent a lot of time waiting on the screens to refresh between steps.

4. The average time through the process was 19.5 minutes. Over half that time was spent waiting on the system to refresh the screens.

5. The agents’ level of customer service was inconsistent. To ensure a consistent level of service, they might benefit from receiving customer service training.

Jannie reminded Jim and Nancy that the team had already implemented countermeasure #1 and received positive feedback from customers along the lines of “It’s nice to call in and talk to a human” and “Thank goodness I don’t have to be bounced around because of that awful automated system.”

Jim was impressed with the team’s progress, so they decided to regroup in the morning and discuss standardizing the process in step 8.

The team filed out of the war room, but Nancy hung back to speak with Jim. She confided that she had not wanted to put him on the spot in front of the team, but to get the results he was looking for, the team needed to tackle countermeasures #2 through #5 before standardizing and implementing this process. The intake system was painfully slow; the average customer was not going to want to spend at least 20 minutes on the phone to schedule a service appointment. She thought it was crucial that they make the necessary changes now: the hardware was old and out of date, and the service agents needed professional customer service training. The cost for the training and the changes would be $50,000, and the software and hardware could both be installed next week. Nancy also recommended a colleague, Lisa, who could conduct the training.

Jim thought that $50,000 sounded like a lot of money, but he also recognized that he really didn’t have much of a choice. He agreed it was time to invest in the company’s future.

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