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Andrew Jaco

Dr. Tara Peters

MSOL 6150 Organizational Transformation

and Effectiveness

Final Paper

20 December 2014

I work for a retail electric provider that went through many changes since 2001.

Our state deregulated electricity back in 2001 so home and businesses can have a

choice who provides their electric service with the hope that prices can be more

competitive or possibly lower. We were the company to beat in the price at the

time. The others were a little cheaper than us back then. Now that we have been

deregulated for several decades now, the challenge is to stay in business despite the

many retail electric providers that homes and businesses can chose from.

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This paper will explain the things needed to be done to obtain those improved cus-

tomer service goals using the concepts discussed in the Burke textbook as well as

the assigned articles during the class. This paper will also conclude by explaining

the things I learned from this organizational change experience such as what

worked and what did not work and why.

 

I have been assigned to head a team to find ways to be able to continue to charge a

slightly higher price per kilowatt hour than the competition while keeping the cus-

tomers from leaving us while still attracting new customers to us in this “cut

throat” competitive deregulated electricity market. I have been given the freedom

needed to restructure the call center of the company internally if necessary to ac-

complish this goal which includes increasing the profits despite the competition for

electric service in our state.

 

One part of the mission was to have a comprehensive website. Many other

providers either don’t have a website or the site is not a full service website for

customers to service their accounts. We have a very comprehensive full service

website for our business and residential customers. We also have an app for smart

phone users so our customers can service their accounts that way as well. This was

completely delegated to our IT department and web development teams since I

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don’t do any IT work at all and am not an IT specialist. As a result, the site works

well and it also helps out our non-customers with general and useful information.

The useful information helps attract customers to sign up for service because the

site can give a positive image of us that “we know what we are doing.” This also

gives an image that although that we are an old company, we can keep up with the

times and technology also. There is no charge to use the site and no charge to pay

the bill using the site. Some of our competitors may charge for using their site to

pay the bill through it.

The most challenging part of the change mission that I’m directly in charge of is to

position ourselves as a provider that would give great customer service when peo-

ple call our call center. We found that other providers had issues with customer

service in their call centers despite the slightly lower prices when I called the com-

petition on common questions.

The other part that I’m charge of is to make the customer service unit a more pleas-

ant place to work to boost work morale. This is another way to continuously im-

prove the customer service while we are restructuring it to make it more efficient.

Agents would be in a better mood and would want to take ownership of the calls

while wanting to challenge themselves to learn other lines of the business.

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The company need is finding ways to serve the customers in a most cost effective

manner while offering exemplary service to all of the customers that call in. I

asked the managers to ask agents to give feedback as to what the customers

concerns are in addition to what they are calling about. This is known as “Survey

feedback” (Burke 2013 p. 126). I found out that the customers don't want to be

placed on hold too long, they don't want to be transferred from department to

department if they have more than one account type as well as when they have

more than one issue/inquiry. They want to reach the desired department the first

time without being transferred after waiting to speak to us and then sometimes

being misdirected, etc. They want an automated phone system that is not touch

toned based. They also don't want to be rushed off the phone either. They want a

website that works right, etc. Even though we have many satisfied and "brand

loyal" customers, some feel that they are still getting a "bureaucratic" customer

service experience. 

The only way to accomplish these objectives is to cross train the current phone

staff agents to reduce having to transfer calls as much. Also, the new hire classes

changed. The first new hire class change that took place is training for both

residential accounts as well as business accounts at the general service level. These

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resulted in new pilot programs in the department which are examples of first order,

planned change (Burke 2013, P.153 & 154). When I started out as an agent, I was

hired to be trained only to take calls for business accounts, for instance. We are

now training new hires to take calls for both residential accounts and the business

accounts at the general service level. I'm having some of our business account

agents to train to take calls in for construction accounts in addition to taking calls

for the general small and medium business accounts. Then after the construction

account call taking becomes proficient, training into apartment service accounts

took place next when construction accounts becomes less of a "learning curve."

The pay then changed for those agents from that point. Agents had to be patient for

this because the pay grade did not change until the agents became proficient in

taking more of those calls together.

Below is the structure of the call center before I started the restructure process:

Residential Department:

• Residential Sales (Acquisitions)

• Residential Retention (To renew pricing plans to keep customers)

• Service (Customer Service)

• Residential Web Support

• Residential Escalations

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• Residential Management

• Operations Management

Business Department:

• General Business Sales

• Telesales (To customize pricing plans for certain businesses)

• General Business Service and Retention

• Business Web Support

• Construction Services and Apartment Services (Specialty Markets)

• Specialty Markets Escalation for Construction and Apartment services

• General Business Escalation

• Operations Management

The proposed outcome is to have all agents experienced in all aspects of the

business and residential sides so that the only time the customer gets transferred is

if they ask to speak to a supervisor. The "Unit Managers" would change also to

multiple account types also to support their agents better. Escalations will do the

same thing, but would have more entitlements to make adjustments that agents are

not supposed to, etc. As agents get crossed trained, they would be more valuable

for move up, more pay, more job security, etc.

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The dilemma to this change would be that it could over burden the agents causing

agent confusion and more errors that are not caught in time or errors undetected

until too late. Another dilemma is that it could slow hiring new agents from outside

as well as possibly cause layoffs. Also the salaries would have to be increased

because of the higher agent expertize that will be demanded of them. When I was

an agent, I did not mind the higher responsibility of handling more than one

account type as long as I get rewarded more since I would be dealing with many

more customer call types throughout the work day.

A variety of change theories are used here for the organizational restructuring.

First the change could be argued as evolutionary instead of revolutionary because

many of the things still remain the same (Burke 2013 p. 134 -135). Another is

Scientific Management (Burke 2013 p. 30-31) because of having to change the

criteria for best employee fit for the revised position duties. The change is also

Systematic because of the pilot programs. Transformational Leadership (Burke

2013 p. 285-289) is involved because of the retooling of the leaders and managers

so agents can get the support that they need for the transitions. This includes

getting agent's frustrations that are unexpected (Spirit of Inclusion) (Ferdig &

Ludema 2002 p. 4) so these new problems can get solved with the help through a

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Management Coalition, a “Team Effort” (Kotter 1995 p. 60) for system issues, for

instance, that could occur due to overpowering the computer terminal due to more

data being handled at once, etc. The training including the new hire training also

changes because of the changes in the department in what the agents will be doing.

Culture would change (Burke 2013 p. 22 and p. 244-245) also because there has to

be rewards for people who can get trained and show willingness for those changes.

More account types will be handled by each agent. Survey Feedback (Burke 2013

p. 38-40) will be utilized so we can find out which agent is proficient to handle

multiple account types. Of those agents that can learn and handle multiple account

types (Learning Agility) (Burke 2013 p. 370) will see a higher pay grade to satisfy

what is in it for them to keep them motivated. Also other incentive programs will

come along.

Another theory being used is Change Phase theory (Burke 2013 p. 176, & 178)

because of the way the pilot programs work. We want to experiment to see what

happens to the agent's metrics and call quality when more than one account type is

dealt with on the calls by the same agent without transferring. After we get the data

after a few months we can see if it is worth phasing in the combining of more

account types.

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Most of the 12 Dimensions of the Burke-Litwin Model (Burke 2013 p. 221-223) in

the textbook somewhat come into play because agents taking more than one call

type from one call type changes Procedures, changes Policy, changes Management

Practices, it also changes the customer experience (External Environment) because

the customer who has two different account types can talk to the same agent

instead of an additional agent, for example. When the pilot programs get

completed and proof is made that one agent can take more than one call type, and

do it well, the Work Climate and the Culture will change. It will become the new

norm of "the way we do things." The individual and organization performance will

change later on because of the cost effectiveness of cross training existing agents

while giving them an increase without having too many agents taking only one call

type. That too will become the norm which will change the culture on its own. The

culture is important because a change that is accepted and done becoming the new

norm or standard with permanent change the culture of the company and that will

become the model and standard by which the company operates. The culture

changes as a result of the other changes done successfully (Burke 2013 p. 5, 15, 22,

66, 257).

Here is current restructuring:

Residential Department:

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• Residential Sales (Acquisitions)

• Service (Customer Service)

• Residential Web Support

• Escalations (Both Business and Residential)

• Residential Management

• Operations Management for both

Business Department:

• General Business Sales

• Telesales (Custom creating pricing plans for certain businesses)

• General Business Service with Residential Service

• Business Web Support

• Escalations (Both Business and Residential)

• Specialty Markets (Including Construction and Apartment Services)

• Specialty Markets Escalation

• Specialty Markets Management

• Operations Management for both

So far we got the General Business Service agents taking residential calls together

when the business customer wants to talk about their residential account in the

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same call without another call transfer. That pilot program is now working well

because we still get many business calls in which callers want to talk about their

residential account after working out their business account without being

transferred to wait to speak to a residential agent. Our customer surveys show more

satisfactions there. The “ease” of getting their requests handled increased as per the

customer feedback surveys. The agents are very successful in handling both of

those call types in the same call because in the training between the residential

account and the business accounts, there were not that many differences in those in

the servicing level. Also the call quality scores went up because agents no longer

got point deductions for “taking it upon themselves” to work a residential account

after working a business account with the business customer on the same call when

that was not allowed. The change was successful because the objective was simple

and easily understood by many and the benefits to the customer as well as the

agent was realized in addition to the higher pay. (Kotter 1995 p. 60) The company

would save some money because when we hire new agents, we are hiring them to

start out to do more with a slightly higher pay rather than double the agents at

slightly lower pay.

At the sales and retention level between the residential and business accounts, there

is a significant difference in the pricing plans between the residential and business

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accounts. We thought the training would be successful in the agent’s learning. We

found that when agents got on the floor after training to sell the different pricing

plans for both of the residential and business accounts, whey got the information

confused and sometimes transposed the pricing and term information and it

confused the customers. That pilot program had to be phased out quickly for

combining the different sales call types to one set of sales agents. I then decided to

keep the business sales and acquisitions as well as residential sales and acquisitions

teams separate as they were. The training became too specialized in terms of

learning the features and benefits of the pricing plan types as well as the different

terms, conditions and the different disclosures that customers needed to know to

stay legal and compliant to the state. Keeping the residential sales and business

sales separate cut the learning of the pricing plans in half to help the agent’s

comprehension of the pricing plans. Had the terms and conditions been the same

for all plans, the only thing to learn are the rates. The reason that I wanted to bridge

the sales and service together in business and residential is to have more

opportunity for agents to earn more commissions per hour. That just did not

happen because agents were confused as to the differences between the business

and residential pricing plan terms and conditions even after the trainings. The risk

ran high on new customer complaints of not getting the terms and pricing that the

customers thought that they were getting. I wanted to somehow to get the terms

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and conditions to be similar to both business and residential pricing plans. It was

not possible under the advice from our legal department. The company use to have

complaints to the state in the past before I came along, so keeping the sales

separate ended up making sense to preserve the low complainants to the state. Our

company is lower than the “competition” in customer complaints to the state since

the previous year that I started with the company.

I had a dream to be able to have every agent in the call center to be hired as well as

the internals to be able to take every call type for both residential and business and

also be able to sell all types of pricing programs for all call types for both

residential and business. This would be the ultimate in customer service because

the calls would more often be one and done with no call holds, no call misdirects,

etc. Each agent could make much more money and more agents would share in that

higher wealth while the company spends the same amount of money for the call

center.

Business and Residential combined:

• Service (Both Residential and General Business – Including Business

Specialty Markets – including Retention for both)

• Sales (for both new residential and business customers)

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• Residential and Business Web Support

• Escalations for both

• Management trained for both

• Operations Management trained for both

This was a proposed restructure that I dreamed of. It would have involved the same

total number of people and agents in our call center doing more things and getting

paid more and more equally as well. It did not happen this way because of the

training needed as well as system updating that will be needed. This restructure

will reduce the number of misdirected calls and reduce the number of call transfers

to get closer to a single call resolution we well as save the company some money

and increase the starting salaries of us because of the higher responsibilities. The

argument against this would be that the number of us will be reduced thus causing

possible permanent layoffs of some of us. Another argument against this would be

the overburden to the phone agent constantly changing gears of the call type and

putting a strain on the computer terminal requiring more than one screen, etc. The

company did not want to spend money on server capacity and PC capacity, etc.

even though I argued that it is a one time expense.

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I learned that it is not possible right now because of the state regulations as well as

system clogging on top of the high risk of agent error. It would also spike up

training costs because the agents would be in training so long before they get on

the phones to take calls to the point that there will be so much time passing

between training and on the job training to forget what they learned in the class

portion of training.

I managed to get some positive change done for the call center. Specialty Markets

came about as a means to get property management accounts with construction

accounts calls taken together for the business side. Even though business service

and residential service were together, the specialty markets side had to be separate

from the business service because of the highly detailed issues that need to be

addressed for taking those call types. The pricing plans were also different than the

pricing plans for other business call types.

Because of the detailed nature of the call types I went ahead and called several

meetings which took about 2 weeks to complete to explain face to face to each of

the agents in small groups to invite them to show initiative to learn additional lines

of business in our call center. This is to inspire agents to become leaders. This also

inspires agents to also to become trainers. I explained that once agents volunteer to

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start to learn and take calls for more lines of business to become what I called dual

skilled agents, they will get a higher pay grade when they become equally

proficient to the present call type. This is what makes possible the changes even

though not every agent wants to be a dual skilled agent. By approaching the call

center change this way, the change would happen with less resistance from the

agents (Burke 2013 p. 109-112). I found that agents feel that they have enough to

do each day already and why do more with no incentive. When I also explained

that they would get customers that complain less because of the increased power to

serve them as well as the higher pay grade with higher agent stats, more agents are

showing interest in wanting to change. This is also same as true when they can

become trainers. In the past, we hired trainers from outside that had other training

experience; but I think agents who have the direct experience in their line of

business in the call center should train other agents from other lines of business in

the call center.

What I mainly learned was to broadcast the work incentives more first hand and

how the restructure would make things easier on the agents to better prevent some

of the resistance and concerns that came up and make it more voluntary as well. I

also announced recently to include flex time off in the agents’ scheduling which

reduces penalties in their attendance record as well when personal emergencies

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come about. I decided that our company is to have interview workshops with

resume clinics to help advancement for all of us. Our company also develops new

leaders and management by means of Toast Masters and allowing universities to

come visit our company for recruiting students in leadership programs offering to

reimburse their tuition.

I’m offering this and more of these for 2015; but should have offered them in 2014

in retrospect. These offers make for a wonderful trade off to help agents’ ride out

changes. Now I can see why Burke says change can be “messy” (Burke video

2014) 

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Works Cited

Burke, W.W. Organizational Change: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications,

2013.

Kotter, John, P. "Leading Change:Why Transformation Efforts Fail" (1995): Pages From 59 to

67. Print.

Ferdig & Ludema: "Transformative Interactions: Qualities of Conversation that Heighten the

Vitality of Self-Organizing Change" (2002) Pages From 1 to 6. Print.

Burke, W.W. Change and Organizations by Warner Burke (2014) You Tube video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBIYNSY0bPU