Problem
Scenario
You are the VP of Customer Service for a large sporting goods retailer. Customers can contact your staff of service agents with product questions, warranty claims, returning items, or other information. Each time a customer contacts a service rep (via email, chat, or phone) a brief follow-up survey is sent to the customer asking about his/her experience with your brand's customer service. You have noticed that over the past 6 months or so, satisfaction scores have declined.
Now is the time of year for performance evaluations. You have decided to group all service agents into three groups, based on average rating by customers who complete the follow-up survey- Satisfactory scores (employees who receive an average rating of 4 or 5 when customers are asked about their experience), Neutral scores (those who average a score of 3), and Unsatisfactory scores (those who receive an average score of 1 or 2). Before completing performance evaluations, you want to decide if there are any differences among the groups- what variables would you examine to see if there are major differences among the groups? What metrics might you look at to ensure you're making accurate comparisons among employees of different groups? (For this scenario, think about discussions of process vs outcomes).