Problem
CALL Rx Case Study
Background
Call Rx is a mail order pharmacy....individual consumers place prescriptions and receive shipments of drugs, often at prices lower than retail pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens. A superb distribution network and significant buying power with pharmaceutical makers allows CallRx to provide direct services to a growing customer base of insured and uninsured customers. Profits and revenue had been increasing but in the last six months have leveled off. The corporate leadership has encouraged its four U.S. Call Centers to find ways of increasing productivity and reducing costs.
The Aurora, Illinois Call Center has 426 employees who work from home or in the Call Center. The job involves taking calls from people with questions or who have challenges using the Call Rx website. This could involve troubleshooting issues, renewing prescriptions, making account changes, and generally ensuring customer retention, which has been slipping a little, partly due to Amazon's entering the mail order pharmacy market in 2020. Turnover is moderate, as in most call centers, but may increase with the expected post-Covid economic upturn.
Tom, VP in Charge of Aurora Call Center
The material from the vendor was colorful, no doubt about it, thought Tom as he flipped through the "Executive Only" presentation binder from last week's visit. The basic idea that Devon from Acceleration Solutions pitched was appealing: make use of existing information to make call routing more efficient. Specifically, identify the people best suited to each type of call, screen the calls automatically using voice activated routines, then route the calls to available agents with the needed expertise. As it was now, there was a lot of fumbling around and transferring from inexperienced, newer people to the "old hands" who had expertise in the area that the call required. Presently, the people were set up on product basis....a team for pain medications, one for diabetes, one for cardio, and so on. In the new system, without changing reporting relationships, people would in future be assigned calls at their level of experience and knowledge, resulting in....what had Devon said? A reduction of at least 17% in call handling time. Happier customers, less confused and frustrated employees, maybe clearer career growth paths. On Friday, in three days, Devon was to present to all the Managers and the HR team, and the turnkey system could go live within the month. What was not to love?
Gloria, HR Representative
Gloria was the junior half of a two-person HR team. As such, she saw and heard a lot that it seemed even Jane, the HR Director, seemed not to hear. Take the whole Covid mitigation effort in March of 2020. The stress and tension of the Call Center people seemed to grow and stay high even as efforts were made to allow anyone to work from home. Many of the Center's seven Managers were happy to allow the options, but some traditionally minded ones seemed to be sending messages that "real work" required being in the Center. Predictably, turnover had increased in the summer before leveling off. Now, there was to be a new routing system for incoming calls, according to a meeting invite that Jane had forwarded to Gloria. Details were vague, but Jane said that the system seemed to involve a new approach to call routing. And therefore a big change to structure and performance demands. Would there be training? Gloria groaned as she thought about the train-wreck of the training effort that the company did two years ago when a new drug line was added to the Center's scope. Maybe the Sales guy from the vendor would clear things up at the meeting on Friday?
Jane, HR Director
Jane was often tugged between optimism and pessimism. Today, after a talk with Gloria, the pessimism side was winning. The new routing system idea had sounded pretty routine when she first heard about it. And Tom's draft email to the whole Call Center, which she had just read, certainly sounded positive. Bland, lacking in details, but upbeat and encouraging, much like Tom himself. The problem was, as Gloria had said at lunch, that the real point of the thing was missing, at least in terms that non-management people would understand. "Efficiency," "prepare us for the future," and "increase capacity for expansion" were big and broad terms. Gloria had asked just how would it affect jobs? Would it just make it easier to fire people (an ongoing suspicion on the floor)? What sort of reassignments would be needed? Who would answer these questions? And, thought Jane as she updated her calendar for the meeting on Friday, would all of the work fall as it often did on the Human Resources team?
Fran, Team #4 Manager
Fran yawned, stretched, and gathered her greying, curly hair in a messy bun that she tied up with a worn yellow hairband. Looking out at the team, she thought what a crazy place most call centers were. People were in the late Thursday rush of calls, fielding issues, waving little orange and red flags for help from the "peer coaches" that Fran had set up to help new people, and generally pushing on through the buzzing and crackling confusion of dealing with angry and needy customers. How she loved it all! The craziness and managing it was what made her happy. But there was "good crazy" and "bad crazy," and the new routing program might fall into the second class. Julie, a friend in the IT area, had forwarded a very confidential memo that suggested a lot of work would be needed. The IT team was uneasy. "Where do we have the data about employees' expertise areas and interests?" was scribbled at the foot of one slide from the initial presentation. This was needed to set up the routing process. Fran knew the answer: in the heads of Fran and some of the other Managers, or nowhere. A "just do it!" place if ever there was one, the Aurora Call Center lacked a lot of information the new system would need. And just how would the reorganization work? Even if all Managers kept existing teams, how would people learn the new jobs? "Bad crazy" ahead, for sure. But there was a meeting the Managers were invited to tomorrow. Should be interesting, Fran thought as she went for a walk around the floor.
Task
1. Who you see as the Initiating and Sustaining sponsors here.
2. How well they played their roles, and what they could have done differently.
3. Who were the Change Agent(s) and how well they did their role.