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Case Analys For Applied Performance Practice

Yakka Tech is an IT services firm with a customer service division that handles client issues through a ticketing system. Each regional customer service center is divided into departments that handle different issues. Clients often deal with different employees each time they have a problem. While high pay reduced turnover, customer complaints and productivity remain low. Experienced employees still find the work monotonous and disconnected from consequences. This suggests that high pay alone did not solve the underlying issues.

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Shella Segui
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159 views2 pages

Case Analys For Applied Performance Practice

Yakka Tech is an IT services firm with a customer service division that handles client issues through a ticketing system. Each regional customer service center is divided into departments that handle different issues. Clients often deal with different employees each time they have a problem. While high pay reduced turnover, customer complaints and productivity remain low. Experienced employees still find the work monotonous and disconnected from consequences. This suggests that high pay alone did not solve the underlying issues.

Uploaded by

Shella Segui
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CASE ANALYS FOR APPLIED PERFORMANCE PRACTICE:

YAKKATECH, INC.

Steven L. McShane, University of Western Australia

Yakka Tech Inc., is an information technology services firms employing 1,500 people throughout
Washington and Oregon. Yakka Tech has a consulting division, which mainly installs and upgrades
enterprise software systems and related hardware on the client’s site. Yakka Tech also has customer
service division that consists of four customer contact centers serving clients within each region.

Each customer service center consists of a half-dozen departments representing functional


specializations (computer systems, intranet infrastructure, storage systems, enterprise software
systems, customer billing, etc.). These centers typically have more than two dozen employees in each
department. When a client submits a problem to the center by e-mail or telephone, the message or call
is directed to the department where the issue best applies. The query is given a “ticket” number and
assigned to the next available employee in that department. Individual employees are solely
responsible for the ticket assigned to them. The employee investigates and corrects the issue, and the
ticket is “closed” when the problem has been resolved.

If the client experiences the same problem again, even a few days later, a new ticket is issued
and sent to whichever employee is available to receive the ticket. A client problems are almost always
handled by different employees each time, even when the issue is sent to the same department.
Furthermore, when a customer center department is heavily backlogged, clients are redirected to the
same department at another regional center where their problem can be addressed more quickly.

At one time, Yakka Tech operated more than a dozen small customer contact centers
throughout the region because client problems had to be diagnosed and resolved on-site. Today
employees can investigate most software and hardware system faults from the center through remote
monitoring systems, rather than personally visit the client. Customer service operation into four large
regional centers. Customer service staff work entirely within the center. When client visit is required,
the ticket is transferred to an individual or team in the consulting business, who then visit the client.

Yakka Tech’s customer service business has nearly double over the past five years, but this
growth has come increasing customer complaints regarding poor quality service. Many say that
employees seem indifferent to the client’s problems. Others have commented on the slow response to
their problems where the issue requires involvement of more than one department. Several clients
have also complained that they are continually educating Yakka Tech’s customer service employees
about details of their unique IT systems infrastructure.

Another concern is that until 18 months ago, Yakka Tech’s voluntary employee quit rates in the
contact center were above the industry average. This increase labor costs due to the cost or recruiting
new technical staff, as well as lower productivity of new employees. According to results of an
employee two years ago (as well as informal comments since then), many employees felt that their work
is monotonous. Some also said that they felt disconnected from the consequences of their work. A few
also complained about ongoing conflicts with people in other department and the stress of serving
dissatisfied client.
Eighteen months ago, Yakka Tech’s executive team decided to raise pay rates for its customer
service staff to make them among the highest in the industry around the Pacific Northwest. The
assumption was that the high pay rates would improve morale and reduce turnover, thereby reducing
hiring costs and improving productivity. In addition, Yakka Tech introduced a vested profit-sharing plan,
in which employees received the profit-sharing bonus only if they remained with the company for two
years after the bonus was awarded. Employees who quit or were fired for just cause before the visiting
period forfeited the bonus.

Employee turnover rates dropped dramatically, leading the executive team to conclude that
customer service quality and productivity would improve. Instead, customer complaint and productivity
remain below expectations and, in some cases, have worsened. Experience employees continue to
complain about the work. There have been a few disturbing incidents in which employees were careless
in solving client problems or did not bother to forward ticket that belong in another department.
Employee referrals (in which staff members recommend friends to join the company) have become rare
events, whereas at one time they represented a significant source of qualified job applicants.
Furthermore, a few executive have recently overheard employees say that they would like to work
elsewhere but can’t afford to leave Yakka Tech.

Required: Read the case carefully and answer the following Discussion Questions:

1. What symptom(s) in this case suggest that something has gone wrong?
2. What are the main causes of these symptoms?
3. What actions should Yakka Tech Executives take to correct these problems:

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