The Four Job Application problem of Drainflow
Plumbers
Because of the wrong information from Order processors, the company is sending them to do the simple job, as a result of that the customer have to pay a licensed plumber rate for the easy service, in which customers has seen it not fair, and the plumbers have nothing to do about it. This miss-sending problem also makes DrainFlow lost their potential customers, because the company has limited plumbers. When they send a plumbers assistant for the job but rather it’s a work of a licensed plumber, customers will usually wait for another day or 24 hrs for their plumbing to be repaired and the customer will be forced to go to another plumbing agency. Plumbing problem is usually kind of urgent; nobody wants their house full of water because of the leaks and everybody uses water as the primary needs of human beings.
Plumber’s assistants
When a plumber assistant is sent to a job that he cannot handle a reschedule will be made for it to be repaired by a licensed plumber, then the customer will suspect if the company has enough plumbers to answer the all its customer services. For being rescheduled the customers will have to wait and dissatisfied with Drainflow’s services which would come up that the customers will change its plumbing services to another company. None of these is the management willing to see.
Billing representatives
They have to collect the money from their customers, although they are not the person who pick the first call and sent the wrong guy, the customers yelled to them and feel unfair about the charge or the time took they are waiting. They are the last one to clean the mess.
Order processors
Most of them are just the normal people who is hiring to pick up the phone and follow the procedures to decided who will be sent to fix the pipes, and they have not anymore Experiences than any customer at all, and their co-workers get angry because the miss-sending problem. They feel frustrate when thing happened this way, because they already try their best.
The most complains from DrainFlow customers Timing
If the order processors make the wrong design, send the wrong person to the plumbing work, it will waste time not only for the company to resend the worker, but also waste their customer’s time to wait the right plumber arrived.
Cost
When the miss-sending problem happened, the company may have to make two trips to make the right worker to do the job. If not, the customer either has to pay the plumber to do an easy job which a plumber’s assistant can handle, or the customer will switch to another plumbing company. None of the result is the company want to see.
When you write, make sure you touch on the following point:
1. Although it’s clear employees are not especially satisfied with their work, do you think this is a reason for concern? Does research suggest satisfied workers are actually better at their jobs? Are any other behavioral outcomes associated with job satisfaction?
What are the differences between satisfied and unsatisfied employees?
Satisfied employees: love their job, doing their job full of passion, low turnover rate, high preform at the job.
Unsatisfied employees: complain about their job, confuse what they should to do, high turnover rate, low profession at the job.
Yes, I do think this is a reason for concern if employees aren’t especially satisfied with their work. As the text said, managers should be interested in their employees’ attitudes because attitudes give warnings of potential problems and because they influence behavior. Job satisfaction is also negatively related to turnover. The book also shows satisfied employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
2. Using job characteristics theory, explain why the present system of job design may be contributing to employee dissatisfaction. Describe some ways you could help employees feel more satisfied with their work by redesigning their jobs.
Money may bring happiness, but not necessarily job satisfaction. Yes, money may bring the motivation to the employees, but it also makes them getting greedy. So we have to much more careful when we use a money rewards system. I think the company should use that money to make their employee get training: order processors said they only have a basic survey to ask the question their customers what’s going on with their plumber, company should sent them training to let them get enough knowledge to new what actually the problem is and then they can decide who should do the job. It will save both the company and the customers time, and we will not hear the plumber or the plumber’s assistants complain about this miss-sending problem.
3. Lee has a somewhat vague idea about how to implement the cash rewards system. Describe some of the specific ways you would make the reward system work better, based on the case.
Lee did offer cash rewards if there is no complain about their service with every 20 calls successfully completed and a larger rewards if the customer indicates real satisfaction with the service will give to the plumber or the plumber’s assistant, but the problem also with it is, She let the billing representative collect information about the customer satisfaction, who have no effect by these information. Yes, it will help the information more correct because they are not involved in this rewards system, but it will harm the billing representative feeling with seeing everyone getting extra money if they are doing well except themselves. Not all the employees are working only for money, they also have their needs, and it will be much easier to control the employees if the manager makes them feel what they want to get. The needs like job satisfaction; achievement; power; affiliation…..
4. Explain the advantage and disadvantage of using financial incentives in a program of this nature. What if any, potential problems might arise if people are given money for achieving customer satisfaction goals? What other types of incentives might be considered?
Advantage: Employees’ motivation will be increase by earn extra money, they will try to do their best perform their job. DrainFlow customer satisfaction should increase also
Disadvantage: The motivation from the cash reward system cannot list long. The customer service will getting better after the training and the motivation from the cash, but we all know it cannot be improve all the time, there is a limited, and when the number get there, it won’t move for a long time, as a result of this, employees see this reward as part of their regular salary, and the motivation from the cash reward system disappear. The company has to spend extra money to do the cash reward system.
Other types of incentives might be considered: the way to collect information—successful call may be hard to do (billing representative may bribe-taking). The top management may not accept the reward system because the additional money spends.
5. Great a specific plan to assess whether the reward system is working. What are the dependent variables that should change if the system works? How will you go about measuring success?
We can assess how the reward system is working by counting the miss-sending problem or the billing rate problem. Example, if the plumber or the plumber’s assistant has been sent to the wrong job, we count, and if the number shows decrease, that means the rewards system works, because the goal of this system is letting the employees make less mistake when doing their job.
The dependent variables that should change if the system works is the number of successful job done, the goal of the rewards system is give extra cash as rewards for the employees who has improve their job performance, so after a time period, the number of the successful call should be increased, and the employees will feel changeling about their job. The measuring success at this company is keep a low turnover and high satisfaction of the employees (compare with the average of the job satisfaction), a high satisfaction from the customers, and lower mistake rate at the job.
6. What types if hiring recommendations would you make to find people better suited for these jobs? Which big five personality traits would be useful for the customer service responsibilities and emotional labor?
Three types of Personality employee should be hire to do this job:
Emotional stability —less negative thinking and fewer negative emotions; less hyper-vigilant —higher job and life satisfaction; lower stress levels
Billing representative
Extraversion —better interpersonal skill; greater social dominance; more emotionally expressive —higher performance; enhanced leadership; higher job and life satisfaction
Order processor
Conscientiousness —greater effort and persistence; more drive and discipline; Better organized and planning —higher performance; enhanced leadership; greater longevity
Plumber and plumber’s assistant