Karen Brown sat in her office and thought about her 20-year career at Bright Lights Corporation (BLC). Her success at BL

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Karen Brown sat in her office and thought about her 20-yearcareer at Bright Lights Corporation (BLC). Her success at BLC hasbeen from her own efforts and management. She had improveddiversity for the team she led, launched new products and had takenon challenges which at times seemed insurmountable. Recently, sheand her colleagues were part of a team that launched a number ofproducts in the Caribbean region. The successful product launch hadcreated a huge demand for the company’s products that required BLCto establish and centralize a call center in Trinidad and Tobago.The call center would create additional jobs, one of which was herown - Senior Vice President for Global Operations and Support,where she was based in Trinidad and was responsible for beefing upoperations and customer service given the growing expansion of thebusiness. As she sat in her office reviewing the latest departmentcall logs, and reflected on the heated meeting she had with herteam members this morning, she wondered whether she was competentenough get the job done and exceed the company’s expectations. Shewondered whether her team fully supported her. The call responsetimes were unsatisfactory and if the department continued on thispath, her budgeted figures would turn red. The meeting this morningdisturbed her as she realized that there were disagreements amongher team members where there appeared to be a division alongCaribbean and Non – Caribbean groups. The team comprised twoJamaicans, one Trinidadian from the Trinidad headquarters and onePanamanian from the Central American sales office. The twoJamaicans, already thinking about customer support, had spent thepast few months working with product developers to create webbasedtraining videos that provided step-by-step product use information,as well as testing competitor products. The employee from Panamahad also spent time with the product development team and had beenan outstanding sales representative. She had transferred from theCentral American sales office to join the Trinidad call center. Theproblem was that the Jamaicans and the Trinidadian were angry aboutthe work habits of the Panamanian member whose call times werelonger than theirs, so they accused her of effectively loweringtheir pay. During that morning’s meeting, things had deterioratedinto a verbal onslaught that culminated in one of the Caribbeanmembers calling the Panamanian member a “chatty Latina.” Afterthat, the conflict got personal and highly emotional. Was this the“cultural iceberg” she’d heard so much about? And what exactlyshould she do to steer the team away from it? Products at BLC WhenKaren had joined BLC 10 years earlier, it was a small Caribbeancompany selling unique light fixtures for modern homes. Since then,it had expanded to selling light fittings for hospital equipment.Aside from the light fixtures, BLC’s most profitable product linesincluded phototherapy devices for the treatment of jaundice (oftencalled light boxes) and a sophisticated line of neonatal heart andbreathing monitors. BLC’s institutional customers includedhospitals and nongovernmental organizations that cared for at-riskpopulations and pregnant mothers. The company also sold smallerversions of the phototherapy devices to hospitals. Allmanufacturing and distribution took place in Jamaica. By 2011, BLCexecutives were ready to expand sales of phototherapy devices intoLatin American markets. The decision was based largely on theregion’s lack of competitors in the maternal product segmentswhich, had a low entry barrier. Karen had been part of the teamthat executed the launch. They had decided to hire locals in eachof their markets to create a Latin American sales unit and to focuson direct-marketing distribution channels to institutionalcustomers (hospitals and NGOs). The product rollout toinstitutional customers in Latin America was a huge success. Withina year, BLC had established ten sales units: two in Mexico, threein Central America, and five in South America. During the first fewmonths of the expansion, the sales representatives were able toprovide some degree of customer support because their clientstended to be large hospitals— sales representatives would train afew hospital employees who, in turn, would be the support people intheir hospitals (a train-the-trainers model). By the end of thatyear, however, the management team realized that it did not havethe infrastructure to provide customer support for all of the salesit was generating. As customer volume grew, the sales force was toobusy to provide reliable customer support. The sales force was paidon commission, so was less interested in providing adequatecustomer support and was not necessarily made up of the best peopleto do so. Instead of relying on its sales force, the Karen and hermanagement team decided to provide customer support via callcenters and, after much discussion, to establish these call centersinhouse instead of relying on outsourcing. During BLC’s originalmarket research, potential Latin American customers made it clearthat being able to speak directly to the company—to talk to thesame two or three people about their case rather than having torely on retailers or third-party support— would make them morelikely to buy BLC products. Given that the consistency and accuracyof information from customer service was essential, BLC decided tofirst establish a Caribbean based call center supplemented byweb-based video training. The company did this for two reasons.First, Karen and her management team wanted to closely monitor thecalls to be able to communicate quickly with quality control inorder to provide onsite training that was updated on a monthlybasis. Second, it wanted to build trust with its customers. Karenwas in charge of making this happen. She immediately pulled fourpeople, who spoke fluent Spanish, from the sales side of theorganization to serve as customer support representatives in thecall center. Differences in the Call Center Team As with most callcenters, the team was rewarded based on how many calls it handled.In light of their large and growing customer base, the team founditself with high call volumes. Karen believed it was important tokeep calls short for two reasons. First, it was important to avoidlong customer hold times in order to create greater ease forcustomers. Second, she had been given a fixed percentage of companyprofit to devote to call-center compensation. She did extensiveanalysis over a six-month period about realistic estimates of thelength of time that her team of four could spend with eachcustomer. She had the sales team document the time spent oncustomer support, used new customer forecasts and did a handful ofscenarios with existing customers to get an average time estimatefor a typical call. She then divided the amount of money she had tospend by the number of customers she anticipated would call eachday, and determined that she could afford to have representativesspend about seven minutes with each customer. This number wasroughly the same as her event-by-event “scenario trials.” In orderto stay within her budget, she decided that each representative’spay would be docked by $1.00 per minute after seven minutes ofconversation with a customer. While the representatives werecompensated with an annual salary, which was paid to them inmonthly pay periods, she decided to make their monthly paycontingent on the team maintaining a daily seven minute callaverage. So the team members’ monthly pay was calculated as theirsalary minus $1.00 for each minute of each day that the teamaverage was over seven minutes. She believed this would encouragethe call-center members to collaborate (rather than compete) withone another about the best strategies for quick and helpfulservice. Karen was discouraged that, at the end of their firstmonth of working together, the team members’ call response averagewas a little over two minutes off target. She was also gettingcomplaints from the three Caribbean team members. They calculatedthat together the three spent an average of five and a half minuteswith each customer; when customers wanted further information, theemployees referred them to the training videos. In contrast, theyobserved that the Panamanian member, Maria Perez, spent about 15minutes with each customer, often walking the customer through thevideos over the phone. These longer calls were affecting thecompensation of all members, and the Jamaicans and Trinidadianswere angry. At the most recent weekly team meeting, the tension hadbeen palpable. The Jamaicans and the Trinidadian understood Perez’spoint about the need for customer satisfaction, but they believedthat helping customers solve problems and referring them to thetraining video was good enough. The complaints in the meeting wentlike this: Joy Campbell says: This goes beyond being annoyed abouthow much Maria talks, it now affects my pay—it’s being docked. Whenshe does a call, it goes way past product information; she carrieson about family, gets wrapped up in their problems, laughs andjokes—but the thing that really put me over the edge was when shetold someone she’d put the kids who used our equipment on herprayer list! Maria acts like a therapist instead of providingtechnical support. For the love of Pete, we sell lightingequipment! The less you talk, the more you listen, and the betteryou do your job. Paul Ross says: Maria talks so much that my mouthhurts—and I’m being penalized because of it. There is no offswitch. She thinks her approach is a success. So she buildsrelationships with her customers, but we’re here to provideinformation. We have training videos for a reason—and she needs torefer customers to those videos, not watch the things with thecaller while she’s got them on the phone! George Cann says: I findmyself increasingly angry at Maria for prioritizing her need totalk over any work that needs to get done. She couldn’t care lessthat our pay is being reduced because of her. She has it in herhead that any conversation under 15 minutes is rude and to cutcalls shorter is bad manners. Callers don’t need to feel special,they need information to solve their problem, and that takes fiveminutes tops for all the rest of us. We are helping solve problemsand providing good care too. Maria Perez says: We don’t do thingsthat way in my country. You should have studied my culture beforeyou joined this team. This is serious business. The lives of manychildren depend upon our product, and their caregivers need to knowour company cares about them. We have to build trust that we aren’tgoing to sell them something and then hit the road. No one else onthis team takes the time to earn health care providers’ respect. Weneed to make them feel confident in their decision to buy ourmonitors and not someone else’s. But don’t take my word for it—havea look at the how customers have rated me: my satisfaction scoresare exponentially higher than anyone else’s on this team. Karenworried that both she and the team were at a breaking point. Pleaseprovide a suitable conclusion.