Caribbean Team Vibes and Whatever! Karen Brown sat in her office and thought about her 20-year career at Bright Lights C

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Caribbean Team Vibes and Whatever!
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 morning disturbed her as she realized thatthere were disagreements among her team members where thereappeared to be a division along Caribbean and Non – Caribbeangroups. The team comprised two Jamaicans, one Trinidadian from theTrinidad headquarters and one Panamanian from the Central Americansales office. The two Jamaicans, already thinking about customersupport, had spent the past few months working with productdevelopers to create webbased training videos that providedstep-by-step product use information, as well as testing competitorproducts. The employee from Panama had also spent time with theproduct development team and had been an outstanding salesrepresentative. She had transferred from the Central American salesoffice to join the Trinidad call center. The problem was that theJamaicans and the Trinidadian were angry about the work habits ofthe Panamanian member whose call times were longer than theirs, sothey accused her of effectively lowering their pay. During thatmorning’s meeting, things had deteriorated into a verbal onslaughtthat culminated in one of the Caribbean members calling thePanamanian member a “chatty Latina.” After that, the conflict gotpersonal and highly emotional. Was this the “cultural iceberg”she’d heard so much about? And what exactly should she do to steerthe team away from it?
Products at BLC
When Karen had joined BLC 10 years earlier, it was a smallCaribbean company selling unique light fixtures for modern homes.Since then, it had expanded to selling light fittings for hospitalequipment. Aside from the light fixtures, BLC’s most profitableproduct lines included phototherapy devices for the treatment ofjaundice (often called light boxes) and a sophisticated line ofneonatal heart and breathing monitors. BLC’s institutionalcustomers included hospitals and nongovernmental organizations thatcared for at-risk populations and pregnant mothers. The companyalso sold smaller versions of the phototherapy devices tohospitals. All manufacturing and distribution took place inJamaica. By 2011, BLC executives were ready to expand sales ofphototherapy devices into Latin American markets. The decision wasbased largely on the region’s lack of competitors in the maternalproduct segments which, had a low entry barrier. Karen had beenpart of the team that executed the launch. They had decided to hirelocals in each of their markets to create a Latin American salesunit and to focus on direct-marketing distribution channels toinstitutional customers (hospitals and NGOs). The product rolloutto institutional customers in Latin America was a huge success.Within a year, BLC had established ten sales units: two in Mexico,three in Central America, and five in South America. During thefirst few months of the expansion, the sales representatives wereable to provide some degree of customer support because theirclients tended to be large hospitals— sales representatives wouldtrain a few hospital employees who, in turn, would be the supportpeople in their hospitals (a train-the-trainers model). By the endof that year, however, the management team realized that it did nothave the infrastructure to provide customer support for all of thesales it was generating. As customer volume grew, the sales forcewas too busy to provide reliable customer support. The sales forcewas paid on commission, so was less interested in providingadequate customer support and was not necessarily made up of thebest people to do so. Instead of relying on its sales force, theKaren and her management team decided to provide customer supportvia call centers and, after much discussion, to establish thesecall centers inhouse instead of relying on outsourcing. DuringBLC’s original market research, potential Latin American customersmade it clear that being able to speak directly to the company—totalk to the same two or three people about their case rather thanhaving to rely on retailers or third-party support— would make themmore likely to buy BLC products. Given that the consistency andaccuracy of information from customer service was essential, BLCdecided to first establish a Caribbean based call centersupplemented by web-based video training. The company did this fortwo reasons. First, Karen and her management team wanted to closelymonitor the calls to be able to communicate quickly with qualitycontrol in order to provide onsite training that was updated on amonthly basis. Second, it wanted to build trust with its customers.Karen was in charge of making this happen. She immediately pulledfour people, 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 call centers, the team was rewarded based on howmany calls it handled. In light of their large and growing customerbase, the team found itself with high call volumes. Karen believedit was important to keep calls short for two reasons. First, it wasimportant to avoid long customer hold times in order to creategreater ease for customers. Second, she had been given a fixedpercentage of company profit to devote to call-center compensation.She did extensive analysis over a six-month period about realisticestimates of the length of time that her team of four could spendwith each customer. She had the sales team document the time spenton customer support, used new customer forecasts and did a handfulof scenarios with existing customers to get an average timeestimate for a typical call. She then divided the amount of moneyshe had to spend by the number of customers she anticipated wouldcall each day, and determined that she could afford to haverepresentatives spend about seven minutes with each customer. Thisnumber was roughly the same as her event-by-event “scenariotrials.” In order to stay within her budget, she decided that eachrepresentative’s pay would be docked by $1.00 per minute afterseven minutes of conversation with a customer. While therepresentatives were compensated with an annual salary, which waspaid to them in monthly pay periods, she decided to make theirmonthly pay contingent on the team maintaining a daily seven minutecall average. So the team members’ monthly pay was calculated astheir salary 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 went like this: J
oy Campbell says: This goes beyond being annoyed about how muchMaria talks, it now affects my pay—it’s being docked. When she doesa call, it goes way past product information; she carries on aboutfamily, gets wrapped up in their problems, laughs and jokes—but thething that really put me over the edge was when she told someoneshe’d put the kids who used our equipment on her prayer list! Mariaacts like a therapist instead of providing technical support. Forthe love of Pete, we sell lighting equipment! The less you talk,the more you listen, and the better you do your job.
Paul Ross says: Maria talks so much that my mouth hurts—and I’mbeing penalized because of it. There is no off switch. She thinksher approach is a success. So she builds relationships with hercustomers, but we’re here to provide information. We have trainingvideos for a reason—and she needs to refer customers to thosevideos, not watch the things with the caller while she’s got themon the phone!
George Cann says: I find myself increasingly angry at Maria forprioritizing her need to talk over any work that needs to get done.She couldn’t care less that our pay is being reduced because ofher. She has it in her head that any conversation under 15 minutesis rude and to cut calls shorter is bad manners. Callers don’t needto feel special, they need information to solve their problem, andthat takes five minutes tops for all the rest of us. We are helpingsolve problems and providing good care too.
Maria Perez says: We don’t do things that way in my country. Youshould have studied my culture before you joined this team. This isserious business. The lives of many children depend upon ourproduct, and their caregivers need to know our company cares aboutthem. We have to build trust that we aren’t going to sell themsomething and then hit the road. No one else on this team takes thetime to earn health care providers’ respect. We need to make themfeel confident in their decision to buy our monitors and notsomeone else’s. But don’t take my word for it—have a look at thehow customers have rated me: my satisfaction scores areexponentially higher than anyone else’s on this team.
Karen worried that both she and the team were at a breakingpoint.
5. Assess the benefits and risks of your chosen course of action(s). These must be backed up by strong evidence (course readings,discussions, outside research).