Melissa

According to the Melissa’s case, her supervisor told her not to rush callers and she has to complete at least 5 calls per hour because of the volume of calls that typically comes in and the limited staff available. It means that she can only have maximum 12 minutes for each call to success. Maximum 12 minutes per call defeats the purpose of not rushing the caller. In addition she cannot always find the information that she needs in the database which it might take more than 12 minutes to find correct answers. So I think she does not have sufficient time to complete each call since she has to not rushing the caller. That’s why it is normal for her to be stressed whenever she is told to “speed it up”. My opinion Deming might say about this situation is that it is time to bring the company up-to-date with sufficient technology and create a customer-driven focus aimed at improving processes by implementing a system. 2. Drawing upon Deming’s principles, outline a plan to improve this situation.

Drawing on Deming’s principles, the following steps for a plan should be used to improve Melissa’s case:

a. The company should avoid setting the numeric goal of making 5 calls per hour for Melissa. She is frustrated because there is no method to help her achieve this goal.

b. The company should make improvement in technology, training and process design to reduce the variation in Melissa’s work. And since there is a lack of resources which makes Melissa’s work harder, the company should hire an additional support representative or resources.

c. It seems difficult to handle at least five calls per hour for Melissa. Up-to-date, new and faster computers could reduce the time for answering the telephone, answering technical questions, troubleshooting customer problems, and providing other general information and guidance to customers.