Running head: CONTROL MEASURES
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Control Measures
Nena Fairbanks, Ian Hosein, Brent Kumorowski
MGT/521
January 21, 2013
Samuel L. Cunningham, CIA, CGFM, CDFM, MBA
CONTROL MEASURES
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Control Measures
Caribbean Resort Timeshares (CRT) is a customer call center for timeshare vacations
which has been presented with unprecedented challenges as a direct result from a decline in the
centers productivity and profits. Nena, Ian, and Brent are managers at CRT who believe it is due
to many factors and want to evaluate how they can put in control measures to not only evaluate
each employee but the center as a whole to make this year full of unprecedented growth. Each
manager has agreed to present his or her perspective on what control measures he or she thinks
to be most valuable. As a team, Nena, Ian, and Brent meet and discuss their ideas.
Nena is first to present. She believes individual employees should be measured as to how
many calls he or she handles in a day, the number of time shares they have sold, positive or
negative survey feedback in the areas of friendliness and knowledge of products or services
offered. Nena wants to add control measures to monitor the progress of each individual in
relation to set targets. She would also like to evaluate methods being used by the individual to
make their sales.
For the call center as a whole, Nena, would like to measure the total number of calls
received in a day, the number of dropped calls or missed sales in a day, whether calls are being
dispersed evenly amongst representatives working in a given day and how many calls each
person takes on average in a day. She would like to implement stronger controls in measuring
the total sales on a daily basis, to compare historical data year over year for profit and call
history data, and to benchmark against competitors.
Ian is the next to share his ideas and wants to ensure that new control measures monitor
non-work activities at work. He wants to know how often individuals take breaks, if he or she
smokes and takes extra breaks, also if inner office dating is taking place distracting a person
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from his or her work. Ian is curious to see how quickly a person takes a call and whether or not
the employee is taking enough time or too much time on one call, therefore, he wants to record
and listen to calls. Through these recordings, Ian also wants to learn what marketing methods
are being used by the employee to sell products and services. For the entire call center as a
whole, Ian wants to place a control measure that monitors the frequency of inbound and
outbound calls. He also wants to use recordings to see what violations might be occurring in
terms of communication, such as yelling or harassment of customers.
Brent mentions that his list is similar and begins to read his objectives for control
measures. He mentions his desire to monitor individuals in the areas of average call times,
average number of login’s and logout’s recorded in the system, and percentage of successful
sales versus denials. Brent is concerned that employees may not be following up with customer
inquiries and requests or calling customers back who may not have answered the first time. In
addition he wants to measure how much communication is being logged on each call so that the
managers and other callers have an extensive collection of information on each caller and his or
her concerns. Brent wants to see individual calls recorded for playback review not only for
filtering the call but as a learning tool for the employee to know how they are perceived on his or
her calls. Collectively as a whole, Brent wants to measure inbound and outbound calls placed
year to date (YTD) over prior five years, customer satisfaction survey results YTD over prior
year, and how many time shares have been sold YTD over prior five years.
Brent, Nina, and Ian are feeling confident in the list they have acquired and agree that the
two primary divisions of controls they are contemplating using are feedback controls and some
information controls. Feedback controls use data and information collected after each call is
placed to analyze and interpret in helping the organization understand areas for improvement
CONTROL MEASURES
(Robbins & Coulter, 2012, 18-8). Information controls which use information in different areas
of the evaluation and decision making process in terms of what productivity and different
statistics exist can help managers plan and understand (Robbins & Coulter, 2012, 18-8).
All three manager’s Nena, Brent, and Ian have decided that all three lists of control
measures would be valuable to the operation and success of the call center. The team does
decide that trying to monitor inter-office dating and determining if a person is a smoker is
probably not relevant at this time to the primary needs of the organization and decides that the
human resources department could do follow up surveys if they determine these issues to be a
deterrent to the success of the center. The management team is confident that 2013 will be a
more successful and profitable year for the operation of the call center and for each team
members ability to be successful by being held more accountable.
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Reference
Robbins, S., & Coulter, M. (2012). Management (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall.