Question

Creating cross-functional teams

The Direct Response Group (DRG) at Capital Holding is a direct marketer of life, health, property, and casualty insurance. In the past, it sold a mass-produced product to a mass market. Over time, however, sales slowed, profits eroded, and the company decided it had to refocus its efforts. That meant, for one thing, selling to particular, identifiable customers and giving those customers a customized product/service package that was world class, enabling the company to compete globally.

An analysis of the corporate culture showed that people were more concerned with pleasing their bosses than pleasing the customer. People hoarded information instead of sharing information because the people with information had power. The information system had to be changed to encourage sharing.

Organizational change began with a vision statement that emphasized caring, listening to, and satisfying customers one-on-one. To accomplish that goal, the company formed a cross‑functional team to study the sales, service, and marketing processes and completely redesign those functional areas. The idea was to have a world-class customer-driven company. That meant gathering as much information as possible about customers.

Frontline customer-contact people were empowered with user-friendly information systems that made it possible for one contact person, working with a support team, to handle any question that customers had. Management used external databases to get detailed information on some 15 million consumers. The combined internal and external databases were used to develop custom‑made products for specific customer groups.

The whole company was focused on satisfying customer wants and needs. That meant changing processes within the firm so that they were geared toward the customer. For example, one case worker is now attached to each customer, and that case worker is responsible for following an application through the entire approval and product design process. Previously, many people handled the application, and no one person was responsible for it.

A pilot program was started whereby a customer-management team was formed to serve 40,000 customers. The team consisted of 10 customer service representatives and their support team (a marketer, an expert in company operations, and an information systems person). Employees are now rewarded for performance, and merit raises are based on team performance to encourage team participation.

Discussion questions for bonus case 8-2

1. Are traditional bureaucracies set up to provide custom-made products to individual consumers? Could they be, or is it always better to have customer-oriented teams design such products?
2. Anyone who has worked in team situations has discovered that some members of the team work harder than others; nonetheless, the whole team is often rewarded based on the overall results, not individual effort. How could team evaluations be made so that individual efforts could be recognized and rewarded?
3. What service organizations, private or public, would you like to see become more customer oriented? How could this case be used as a model for that organization?
4. What are some major impediments to implementing customer-oriented teams in service organizations?

Answer 1

Answer1:

Traditional bureaucracies face bound disadvantages in developing custom created products to individual customers, notable thanks to their rigid structure and inflexible processes and procedures. This makes it laborious for government official’s organizations to reply to the varied desires and desires of the client that is that the key ingredient of customization. Thence in most of the cases, it's higher to own client homeward-bound groups style such product. client homeward-bound groups have the advantage of understanding a lot of clearly the precise needs of the client thanks to their "customer first" approach; responding adequately to varied desires on account of their flexibility, and giving a better far better much better higher stronger lot of robust and improved and more bespoke answer to the client supported their combined set of skills.

Answer2:

Team evaluations may be created to focus a lot on individual contributions through many various ways in which. Firstly, one will measure the performance of every member against the tasks he was assigned, therefore during this manner the performance of every member may be compared with the opposite members of the team. Secondly, we will choose what proportion effort every member is put into cooperation by observant his performance and inputs throughout team discussions, and his disposition once the cluster task is split among the members. Through these ways, we will choose the extent of disposition a selected member has towards the completion of the cluster task additionally as his individual contribution towards the completion of the cluster task.

Answer3:

I would {prefer tarlike better to value a lot of highly to favor toot to choose to} see personal organizations become more customer-oriented, thanks to the rationale that there is a unit several personal organizations, notably within the service sector, that area unit hampered thanks to their rigid hierarchy and operations. Also, they're infested with competition among staff, which generally leads staff to win favor with suggests that apart from honest ones. This case may be a model for such a corporation n that it effectively describes the steps that may be undertaken by the corporate management to become a lot of customer-oriented. This case accurately describes the essential needs for a personal organization to become a lot of customer-aware, like easy systems, team-oriented approach, etc. conjointly it effectively describes the firewalls against activities like pleasing bosses, by making cross-functional groups and diluting a strict stratified structure.

Answer4:

One major impediment towards the implementation of customer-oriented groups in commission organizations is that the system of processes and procedures within the organization, notably the inflexibility hooked up to those processes. This could be crucial for a corporation to become actually client-oriented; an exact level of flexibility in operations is needed therefore on reply to every customer within the best manner. Another impediment is that the stratified structure within the organizations because it causes problems within the formation of groups at intervals the organization. Lastly, employees' attitudes associate degreed personalities conjointly become an impediment towards the event of an efficient team, particularly one that's cross-functional (Webber, 2002). Staff might not feel snug operating with each other and will not like equal standing. This creates problems within the effective operation of a team, even once the group’s area unit created.