Question

Prompt:

You are the HR Manager for a cable company that has recently decided

to build a new call center to handle customer service issues. Your company is

considering four (4) locations for the call center: Memphis, TN; Montgomery,

AL; Jackson, MS; and Baton Rouge, LA. The plans are to initially hire 100

customer service representatives with the potential to hire another 50

representatives within three (3) years of the

facility’s opening. You have been

tasked to determine which location would be best, developing the customer

service representative job description, developing the recruitment program for the

position, and determining the selection process, training program and pay structure for the position.

A minimum of 2,000 words

Answer 1

First task is to determine which location would be best for the company, as company is considering 4 locations for call center, a further study or deep dive needs to be done in terms of following parameters:

• Taxes and registration formalities – first and most important point to investigate is the tax requirement of particular state, some state have more tax than other and employees may not willing to come to location where taxes are more as it will impact their salary. Further for business it is equally important to know what is registration requirement to set up a call center in all of these 4 locations
• Rent and other administrative cost – next assessment needs to be done by company the rent, electricity, availability of labour, incentives given by government in each of these locations, and accordingly it is important to compare the location in all of these items
• Public transport – Generally employee look to apply for those jobs where they can easily avail public transport so to save cost in travelling, and therefore it becomes very important for company to look for a property which is near to a bus station, or a metro or to a location where public transport is easily available. A comparison in all these 4 locations needs to be done

While looking and deciding the best location for the company, it is important to study and compare the location from the point of view of company, prospective employee, customers, availability and finally cost

Next step or task for a HR manager is to develop or define the job description for customer service representative role in a company:

In order to develop job description for customer service representative, firstly set up a meeting with the hiring manager to understand the job expectations, what would be the day to day will look like for an employee, what will be the responsibilities, how his performance will be assessed.

Once we have clarity on all of these points next step is to draft the job description basis the discussion with the hiring manager. Job description is very important document as this provide a chance to connect with prospective employee and therefore should include following in terms of job:

• Introduction about the company
• Job title
• Main duties and responsibilities
• Location
• Salary & benefits

Once the document is ready, it is important to get the document approved by the hiring manager, and company leadership so that in case any thing needs to be added or deleted can be done there and than. As customer service representative of the company is someone who represent the company to customer, defining their duties in a written document is very crucial activity. It is important to explain the guidelines of how they will the resolve the customer service issue, how they handle customer queries, how they will record, validate and respond to customer issues.

Next task is to developing the recruitment program for the position and determining the selection process, it is again one of the most important activity in term of hiring a candidate.

Once we have the job details and responsibilities, next step is to design a recruitment program for the position basis the job description available. It is important to understand whether company will hire directly from job sites, and other social networking platform or company will use a recruitment consultant or company will visit a college campus to recruit the candidates

Once it is decided how company will recruit, than next task is to decide the selection process – whether company will take aptitude test, group discussion, and personal interview or only aptitude test and interview, or just interview. For job likes customer care associate, a aptitude test and interview is recommended as test will be able to assess the mindset and aptitude of candidate and through personal interview hiring manager will be able to assess the body language and communication skill and how much job clarity candidate has.

Next is to design the training program for the role, before candidates joins the company it is important to do a training assessment in a company to find out the training needs of such roles, once objective is the organization set up and what kind of training they wish to offer to candidate, than it is important to define they delivery of such training program. For job role like customer service associates communication skill is one of main requirement of job and company can start with arranging soft skill, voice accent and modulation training programs for the associates and after few months, it is best to analyses the feedback and response of such training programs.

Lastly the most important step is to define Pay structure for the position. In deciding pay structure fist task is to assess the job roles, its challenges, how much experience is required to perform quality work and than accordingly set the value for the company for such role, once the details of this is available next step is to research the wages in that particular location, generally a bench mark study is done where we study how much salary a company in same domain is paying to their employees, this is done for couple of companies and accordingly a high, average and low median salary is decided