The organization is a customer support call center in California for a company that sells equipment to airlines. The company's products are sold internationally so calls come into the center on a 365/24/7 basis from people with varying degrees of technical knowledge and varying degrees of English skills. When calls come into the center, they are logged by their criticality, with those problems that could cause a flight delay receiving highest priority. Some issues can be resolved in a single phone call; other issues will need to be referred to an engineer (also in California) while some few issues will require an on-site visit. When the issue is not resolved through the phone call, it is entered into the support database and routed to the appropriate person for resolution. The call center operator typically does not handle the call again unless the problem repeats. There have been complaints that some issues that should have been resolved over the phone have instead moved through the process resulting in delays in resolution and excess expenditure of resources.
The call center follows a straightforward process flow with the individual operators determining whether a call needs to be elevated or has been successfully resolved. If it is elevated, the operator determines the next person to handle the issue and the issue can be tracked by job number.
Relationship of Process to Strategic Plan
The process is critical to the strategic plan in that customer satisfaction is a key part of the company's strategy. Because the company sells a variety of products and is doing so on a continual basis, airlines need to be satisfied with the products that they currently have and with the level of support they receive from the company. Thus minimizing problems to begin with, and handling problems effectively when they do arise, is part of the st
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