Challenges Faced by a Newly Hired Customer Service Manager
Professional development can be referred to a plan or process, which is attained for nurturing the given responsibilities in an individual. Different organization as have different sets of rules and policies. However, the given responsibility requires the utmost connection to the organizational policies in order to attain the maximum level of development (Burke and Noumair 2015). The main purpose of this assignment is to construct a professional development plan, which is very important from an organizational perspective as well as from the professional perspective.
Figure 1: To-Do list
Source: (created by author)
The above described to-do list mentions some of the woks that being the customer service manager, the learner is supposed to do at the BizOps Company. Some of the tasks are on a daily basis as in checking the different works, which are into the process. This also includes checking the list of customer complaints and then providing them the possible solutions. It also includes the interaction with the different employees and analyzing their work progress. Nevertheless, the list also includes some of the tasks, which are designed for the improvement of the professionalism into the learner. This would be achieved by interacting with the team members at the regular intervals. Moreover, the learner would also interact with the marketing & the sales team to enhance the profitability of the organization and reduce the order cycle time (Hopkins 2013).
Figure 2: To-Do list
On the Monday morning, the learner had to give separate priorities to the different tasks, which the learner had prepared for him for tracking his performance and making up his allotted responsibilities. The Monday morning was very surprising and the learner had not accepted the kind of morning before coming to the office. One of the sales representatives was frustrated because of a customer who verbally abused the representative and threatened to sue the company. The customer wanted to speak with the manager. Another challenge cam when the HR manager Gina asked the newly hired manager for coming to her office in the spare time. The last challenge came in the form that an interview candidate did phone the manager informing him that the candidate would be ten minutes late for the interview. The Monday morning did test the potentiality of the newly hired manager. Nevertheless, the newly hired Customer Service Manager can never expect anything bigger than this. It was challenging the learner to choose from the three up front challenges. However, the manager did show his credential in identifying the most important challenge of all that happened. The manager convincingly attempted to approach to the customer calls only because the customer was irate and was threatening to sue the company (Hopkins 2015).
Opportunities for Career Development at BizOps Enterprises
a) What are the challenges that are coming up front?
b) What actions have been taken to analyze the exact solutions to the challenges?
c) What steps are adopted to implement the identified solutions?
d) What techniques are used to monitor the implemented solutions?
e) What efforts have been given to acknowledge the feedbacks given by the customers and the higher management?
f) What efforts have been given to enhance the customer service standard?
g) What initiatives have been taken to enhance the efficiency of the marketing & the sales department?
h) What has so far been done to implement the identified initiatives?
i) What resources were used and how were they managed?
j) How much challenging is the job and what all are being done to mitigate the identified challenges?
Following are the list of career objectives (Latif, Jan and Shaheen 2013):
- To become an efficient Customer Service Manager
- To attain the maximum customer complaints handling capabilities
- To enhance the interpersonal skills
- To enhance the communication skills
Following are some of the personal goals (Locke and Latham 2013):
- Planning, coordinating and controlling the activities of the customer service team to attain the highest level of customer satisfaction
- Maintaining and enhancing the customer relationships
- Meeting with the organizational and the operational objectives
- Enhancing the technological efficiencies of the system to reduce the order tracking time, enhancing the shipment tracking and on time delivery of the products
Following are some of the skills that are assessed against the organizational policies (Moon 2013):
- Customer complaint handling skills
- Coordinating with the sales representatives
- Improving the sales performance of the company
- Enhancing the sales capabilities of the representatives
- Pressure handling capabilities
Following are some of the skills, which are needed to be developed (Pedler, Burgoyne and Boydell 2013):
- Relative skills to effectively handle the customer’s queries and complaints
- Developing the skills needed to be implemented on maintaining a balance relationship in between the sales generation and the customer service
- Learning the skills needed to allocate the appropriate resources to the appropriate places
- Learning the transformational leadership style, which is important for being flexible with any kinds of situation
The BizOps Enterprises provide an enormous learning process for the career development. The opportunity is identified at the annual performance and development review process. The opportunities are provided to the needed employee for serving the following purposes (Zepeda 2012):
- To develop the needed skills requiring to be adjusted with the change in role
- Professional development requirement for an individual
- Development of career and the processing with the changing culture of BizOps
The opportunities are provided in the form of short courses, tertiary courses and the study leave. Short courses are for little below to 80 hours in duration, which is possible during the working time. Tertiary courses whenever needed are conducted at some outside of the office premises. The personal development policy according to the organizational plan of BizOps is well provided in the organization (Zepeda 2012).
Following are the methods (Hopkins 2013):
- Sharing of jobs
- Working hours flexibility
- Works in part-time
- Salary in deferring format
- Work from home
- Retirement in phasing
The action plan for the implementation of the PDP can be done with the help of SMART as follows (Hopkins 2015):
- Being specific to the goal
- Being measurable in approach
- Being attainable while setting the goal
- Being relevant to the needs
- Being time specific in attaining the goal
Conclusion
The personal development plan is highly attainable if the respective organizations are supportive to the facts. The BizOps Enterprises has shown such a good example of an ideal organization, which provides opportunities for PDP to its employees. Nevertheless, personal development plan is highly recommended for the attainment of maximum pleasure of the allotted position.
References
Burke, W.W. and Noumair, D.A., 2015. Organization development: A process of learning and changing. FT Press.
Hopkins, D., 2013. Creating the Conditions for Classroom Improvement: A handbook of staff development activities. Routledge.
Hopkins, D., 2015. Improving the quality of education for all: A handbook of staff development activities. Routledge.
Latif, K.F., Jan, S. and Shaheen, N., 2013. Association of Training Satisfaction with Employee Development aspect of Job Satisfaction. Journal of managerial sciences, 7(1).
Locke, E.A. and Latham, G.P. eds., 2013. New developments in goal setting and task performance. Routledge.
Moon, J.A., 2013. Reflection in learning and professional development: Theory and practice. Routledge.
Pedler, M., Burgoyne, J. and Boydell, T., 2013. A Manager’s Guide to Self-development. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Zepeda, S.J., 2012. Professional development: What works. Eye on education.