Proposal for THE DEVELOPMENT Of E-learning Intranet
For New Employees
Prepared for Proffessor Dr. Jose Lepervanche
Director of Operations
Submitted by
Project Manager
November 6, 2003
Abstract:
Since February 2002, Vibe Telephone call centers have experienced a high turnover rate of new employees, defined here as employees of less than 90 days. Each new employee costs Vibe Telephone Company approximately $4868 to train. A study of exit interviews of departing employees, indicate the high turnover rate of new employees stem from a core of five areas. The most prevalent and recurring answers on the questionnaires indicate training does not prepare the new employee for the continual adjustments. This proposal recommends Vibe Telephone Company build a separate intranet focusing on e-learning as the mechanism for success for future employees.
The Problem
The Vibes Telephone Company (VTC) started business operations in 1997. At that time, VTC opened five call centers in Denver, Anaheim, Kansas City, Phoenix, and Tampa. The five call centers employ more than 2500 customer service employees. VTC prides itself on delivering superior customer service to its more than 5000 independent dealers, national retailers, and wireless consultants selling its Motorola cellular telephones. The bases for VTC’s superior services were a highly skilled and well trained staff of customer service representatives that received a salary and benefit packages above industry standards. For that reason, the number of customer care employees quitting their jobs at VTC before obtaining four months job experience or roughly 90 days was on average 25 to 35% lower than the industry turnover rate for newly hired customer care workers.
The largest single expense charged to a Call Center or Contact Center’s budget, is staff training. When you count the salaries of recruiters and trainers, advertising expense, benefits packages, and other intangible costs, companies invest a great deal of resources in their employees. A direct result of VTC’s low staffing needs was a budget surplus. That budget surplus allowed VTC to take the money once earmarked for the training of new hires and reinvest it in other projects and debt reduction (Concerto, 2002).
Since December 2002, VTC call centers hiring rate for new customer service representatives has increased. The monthly turnover rate of employees for fiscal 2003 is double employee turnover rate for fiscal years 2000 and 2001, and 20% above industry turnover rate of 35% for new employees
In an effort to understand why the customer care turnover rate has increased so dramatically over the past two years, the company has funded a study of the exit interviews of three thousand former employees. Exit interviews can provide an excellent source of information of internal problems, employees' perceptions of the organization, underlying workplace issues, and of managers' leadership abilities. The results of the study indicates customer service representatives leave the company for the five basic reasons: lack of career opportunities, overwork and burnout, incomplete or minimal training, lack of positive direction form all levels of management, and poor analysis of call center statistics.
Proposed Solution
The E-learning Intranet for New Employees project is part of an ongoing effort by Vibe Telephone Company to reduce employee attrition in its customer service department. This project addresses the training issues raised by the employee exit interview’s study.
The components of the E-learning Intranet for New Employees include a company news page, a human resource page a training page, and a customizable personal page for the new employee. The news page represents the corporate point of view. It lists corporate departments such as research and development and stockholders interest. In addition to corporate structure, the page will provide the new employee with letters from the CEO, products updates, sales strategies, marketing strategies, and explain to the new employee how programs and product affect management decisions.
The human resources department will developed a page on the proposed intranet. The human resources page contains information about benefit packages, career opportunities, and civil rights and employment laws. Included on the human resources page are links to local babysitting services, transit authorities, and social services.
The training department sponsors another component of the new employee intranet. This page will contain pertinent facts about products and services, customer service procedures, and training modules. Included on the training page are matrixes of short cuts and a compendium of work related issues from legacy equipment and sales programs.
The final page on the new employee intranet is a personal page. The personal page allows the newly hire workers the opportunity to customize a page to their own need. The personal page offers the new employee limited Internet access. Options available on the personal page permit the new employee to choose a news agency, local news service, a weather service, and entertainment news.
Schedule
Table-1: Schedule
Event Start date End Date Kick Off
January 5 2004 January 5
Project Charter January 6 - January 12
Signing of Project Charter January 12
Project Planning
January 20 through March 2
Implementation and Prototyping
February 17 through May 25
Training Manual Development April 6 through April 27
System Testing May 13 through May 28
Delivery May 28
Cost
Table-2: Expenses
Resources
Cost
Human Resources Training Technical Writing,
Administrative $12,504.00
Web Design and Development $21,956.20
Consulting $2,349.00
System Engineering $8,295.00
Database Designed and Development $4,025.00
Project Management $9,972.00
Purchasing $740.00
Software Development $5,939.99
Customer Service $5,799.32
HP ProLiant DL360 G3 $13,303.00
Totals $84,883.51
Conclusions
The New Employee Intranet project is part of an ongoing effort by Vibe Telephone Company to reduce employee attrition in the customer service department. This project addresses the issues of training and management issues raised by the survey of exit interviews. It implements an employee intranet that brings pertinent facts and timely information to newly hired customer service workers. Unlike the regular employee portal, which is sometimes unwieldy and ponderous. The New Employee Intranet portal is fast and streamline. Its links are simpler, its information more succinct and explanatory. The New Employee Intranet focuses on making the new employee more proficient through positive experiences and training. The design and direction of this site focuses on the inexperienced customer service representative and lets the learners be active participant in their own development (Raman, 2002).
A simple endorsement of this site is not enough, I strongly recommend Vibe Telephone Company with all due speed and construct the New Employee Intranet.
REFERENCES
Concevitch B. B. (October, 2003) Improving Your Performance by Creating a Dynamic Learning Environment. Retrieved December 16, 2003, from Concerto. Customer Contact Centers: Today and Beyond Customer. Retrieved December 2, 2003, http://www.crmexchange.com/whitepapers/pdf/concerto-customercontact.pdf
Raman, A. (2002, June). Using E-learning to Educate Call Center Agents. Retrieved December 14, 2003, from http://www.tmcnet.com/cis/0602/0602out.htm1
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