Marilyn’s Just for Woman, Inc. is an internet company selling clothing, jewelry, and other fashion items. The Company’s target market is middle-class women age 25 and older. The Company’s carefully crafted advertising and promotion program has made Marilyn’s a popular internet shopping site for women of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. The Catalog of products is on-line. Customers can order on-line or they can order using an 800 toll-free Call-Center. The 800 toll-free Call-Center is also used by customers to check on orders, request adjustments, and express complaints.

Harold Cleave has been manager of the Call-Center for the last 3 years. He is responsible for all aspects of the Call-Center. The Company establishes a budget for the Call-Center. The Budget is established after reviewing the costs of similar call centers in other Companies. Harold has always managed to operate the Call-Center below budgeted costs. He has received bonuses every year for his cost savings.

Call-Center associates are evaluated on how much time they take with each customer. The longer an associate spends on the phone with a customer the more it costs the Company. Associates also earn bonuses when their average Call-time per customer is less than 2 minutes. Call-time is measured as the amount of time from when an associate first answers a call to the time when the call is completed or transferred. To protect their Call-time statistic, associates transfer complainers and customers seeking adjustments quickly to other departments. Occasionally associates disconnect callers to protect their call-time statistic.

John Barrow, the Director of Marketing, believes sales should be growing by around 10% but that is not happening. Sales orders placed through the internet are flat and sales orders placed through the Call-Center are actually declining.

The CEO, Jennifer Jones, agrees with John and has hired a consultant to examine operations. The consultant checked social media and a number of other sources. The consultant discovered and verified the following:

• Customers frequently wait up to 20 minutes before their call is answered. Some customers complain about being disconnected. Customers complain about being transferred 4 or 5 times before they are connected with a person who can actually help them.
• Some employees have made anonymous posts to social media about some of their concerns. Several employees complained that they are never even considered for other positions within Marilyn’s even though their education and experience are commensurate with the requirements of those positions. Quite a number of complaints are about the lack of training on software upgrades resulting in: increased Call-time, and mix-ups and errors on sales orders.

Required: You get what you Pay for!

1. Evaluate the current Call-Center method of evaluating performance.
2. Devise a performance evaluation scheme based on the Balanced Scorcard.