Industrial Strategies Of Service Research: Redesigning Customer And Business Facing Jobs

Customer Facing Jobs and Strategies for Redesigning Them

Discuss About The Industrial Strategies Of Service Research.

The term ‘customer facing’ refers to the service or role or technology or information that are intended directly to the customers (Eggert et al. 2014). Thus, it can be said that customer facing is an approach, which can be associated with different aspects. For instance, job roles are there that directly associated with customers.

As per the growing need in the industry, organizations recruit a large number of employees in the customer service sector. The customer service jobs demands the concerned employees to work have an adequate knowledge of customer satisfaction (Eggert et al. 2014). At the same time, the employees must be able to understand the customer requirement. Some strategies therefore can be adopted to redesign a customer facing job in an organization.

The organization must ensure that all its staffs concerning customer facing jobs possess adequate knowledge regarding the product of the company. Therefore, special training program should be introduced by the organization so that they can understand everything about the product for which they are providing services to the customers (Eggert et al. 2014).

Communication plays an integral role in customer facing jobs. The employees must be well trained in order to communicate mannerly with the customers (Eggert et al. 2014). it has been noticed that, sometimes the conflicts arises between a customer service agent and a customer as the customer service agent do not possess the essential qualities of communication with customers.

A customer service agent can work well in order to meet the satisfaction of the customers, if only he or she is provided with the proper infrastructure (Eggert et al. 2014). The organization need to build an infrastructure, through which the employee can easily solve the issues customers bring to them.

In contrast to customer facing jobs, business facing jobs also exist. Different strategies need to be applied redesign business facing jobs in order to increase the productivity of the company.

The employees should be guided by an experts to manage operational issues so that they ant kind of disorder can be avoided. The expert must possess adequate experience in the same field in order to address the issues and solve them accordingly (Eggert et al. 2014). As internal business process is the primary aspect of business, the organization must secure the smooth operations which need efficiency of the employees.

Business Facing Jobs and Strategies for Redesigning Them

Everyday challenges are exist in an internal business process and the challenges should be solved immediately without wasting tome. Therefore, the organization must incorporate problem solving training in their work places so that they can able to solve the problems while taking decisions independently (Eggert et al. 2014).

In order to ensure that the employees perform well, they must be made aware of the company’s vision. What the company aims or what is the vision and mission of the company help the employees to understand their job role and work accordingly (Eggert et al. 2014). By making the employees aware of about the vision and mission of the company, the companies try to make them understand about the expectations of the companies from their employees.

Risk plays a major role in case of recruitment. Most of the time, it has been observed that the employees after being inducted face difficulties. The reason for which the employees face difficulties is their ignorance about the actual situations. Therefore, employee retention remains at a high risk. However, the risk can be reduced by recruiting employees internally (Armstrong et al. 2015). Few advantages and disadvantages of internal recruitment are discussed below:

• When shop keepers will be hired from the existing staffs, the retention rate generally remains high. The employees, those are inducted from the organizations only look for a swift internally (DeVaro and Morita 2013). Given the option, they willingly accept the offer to work with the same organization.
• As hierarchy is known to them, they can easily approach to the director or semi director level authorities in case of any problem arises regarding work place.
• The other advantage of the internal recruitment is unlike the new employees, the in-house employees do not tend to leave their jobs easily as they develop a loyalty towards the company (DeVaro and Morita 2013). The employees due to being loyal to the company even perform more efficiently than earlier. Rather they take this as their promotion or reward which encourages the employees work with more energy.
• The employees being accustomed with the work place environment as well as the work culture easily get adjusted with the new role of job (DeVaro and Morita 2013). The employees’ learning process is also faster than the new employees as more or less they remain aware of their job.

Along with advantages, recruiting of the shop keepers from the existing staffs has some disadvantages too which have been discussed below:

• In some cases, it has been observed that, even after given the opportunity to explore a new job position. Being working for a long time for a particular purpose, the employees feel lack of willingness to come out from their comfort zone (DeVaro and Morita 2013). The workers therefore, fail to meet the expectations of the organizing resulting failure.
• Lack of willingness to learn new aspects are another major disadvantage of internal recruitment. Some of the employees possess a tendency of making decision when they shift to another job role (DeVaro and Morita 2013). As they have been working for a long term, they generally think that they are able to work independently assuming the internal job change as promotion.
• As these employees are hired internally, they show lack of association with the new entrants in the organizations. As per the job role of a shop keeper, the people who will be inducted as the shopkeeper must possess essential qualities like customer handling and understanding customer requirements (DeVaro and Morita 2013). Unless these required skills the employees will not be able satisfy their customers.
• Recruiting a new employee for the post of the shopkeeper requires more compensation than the existing employees. However, the employees with adequate knowledge of a shopkeeper’s role can become productive for the overall organization (DeVaro and Morita 2013). The existing staffs may do not possess the potentiality to become an effective shopkeeper, hence it can be considered as the disadvantage of the internal recruitment.

Most effective human resource managers create job profiles even when the post does not exist in the organization. In such cases, the human resource managers outline the main responsibilities and duties of the post by observing g and analyzing the same posts exist in other organizations (Jackson et al. 2014). The human resource e managers also conduct long term interviews which help them setting the actual standard for the post. Different process is there through which the job description can be created for the shop:

Before creating a job description it is necessary for the human resource manager to analyze the job as to what are the responsibilities and duties fulfilled by the professionals. The human resource managers evaluate work of the professionals and understand that the required qualifications to hold the post or the attributes that the person needs to possess in order to hold the position (Jackson et al. 2014). In order to determine the standards for the position, the human resource manger need to be up to date with the current market scenario. The process also includes discussions with the present job holders so that they can consider them while creating the job description.

Recruitment Risks and Employee Retention

Different situations are examined for which the job is meant for. This situational analysis includes different aspects. For instance, how the concerned person will take actions according to the situation (Jackson et al. 2014). Several situations that are considered to be handled by the concerning person are individual situation, group conversation, critical situations and so on.

The concerning person or the position holder determines the actions and executes that action in order to get expected results. Such kinds of situations are solely handled by the person. For example, when a shopkeeper purchases goods, it is only he who directly communicates with the customers (Jackson et al. 2014). The shop keeper is also liable to take decisions regarding any consequences that occur during the sale of products. The other instances of individual situations can be the looking after the shops and the products stored in the shops.

Group conversation is considered as one of the situations for which the concerning person is responsible for. For instance, the shop keeper is responsible for conducting a group discussion with its subordinates (Jackson et al. 2014). The discussion can be related any aspects like performance of the team, duty specification and so on.

Critical situation in relation with job description refers to the situations that are problematic. The concerned person identifies the issue for which the critical situation raised, evaluates the situation and finally gives a solution in order to solve e the issue. In order to handle a critical situation the job holder must be able to take risks which make him or an effective employee (Jackson et al. 2014). The shopkeeper critically analyzes any problematic situations with his or her problem solving attributes. Thus major responsibilities are fulfilled by the shopkeepers in case of critical situations.

The field sales representative possesses different key skills unlike the staffs of the shop. The key skills of a field sales representative include increasing the sale of the company by different methods of sales, development of the strategies and theories in terms of sales so that sales can be forecasted (Ingram et al.2015). evaluation and understanding of the customer requirements at the same time building long-term relationship with them.

The field sales individual develops different strategies through which he is able to attract new customers to use or buy their products. The appropriate candidate works hard in order to increase the revenue. This is done by qualifying the product description as well as negotiating with the clients. The main purpose of a field sales representative is to negotiate with the customers in order to sale the products. The sales representatives compete with each other in terms of sales so that they can achieve the target of sales.

The responsibilities of a field sales representative include understanding of the industry that he works for (Ingram et al.2015). A clear knowledge about the market helps the person to identify the actual market requirement and then develop strategies to reach out to more customers.

Besides approaching to new customers, a field sales person thus required to report the feedback of the customers and then give it to the management personnel (Johnston and Marshall 2016). Along with that, the sales representatives need to attend as well as organize various sales events in order to make them aware of the continuous changing purchasing nature of the customers.

In order to fulfill the requirements, the sales representatives need to possess certain skills. The skills are therefore discussed below:

• The person as sales representative needs to have adequate experience in the same field. Beside experience, the adequate knowledge of making sales strategies is crucial for the sales person (Ingram et al.2015).
• As the job demands the person to be energetic and motivated who can encourage himself to meet his target.
• A sales person needs to have strong communication skills in order to interact with the customers and persuade them in buying or using the products.
• Managing pipeline is considered as one of the most important skills of a field sales representative (Johnston and Marshall 2016). Along with that, several other ways of sales must be known to the person who works as a field sales representative.
• The field sales person must know how to achieve his sales target by using some techniques (Johnston and Marshall 2016). The primary step towards achieving the target is creation of a data base of the assigned customer area.

References

Eggert, A., Hogreve, J., Ulaga, W. and Muenkhoff, E., 2014. Revenue and profit implications of industrial service strategies.Journal of Service Research, 17(1), pp.23-39.

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015.Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.

DeVaro, J. and Morita, H., 2013. Internal promotion and external recruitment: A theoretical and empirical analysis.Journal of Labor Economics, 31(2), pp.227-269.

Jackson, S.E., Schuler, R.S. and Jiang, K., 2014. An aspirational framework for strategic human resource management. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), pp.1-56.

Ingram, T.N., LaForge, R.W., Williams, M.R. and Schwepker Jr, C.H., 2015. Sales management: Analysis and decision making. Routledge.

Johnston, M.W. and Marshall, G.W., 2016. Sales force management: Leadership, innovation, technology. Routledge.