TO: Mr. Ralph Mayberry, Owner of Mayberry A&G Insurance Firm

FROM: Loni Knight, Chris Harper, and Christopher Sipes, Assistant Managers for Mayberry A&G Insurance Firm

DATE: December 3, 2010

SUBJECT: PHONE SYSTEM UPGRADE AT MAYBERRY A&G INSURANCE FIRM

ABSTRACT

We at the Mayberry A&G Insurance Firm have been getting a lot of complaints from our employees about dropped calls. Our current and potential customers are not happy with this either. While talking to our employees, myself and my new survey staff have been finding that in the middle of the employees’ conversations with customers, the calls are simply ending. This is a big problem because these mishaps are causing our firm to lose customers. Therefore, we have gone through and collected data to find and solve this problem. Once we have located and solved this awful problem things will be back to normal and our business will be thriving once again. After careful research we have found that the transfer calling and the conference calling could make for two major problems. Firstly, calls are being dropped resulting in the second major problem, being that the more calls dropped, the more the employees will lose their positive morale causing their work to be less efficient.

Introduction

Background. The Mayberry A&G Insurance Firm in Union, Kentucky deals with selling insurance to and consulting with their customers. The firm does the majority of their business through phone calls. Management is planning to install a new phone system due to a decrease in sales and profits and is allowing employees to vote on three additional features to be included in this upgrade to reduce the amount of calls being lost. If this upgrade is successful for its purpose, a rise in profits and sales might result.

Problem. Overall costs / expenses for the third quarter are up nine percent. Most of the cost increase can be attributed to the antiquated telephone system. To meet competition, it is important that Mayberry A&G Insurance Firm install a new and effective telephone system to reduce overall costs.

Purpose. The purpose of this study is to provide conclusions and recommendations for the selection of the three-most needed features to be included in the Mayberry A&G Insurance Firm’s new telephone system.

Scope. The scope of this study included employees preferences regarding Speaker, Caller ID, Call Waiting, Conferencing, Distribution List, Message Waiting Notification, Multi-line, and Transfer to determine the three top-needed features to include in the phone upgrade to improve quality of phone calls and reduce the amount of calls being lost. The study was limited to employees at the Mayberry Insurance Firm and was only for a two-day period of time.

Procedures

Information for the study was gathered from numerous employee complaints about lost calls including those of salespeople and customer support representatives. Managers administered a survey for the employees about phone features. Employees were asked to rate each feature based on need and usefulness. The findings from the survey were used to decide which three features would be added to the phone system upgrade.

Findings

The findings in this report are based on the employees’ survey that was conducted as requested by Ralph Mayberry. Out of nine possible features, the employees were asked how useful each one is in making phone calls more efficient. From the findings in this survey, the top three features will be added to the phone system along with the voice mail and call forwarding features which are already included. Most of the 47 employees thought that Message Waiting Notification was essential to better their job production; many found this feature useful and convenient to have. The second choice was Caller ID, found being essential to 11 employees and useful to 33 employees for benefiting the amount of production and quality of their work. Although Transfer was very close behind, the third choice was Multi-line, found essential by 7 employees, useful by 6 and nice by 3. Therefore the three choices for features to be added as part of the upgrade are as follows: Message Waiting Notification, Caller ID, and Multi-line.

TABLE I. PHONE FEATURES, RANK OF NEED, AND NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES PER RESPONSE AT MAYBERRY A&G INSURANCE FIRM
Feature
Essential
Useful
Nice
No Need
Speaker
4
1
13
27
Caller ID
11
33
3
0
Call Waiting
5
6
21
15
Conferencing
3
14
1
29
Distribution List
7
2
1
37
Message Waiting Notification
35
4
5
3
Multi-line
7
6
3
31
Transfer
7
6
2
32

Analysis

My supervisors and I have been attempting to interpret the data from the survey given at the Mayberry A&G Insurance Firm. Due to the high number of employees expressing “no need” for distribution lists, transfer calling, and conference calling, it is likely that the employees have used these features before and have found that they are not necessary and would not be helpful for improving the quality of phone calls. However we have found that features such as the message waiting feature are quite necessary for our employees to have at their stations. The principle understanding of the data was that the top two features: message waiting notification and caller ID have the most relevance to the issue concerning dropped calls. The results show message waiting notification as being the most essential for twice as many employees as caller ID, however, caller ID is the only feature that wasn’t declared at all as having “no need;” one may suspect that is because this feature allows for an employee to call a customer back even if they do happen to loose the call. Even though multi-line is the third top feature and will also be a part of the phone system upgrade, the results show that about three fourths of the employees expressed “no need” for this feature and it isn’t needed nearly as much as the other two features that will be added. The findings from the survey of employees gave my supervisors and me excellent feedback providing us with the knowledge of which features would be most effective and helpful for both the company and clients.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusions. The following conclusions are made based on this study:

1. Three features that should definitely be kept are the Message waiting notification, caller ID, and the Multi-line feature.
2. One feature that can be done away with that could be causing the problem is the Distribution list.
3. Finally, the call transfer and the conference calling could also be causing the big problem, because while the employees are trying to conference or transfer calls is a perfect time for calls to get dropped.

Recommendations. The following recommendations are made based on the conclusions of this study:

1. First, getting rid of the call transfer and conference calling may help take care of the dropped call problem. Also we thought logically and this seems to be the most likely way that calls are getting dropped.
2. Next, upgrading the features that the employees think are good. Making these upgrades may help with work efficiency.
3. Last, we would recommend getting rid of those features that the employees feel are not necessary.