The Caribbean Team “Vibes” or “Not”: Another Day in the Life of a Call Centre In a rare moment alone in her office, Jennifer Ames reflected on the past 10 years of her career at GerberGoodstart Corporation (GGC) She could easily chart her successes: She had taken on challenges and produced results where her colleagues had failed; she had increased the diversity of the work force in every unit she had led; she had successfully launched new products and developed several new markets. In fact, just a few months before, Ames had been part of a team that had led a highly successful launch of several GGC product lines into the Latin American market. That success and the ensuing demand for its products drove GGC to centralize customer support in a call center in Kingston, Jamaica—and to create Ames’s new position: senior director for global customer support. Ames had studied other call-center models and created a team of four as a prototype for customer support. She had a goal of scaling up as the business expanded. But as she sat in her office, looking at the latest financials and mentally reviewing the events of a disturbing meeting earlier that morning, she saw the failure of her prototype looming large. The call response times were on an upward trajectory that would quickly plunge her budget into the red if the trend continued. Even worse, only one short month into her new position, Ames was worried that her team was stonewalling her. She was deeply troubled by the interaction she had just observed: there was friction among her staff members that was dividing them along Jamaican-versus-non-Jamaican lines. The team consisted of three Jamaicans from the Kingston, Jamaica, headquarters and one Costa Rican from the Central American sales office. The three Jamaicans, already thinking about customer support, had spent the past few months working with product developers to create the web-based training videos that provided step-by-step product use information, as well as testing competitor products. The employee from Costa Rica had also spent time with the product development team and had been an outstanding sales representative. She had transferred from the Central American sales office to join the Kingston call center. The problem was that the Jamaicans were angry about the work habits of the Costa Rican member whose call times were longer than theirs, so they accused her of effectively lowering their pay. During that morning’s meeting, things had deteriorated into a verbal onslaught that culminated in one of the Jamaican members calling the Costa Rican member a “chatty Latina.” After that, the conflict got personal and highly emotional. Was this the “cultural iceberg” she’d heard so much about? And what exactly should she do to steer the team away from it? important to avoid long customer hold times in order to create greater ease for customers. Second, she had been given a fixedpercentage of company profit to devote to call-center compensation. She did extensive analysis over a six-month period about realisticestimates of the length of time that her team of four could spend with each customer. She had the sales team document the timespent on customer support, used new customer forecasts and did a handful of scenarios with existing customers to get an averagetime estimate for a typical call. She then divided the amount of money she had to spend by the number of customers she anticipatedwould call each day, and determined that she could afford to have representatives spend about seven minutes with each customer.This number was roughly the same as her event-by-event "scenario trials." In order to stay within her budget, she decided that eachrepresentative's pay would be docked by $1.00 per minute after seven minutes of conversation with a customer. While therepresentatives were compensated with an annual salary, which was paid to them in monthly pay periods, she decided to make theirmonthly pay contingent on the team maintaining a daily seven minute call average. So the team members' monthly pay was calculatedas their salary minus $1.00 for each minute of each day that the team average was over seven minutes. She believed this wouldencourage the call-center members to collaborate (rather than compete) with one another about the best strategies for quick andhelpful service. Ames was discouraged that, at the end of their first month of working together, the team members' call responseaverage was a little over two minutes off target. She was also getting complaints from the three Jamaican team members. Theycalculated that together the three spent an average of five and a half minutes with each customer; when customers wanted furtherinformation, the employees referred them to the training videos. In contrast, they observed that the Costa Rican member, MariaEnriquez, spent about 15 minutes with each customer, often walking the customer through the videos over the phone. These longercalls were affecting the compensation of all members, and the Jamaicans were angry. At the most recent weekly team meeting, thetension had been palpable. The Jamaicans on the team understood Enriquez's point about the need for customer satisfaction, butthey believed that helping customers solve problems and referring them to the training video was good enough. The complaints inthe meeting went like this: Jill Henley: This goes beyond being annoyed about how much Maria talks, it now affects my pay-it'sbeing docked. When she does a call, it goes way past product information; she carries on about family, gets wrapped up in their problems, laughs and jokes-but the thing that really put me over the edge was when she told someone she'd put the kids who usedour equipment on her prayer list! Maria acts like a therapist instead of providing technical support. For the love of Pete, we sell medicalequipment! The less you talk, the more you listen, and the better you do your job. Jordan Burton: Maria talks so much that my mouthhurts-and I'm being penalized because of it. There is no off switch. She thinks her approach is a success. So, she builds relationshipswith her customers, but we're here to provide information. We have training videos for a reason-and she needs to refer customersto those videos, not watch the things with the caller while she's got them on the phone! Jeff Garvey: I find myself increasingly angryat Maria for prioritizing her need to talk over any work that needs to get done. She couldn't care less that our pay is being reducedbecause of her. She has it in her head that any conversation under 15 minutes is rude and to cut calls shorter is bad manners. Callersdon't need to feel special; they need information to solve their problem, and that takes five minutes tops for all the rest of us. We arehelping solve problems and providing good care too. Maria Enriquez: We don't do things that way in my country. You should havestudied my culture before you joined this team. This is serious business. The lives of many children depend upon our equipment, andtheir caregivers need to know our company cares about them. We have to build trust that we aren't going to sell them something andthen hit the road. No one else on this team takes the time to earn health care providers' respect. We need to make them feel confidentin their decision to buy our monitors and not someone else's. But don't take my word for it-have a look at the how customers haverated me: my satisfaction scores are exponentially higher than anyone else's on this team.2 Ames worried that both she and the teamwere at a breaking point.

In this scenario, Jennifer Ames, the senior director for global customer support at Gerber Goodstart…

The Caribbean Team “Vibes” or “Not”: Another Day in the Life of a Call Centre In a rare moment alone in her office, Jennifer Ames reflected on the past 10 years of her career at GerberGoodstart Corporation (GGC) She could easily chart her successes: She had taken on challenges and produced results where her colleagues had failed; she had increased the diversity of the work force in every unit she had led; she had successfully launched new products and developed several new markets. In fact, just a few months before, Ames had been part of a team that had led a highly successful launch of several GGC product lines into the Latin American market. That success and the ensuing demand for its products drove GGC to centralize customer support in a call center in Kingston, Jamaica—and to create Ames’s new position: senior director for global customer support. Ames had studied other call-center models and created a team of four as a prototype for customer support. She had a goal of scaling up as the business expanded. But as she sat in her office, looking at the latest financials and mentally reviewing the events of a disturbing meeting earlier that morning, she saw the failure of her prototype looming large. The call response times were on an upward trajectory that would quickly plunge her budget into the red if the trend continued. Even worse, only one short month into her new position, Ames was worried that her team was stonewalling her. She was deeply troubled by the interaction she had just observed: there was friction among her staff members that was dividing them along Jamaican-versus-non-Jamaican lines. The team consisted of three Jamaicans from the Kingston, Jamaica, headquarters and one Costa Rican from the Central American sales office. The three Jamaicans, already thinking about customer support, had spent the past few months working with product developers to create the web-based training videos that provided step-by-step product use information, as well as testing competitor products. The employee from Costa Rica had also spent time with the product development team and had been an outstanding sales representative. She had transferred from the Central American sales office to join the Kingston call center. The problem was that the Jamaicans were angry about the work habits of the Costa Rican member whose call times were longer than theirs, so they accused her of effectively lowering their pay. During that morning’s meeting, things had deteriorated into a verbal onslaught that culminated in one of the Jamaican members calling the Costa Rican member a “chatty Latina.” After that, the conflict got personal and highly emotional. Was this the “cultural iceberg” she’d heard so much about? And what exactly should she do to steer the team away from it?