Reference no: EM133450620

Question: Terry Smith managed the small group of employees in the Customer Service department at a growing business. Lately, the number of calls had increased, her staff was under tremendous pressure, and there were many complaints regarding the response time to calls. Terry was told that if her department's performance does not improve, the company might just outsource the function all together. She was given a very short time to turn things around; two or three months at best. She thought that streamlining the customer service process could improve the department's workflow and resolve issues with the customers as well as the employees.

Terry decided to construct a project plan for the streamlining project. She began with identifying all the steps she needed to take. To improve the process, she first needed to understand the current process. She began by (A) reviewing the current service level (including knowing the volume of calls, the length of time until the call ticket was assigned to a customer service representative, and the time it took to close the ticket). She thought that she could accomplish all of this in five days. While she was working on measuring the current service level, Terry thought that she could also (B) talk to all company managers to see what improvements in customer service they would like to see as well as (C) send a survey to the department's employees and get some input from then about what was not working for them. She figured she would need two days to make all the phone calls to company managers to get input. As for the survey, she would give her employees 5 days to complete the survey. After her review of the current service level was complete, with help from a colleague in the Operations department with six-sigma training, she would (D) document the current process workflow which probably will take four days to complete. Then, she and the colleague from Operations department will take the documented current process workflow, along with information gathered through talking to the managers and survey results from the employees and start to (E) design a new workflow and she gave herself six days to complete the task. Once a new process was designed, she would arrange for a meeting with some of the key employees in her department to (F) review the new process and get their input and make a revised workflow. She gave herself 15 days for this, as it might require many iterations. After the revised workflow is completed, then (G) the new workflow would be communicated to all the employees, along with any required training, which should take about five days. It is important to let the new process run for a while before deciding if it is working or not. It was decided that they will allow the new process to be used for 30 days, during these 30 days (H) employees would keep track of data related to the service level. At the end of the 30 days, Terry would (I) analyze the data collected- the analysis of data would take 5 days. She was hoping for a 25% reduction in waiting time. If that goal was not achieved, then she would have to think of something else or face having the function completely outsourced. But first, she needed to ask for time to implement the streamlining.

How many days will be needed to complete the project ?