Rogers Cable Case

Executive Summary- After an intensive investigation in the repeat service calls at Rogers Cable it has been observed that the number of repeat service calls toll have gone up to a mammoth 55,000 annually which is incurring a high cost of $50 per service to fix the issue if not resolved by the Technical Service Representative(TSR). Out of every 100 customers 20 had to call again for repeat work installation and service activities .Within a short span of thirty days there are around 16 percent repeat or rework .

The whole service for installation has problems with its approach to customers which has become a serious cause of concern as loyal customers may switch to other service providers if this continues for further time. The major issues include lack of accountability of technicians, shortage of inventory and not enough tools. Customer dissatisfaction has also been noted through various feedbacks putting the company's good reputation at stake.

The company is experiencing an increased level of competitions from its rivals after the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) decided to open the markets and deregulated specific areas of industry.

So far the company's main focus has been on revenue growth rather than cost reduction but now customers have more options than ever before. Feedback and Scorecards, Identification of the technician and Inventory Management System are certain solution options those are proposed by Piderit and Barbour, director of process engineering at Rogers Cable.

As I analyze the situation and problem, I have recommendation for Rogers Cables to have Monthly Scorecard for feedback, Identification of technician, Inventory Management System and Training followed by specific protocol.

Current Situation- The current situation of the Rogers Cable is that the company is suffering from the loss of cost of re-visits and reworks on the work that is not properly done at the time of installations and dissatisfied customers who potentially can switch to its competitors. Rogers Cable is the leader in Canada's cable television market, with over 2.3 million cable television subscribers and 500,000 internet subscribers. In 1993 the Canadian government relaxed the norms of telecommunications industry followed by an application in 1999, allowing local carriers to change the content of the information passing through their networks which has now allowed other competitors to acquire customer database of Rogers to which it was enjoying earlier relatively as a monopolist. The major concern at this point is Rogers can potentially lose its customers with its dissatisfied customer service. The customers are now having more options to opt to get better services and to avoid erred connections and lose in business.

Considering the seasonal demand, Rogers Cable has outsourced the field service technician jobs to vendors or so called "Business Partners" in Rogers. The company outsources most of its field service technicians to 36 business partners, thus having 700-800 contractors nationwide, of which only 18% were Rogers Cable employees. Rogers Cable had no central system in place to know which technician had visited a customer, so the technicians didn't know the exact history of a certain problem or the fact that it might have been reported earlier, ending in visits of different technicians to the same customer. Along with this, the lack of feedback system kept them uninformed about the status of the problem they had tried to resolve. In addition to the field service technicians, Rogers' automated directory is not very accurate in streamlining its customers to the correct support area. If the problem were to reoccur, the customer must make another call to a Roger's TSR and begin the process again. Much of its service relies on technology without much communication between the customer and a Rogers Cable employee before the dispatch of a technician.

In 2002 , through customer feedbacks and polls, it was known that customer satisfaction was poor. Further probing of the situation led to the fact that 16% of all installations required servicing within 30 days and the same was for repeat service activities, leading to an enormous financial loss to the company (Exhibit 1). Along with this there is a significant loss of time and resources, both financial and otherwise, in attending those redundant calls.

The existing inventory management system could not identify, among the boxes in the field, which cable box was in which truck. Even though proper inventory levels were maintained, technicians resorted to hoarding which led to delays and shortages.

The average monthly revenue from a cable customer is $38.09, so his decision to shift to a competitor will cause hefty financial loss to the company. Under the "First Time Right" initiative to resolve the repeat and re-work problems, need to come up with a financially viable solution to retain customers and to see would the repeat service issue have existed if all technicians were Rogers employees.

Organization Capabilities required- Rogers Cable should make strategic clarity to its technicians and need to make them accountable and efficient for their work to avoid this problem. The root causes affecting to Rogers Cable are Accountability and Strategic Clarity. The field technicians lack accountability and strategic clarity will not be able to do their job as well as they will not be responsible for their previous work. Among these technicians 82% (given) were outsourced. The company adopted strategy of First Time Right Program, which was not very clear to these technicians. There was not proper procedure to make these technicians accountable for the work they had done in the past. The lack of evaluation process of their work led to make them not accountable which in turn leads towards the service problem. The whole service for installations has problems with its approach towards customers.

Strategic issues- The company is losing its reputation in the market among customers thus could result heavy shifting of loyal customers to competitors. The first challenge that Rogers Cable needs to tackle is to hold the field technicians accountable and to create some motivation so their work quality would not create bad customer service. Seeing as Rogers prides itself as customer oriented, the company needs to tackle the main issue with the technicians. This issue is a major concern compared to growth because without exceptional service, the whole company would gain a bad reputation for horrible customer service and lose customers to their competitors.

Source of returns- The major source of return for applying solutions to all these problems was retaining the existing