Chapter 4
Your Tur n
Job Analysis
131
The Customer-Service Agent
Read the accompanying article on a day in the work life of Bill Ryan. Then write a job description
for the job of customer-service agent. Use the exhibits in this chapter to guide you in deciding
what information in the story is relevant for job analysis.
1. Does the day diary include sufficient information?
2. Identify the specific information in the article that you found useful.
3. What additional information do you require? How would that information help you?
Pick a teammate (or the instructor will assign one) and exchange job descriptions with your
teammate.
1. How similar/different are the two descriptions? You and your teammate started with exactly
the same information. What might explain any differences?
2. What process would you go through to understand and minimize the differences?
3. What are some of the relational returns of the job?
Bill Ryan often deals with difficult people. It’s
what he gets paid for. He’s one of 30 customerservice agents at Half.com, an online marketplace owned by eBay Inc., the Internet auction
company. Like eBay, Half.com attempts to match
buyers and sellers in a vast flea market featuring
millions of products ranging from trading cards to
camcorders. But unlike eBay, there’s no bidding.
Half.com lists items only at fixed prices. If you see
something you like, pay the price and it’s yours.
The other big difference with eBay is that
for most of the products listed on Half.com,
there’s no way for buyers and sellers to interact directly. Usually there’s no need to. To
make a purchase, buyers use their credit cards
or checking accounts to pay Half.com, which
then automatically credits the amount to the
seller’s card or account—minus a transaction
fee. Once the payment is made, the seller ships
the product.
Despite a well-oiled system, however, questions arise. Things can go wrong. A purchased
item doesn’t arrive, or isn’t in the condition
the buyer expected. Or maybe an interesting
product is listed but its description isn’t clear.
mil32720_ch04_106-139.indd 131
And that’s where Mr. Ryan and his colleagues
come in, handling the buckets of e-mail and
intermittent phone calls from curious, addled,
and upset users. They pass information between
buyers and sellers, answer questions, and resolve the occasional dispute. Half.com says that
fewer than 1 percent of the site’s transactions
require customer service’s involvement. But with
more than 15 million items for sale—well, you
do the math.
In fact, the customer-service department
receives about 1,500 to 2,000 e-mails a day,
of which nearly a third are complaints about
transactions. The rest are mostly questions
about the goods and how the site works. Mr.
Ryan himself on a typical day fields between
60 and 100 e-mails and half a dozen phone
calls. The calls are the most stressful. “People
panic and they want answers,” Mr. Ryan says.
“If they are calling, they are not happy.”
For Half.com—as well as most other e-commerce companies—customer-service agents
like Mr. Ryan are the crucial link between the
faceless website and the consumer. And how
they deal with the public can make or break
02/12/15 12:15 pm
132 Part Two
Internal Alignment: Determining the Structure
a business. As Half.com’s vice president for
operations, says, “It costs too much to get a
new customer only to fumble the relationship away.” Half.com wouldn’t discuss salaries. But Mr. Ryan and his colleagues, who
are split into two shifts covering 8 a.m. to
midnight, seven days a week, say they’re satisfied with their wages, which include quarterly bonuses.
What he likes about the work, Mr. Ryan
says, is the kind of customer problem that
requires research and deep digging to find
the resolution. What he sometimes doesn’t
like about his work are the routine questions
that generate stock responses. Here’s a day in
Mr. Ryan’s work life:
THE ANSWER MAN
8 AM Mr. Ryan strolls into the Half.com office in
Plymouth Meeting, Pa., a short drive from his
home. The company’s single-story gray building is a former tire factory in this colonial-era
industrial town on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Mr. Ryan works in a low-slung, black cubicle toward the back of the office, his space
sparsely decorated.
The atmosphere at Half.com is decidedly
young and casual. Jeans are the uniform.
Mr. Ryan certainly fits in, though at 32 he’s a
few years older than most of his cubicle mates.
He started doing strictly customer service,
answering customer e-mails. Now he also does
what the company calls “trust and safety work”:
investigating fraud and looking for things on the
site that are “funky.” For instance, when Half.
com receives a complaint from a buyer about a
seller, it’s Mr. Ryan’s job to contact both parties
and make sure there is no fraud occurring.
This day, because the site has received a
high volume of e-mails, he’s on regular
customer-service duty. After checking the few
internal e-mail messages he receives each day,
he gets right to work. Mr. Ryan downloads
his first batch of 10 e-mails for the day. He
says it usually takes him about an hour to get
through 10 messages.
mil32720_ch04_106-139.indd 132
8:10 AM The first e-mail is from a woman
interested in buying an audio book on CD that
she saw listed on the site. She wants to know
whether the CD will work on her DVD player.
But since she doesn’t specify the exact listing,
Mr. Ryan is stuck. He can’t search for it among all
the listings or contact the seller. The best he can
do is suggest that she send him an item number
so he can contact the seller with her question.
8:15 AM The next e-mail comes from a user
who sold the Diana Krall CD “When I Look in
Your Eyes,” but lost the buyer’s shipping information. The seller is concerned that a delay in
her shipment will give the buyer reason to give
her a negative rating on the site. After each
purchase is made, the buyer gets a chance to
rate the seller’s performance on a scale from
1 to 5—“poor” to “excellent.” Every rating
sellers collect is displayed along with their user
name next to subsequent items they list. Just
one negative rating can ruin a seller’s reputation, depending on how many sales he or she
has made overall.
Mr. Ryan tracks down the details on this
particular transaction in the Half.com user database. He identifies the buyer and writes an
e-mail to explain that the seller lost the shipping
address and “wants to let you know they are
sorry for the inconvenience.” He then e-mails
the buyer’s shipping address to the seller.
Mr. Ryan says he doesn’t find the e-mails
tedious. “There is such a variety of topics to respond to,” he says. “I never get 50 of the same
questions in a row.” But, a few e-mails later,
he shrugs with disapproval. The user’s question
could easily have been answered by going to
the help section of the website: “Do I include
shipping in the sale price or is it added later?”
Says Mr. Ryan, “It’s a general question. I
like the detailed research questions.” Mr. Ryan
pastes in an answer from a database of stock
responses the customer-service team has put
together. He then tacks onto the end of the
e-mail a salutation that he draws from a list of
suggested message closers provided by Half.
02/12/15 12:15 pm
Chapter 4
com. The list, the company says, makes it easier for the agents to write so many e-mails.
For this message, Mr. Ryan chooses, “It was my
pleasure to assist you.”
GOT JUICE
9:30 AM After answering a few more messages,
it’s time for a coffee break. Mr. Ryan says he
drinks two cups of coffee a day, a habit he
picked up since starting at Half.com.
“A year ago I wouldn’t have touched the
stuff,” he says. He heads to the kitchen, which
is just down the hall from his desk. The well-lit
room is stocked with free cappuccino, juice, soda,
fruit, cereal, cookies, and other munchies. The
cafeteria also doubles as a lounge with a satellite
television playing ESPN, a Foosball table, and a
ping-pong table. This early in the morning, however, most people are interested in the coffee.
9:48 AM An e-mail arrives from a Half.com
collea gue in charge of the stock-answer database. He writes that a response Mr. Ryan
submitted on how users can sign up for direct
deposit—linking their Half.com transactions
with their checking accounts—would be included in the database. “There are so many
things we don’t have responses to,” Mr. Ryan
says. “It makes everyone’s life easier to have
the [database].”
9:50 AM The first 10 e-mails are done. Mr. Ryan
downloads 10 more. One is from a father who
several days earlier ordered the latest Sony
PlayStation for his son’s birthday and is concerned because it hasn’t arrived yet. Half.com’s
policy is that if a buyer hasn’t received an item
within 30 days of the purchase, he or she can
lodge an official complaint. The PlayStation
seller is thus a long way from the delivery deadline. Nevertheless, as a courtesy, Mr. Ryan sends
the seller an e-mail asking whether he can provide a shipping date and tracking number that
Mr. Ryan can pass on to the restless father.
Half.com believes that help like this—beyond
the requirements of its own rules—separates
mil32720_ch04_106-139.indd 133
Job Analysis
133
its customer-service approach from that of
other companies. When the company was
starting out, says Training Supervisor Ed
Miller, customer service tried to respond to
as many messages as it could, as fast as possible. What the company learned, however, is
that “customers don’t mind if you take a little
more time to answer their specific question.”
Instead of just firing off e-mails, Half.com
now sees it as important to personalize each
message. Even with the personalization, Half.
com says it responds to most messages within
24 hours.
Communications with customers have
a consistent and pleasant tone. E-mail messages should conform to the “grandmother
rule.” Each message should “make sense to my
grandmother.”
10:10 AM Bathroom break.
10:15 AM “All right,” Mr. Ryan says eagerly, returning to his desk. He cracks his knuckles and
starts typing.
A buyer who purchased a video game
two months ago but never received it writes
to thank Half.com for “hounding” the seller
to send him the item. But he wants a refund.
Mr. Ryan verifies the buyer’s version of events
in Half.com’s records, then refunds the buyer’s
money and charges the seller’s account for the
amount of the sale. Mr. Ryan sends e-mails
to both parties informing them of his action.
Half.com’s rules say that when an official complaint has been lodged the other party has
five days in which to respond. In this case, the
seller didn’t respond, so the buyer won the dispute by default.
10:25 AM Snack time. Mr. Ryan breaks into a
high-energy Balance bar—a little nourishment
to get him ready for what comes next.
WRECKING CREW
10:30 AM Time to knock down some walls. Lively
human-resources worker Alicia DiCiacco invites
02/12/15 12:15 pm
134 Part Two
Internal Alignment: Determining the Structure
Mr. Ryan and his colleagues to pick up sledgehammers and knock through a wall at the end
of the office. Half.com’s staff has doubled in the
past year, and the company is expanding into
adjacent space in the old tire factory. Everyone
in the office takes turns whacking at the wall.
Some of the younger males dish out screams
of “I’m not going to take it any more!” and
“Where’s the Pink Floyd?!”—a reference to the
1970s rock album “The Wall” by Pink Floyd.
Mr. Ryan eats up the office energy. “It’s exciting to work here,” he says. “We’re growing.
We had the second launch of the site. [Half.
com expanded its product line in April]. We’re
doing construction. It’s good to come to work
when the company is doing well.”
11:15 AM Finished with another batch of 10 emails, he downloads 10 more, including two
separate queries from customers who can’t
redeem special introductory coupons Half.com
offers to new users.
11:47 AM Mr. Ryan gets an e-mail from a seller
responding to a message from Half.com. A
potential buyer has asked Half.com whether
the seller’s 75-cent copy of Carolyn Davidson’s
Harlequin romance “The Midwife” is a paperback or hardcover. Half.com forwarded the question to the seller, who now is writing back to say
it’s a paperback.
Mr. Ryan sends two e-mails: one to the buyer,
answering his question, and one to the seller,
thanking him for the information.
12:10 PM Lunch. Mr. Ryan eats his turkey wrap
in the company cafeteria with some colleagues
and heads back to his desk by 1 p.m.
1:06 PM E-mail from a user who can’t find the
new Stephen King novel on Half.com. The site
is supposed to list all new books from major
publishers, even if no one is selling them. That
way, if a user is interested, he or she can put
it on a wish list and the site will automatically
e-mail him or her when a copy has been posted
for sale.
mil32720_ch04_106-139.indd 134
Mr. Ryan searches for the book meticulously, checking by title, author and publisher’s ISBN number. Once he’s sure the book isn’t
listed, he e-mails Matt Walsh, who is in charge
of fixing catalog errors. Mr. Ryan then e-mails
the user and instructs him to check back at the
site soon.
1:21 PM First phone call of the day. Because
Half.com prefers to conduct customer service
on e-mail, to keep its costs down, it doesn’t
display its phone number on its website. Still,
persistent users get the number through directory assistance or other sources.
This caller, an agitated buyer of the video
“Valley Girl,” a 1983 comedy starring Nicolas
Cage, says she received a damaged tape. She has
lodged an official complaint against the seller on
the website, but the seller hasn’t responded. Mr.
Ryan tells her that the five days the seller has to
respond aren’t up yet. He assures her that if the
seller doesn’t respond within the allotted time,
he will refund her money and charge the seller’s
account. Until then, there’s nothing Mr. Ryan can
do except comfort the caller with apologies and
explanations.
In the event that the seller disputes the
buyer’s claim about the tape, Half.com is still
likely to grant a refund, especially on such
an inexpensive item. Half.com makes it clear,
however, that its customer-service team keeps
a close watch on users’ complaints, looking
out for fraudulent refund requests. If Half.
com suspects foul play, it doesn’t grant refunds so easily.
2:02 PM A seller of the video “I Know What You
Did Last Summer” got the package returned,
marked address unknown. Mr. Ryan looks up
the buyer’s information in the user database
and e-mails him, asking for an updated address to forward to the seller. He then e-mails
the seller, telling him the address should be on
its way shortly.
2:21 PM He downloads 10 more e-mails.
02/12/15 12:15 pm
Chapter 4
HOME STRETCH
2:30 PM The day is starting to get long, at least
to an observer. But Mr. Ryan says sitting still
all day doesn’t cramp his style. “Sometimes it’s
tough to work at a desk, but it doesn’t really
bother me,” he says. “I work out after work,
and that really loosens things up.”
3 PM Bathroom break.
3:15 PM With the clock ticking toward quitting time, Mr. Ryan hunkers down to finish
his last batch of e-mails. It’s more of the
same: a user unsure how Half.com works;
a seller who wants to list a 1976 edition of
“The Grapes of Wrath” but can’t figure out
where to put it on the site; a buyer who
wants a book shipped second-day air, even
though the order was already placed.
3:30 PM A call from a buyer interrupts Mr. Ryan’s streak of dispensing e-mails. The buyer
felt the quality of a book she bought was not
up to snuff. The book, a $2 copy of Danielle
Steel’s “Secrets,” apparently had a torn cover.
The buyer is upset, but Mr. Ryan remains calm,
calling on skills he learned in a one-day seminar called “Dealing With Difficult People.” In
the class, which he took before coming to
Summary
mil32720_ch04_106-139.indd 135
Job Analysis
135
Half.com, he learned to paraphrase what the
customer is saying to make sure he understands the complaint. Mr. Ryan also takes care
to speak clearly with a strong sense of empathy. At one point he says, “I understand your
frustration.” When he explains that the buyer
will have to wait some time for a final resolution of the matter, he makes sure to preface it
with a heartfelt “I’m sorry to let you know . . .”
An observer listening to Mr. Ryan gets the
sense that he is not acting.
“If you don’t understand what they are
saying, then you have a problem,” he says.
Though he can’t satisfy this customer then
and there, he promises to talk to his supervisor and to call her back tomorrow with more
information.
4 PM The day is done. Mr. Ryan finishes his
last e-mail, closes up his desk and shoves on
home. A new shift of workers picks up where
Mr. Ryan left off, toiling from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m.
When they finish, the customer-service staff in
eBay’s facility in Salt Lake City will take over.
Tomorrow, Mr. Ryan will be back on duty at
8 a.m., downloading his first 10 e-mails.
Source: Alex Frangos, The Wall Street Journal, July 16,
2001.
Encouraging employee behaviors that help achieve an organization’s objectives and fostering a sense of fairness among employees are two hallmarks of a useful internal pay structure. One of the first strategic pay decisions is how much to align a pay structure internally
compared to aligning it to external market forces. Do not be misled. The issue is not achieving internal alignment versus alignment with external market forces. Rather, the strategic
decision focuses on sustaining the optimal balance of internally aligned and externally
responsive pay structures that helps the organization achieve its mission. Both are required.
This part of the book focuses on one of the first decisions managers face in designing pay
systems: how much to emphasize pay structures that are internally aligned with the work
performed, the organization’s structure, and its strategies. Whatever the choice, the decision
needs to support (and be supported by) the organization’s overall human resource strategy.
Next, managers must decide whether job and/or individual employee characteristics will be the basic unit of analysis supporting the pay structure. This is followed by
02/12/15 12:15 pm
108 Part Two
Internal Alignment: Determining the Structure
the process, called out in the left-hand side of the exhibit, remains the same for both
job- and person-based structures: (1) collect and summarize work content information
that identifies similarities and differences, (2) determine what to value, (3) assess the
relative value, and (4) translate the relative value into an internal structure. (The blank
areas in the person-based structure will be filled in when we get to Chapter 6.) This
chapter and the next focus on the job-based structure.1
Exhibit 4.2 is part of a job description for a registered nurse. The job summary section provides an overview of the job. The section on relationships to other
jobs demonstrates where the job fits in the organization structure: which jobs are
EXHIBIT 4.2 Contemporary Job Description for Registered Nurse
Job Title: Registered Nurse
Job Summary
Accountable for the complete spectrum of patient care from admission through transfer or discharge
through the nursing process of assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Each R.N. has
primary authority to fulfill responsibility of the nursing process on the assigned shift and for projecting
future needs of the patient/family. Directs and guides patient teaching and activities for ancillary
personnel while maintaining standard of professional nursing.
Relationships
Reports to: Head Nurse or Charge Nurse.
Supervises: Responsible for the care delivered by L.P.N.s, nursing assistants, and orderlies.
Works with: Ancillary Care Departments.
External relationships: Physicians, patients, patients’ families.
Qualifications
Education: Graduate of an accredited school of nursing.
Work experience: Critical care requires one year of recent medical/surgical experience (special care nursing
preferred), medical/surgical experience (new graduates may be considered for noncharge positions).
License or registration requirements: Current R.N. license or permit in the State of Minnesota.
Physical requirements: A. Ability to bend, reach, or assist to transfer up to 50 pounds.
B. Ability to stand and/or walk 80 percent of 8-hour shift.
C. Visual and hearing acuity to perform job-related functions.
Essential Responsibilities
1. Assess physical, emotional, and psychosocial dimensions of patients.
Standard: Provides a written assessment of patient within one hour of admission and at least once a shift.
Communicates this assessment to other patient care providers in accordance with hospital policies.
2. Formulates a written plan of care for patients from admission through discharge.
Standard: Develops short-and long-term goals within 24 hours of admission. Reviews and updates
care plans each shift based on ongoing assessment.
3. Implements plan of care.
Standard: Demonstrates skill in performing common nursing procedures in accordance with but not
limited to the established written R.N. skills inventory specific to assigned area.
Note: Additional responsibilities omitted from exhibit.
mil32720_ch04_106-139.indd 108
02/12/15 12:15 pm
Purchase answer to see full
attachment