Tiffany Franks

CVS OD Dilemma
GM591 Leadership & Organizational Behavior

Tiffany N. Franks 8/26/2012

Table of Contents

Overview Identify the Organization Aspect Technology Training Project Defining The Problem Analysis Causes Solution
References

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Overview

CVS Pharmacy is considered one of the top pharmacy nationwide chains in the country. There are more than 7,100 stores total, located in nearly every state. The stores retail medication, toiletries and sundry merchandise that is purchased by consumers such as snacks, beverages, skin care and personal care items, holiday merchandise and convenience goods. There is also an online site where products can be ordered and shipped directly to consumers. Some of the CVS pharmacies have medical services that operate out of the retail stores. Identify the Organization CVS recognizes the importance of establishing a culture that will have an effect on its people and their performance. The organizational development functional management at CVS realized that sharing a common vision would assist each individual in understanding what the company stands for, commit to the same vision, and then work toward supporting the mission each and every day. The vision at CVS is simple to strive to improve the quality of human life (CVScaremark.com, 2010). Taking a look at two of the organizations functional goals in the Technology and Human Resource business areas, it is easy to see how CVS is an industry leader. The organizational structure or team at CVS involved in working on this issue from the HR area includes the Senior Vice President of HR, Training Specialist, and local HR managers. From organizational operations there is a technology manager, and procurement managers. The role of the organizational development team is to identify areas where issues remain unresolved even though there have been some changes made to management or system

processes. The goals of the technology department are to remain at the forefront of the industry and continue to meet objectives set to improve operations quality with the organization. As HR manager and part of the Organizational Development team, Mr. Ted has recognized that the IT technical department is needed to assist in the problem task. In turn the technical department has brought in Aspect Technology to assist in analyzing the issues relating to customer complaints and the inefficiencies in the level of customer service from a systems standpoint. A report completed on the systems in place at CVS help in identifying the problem areas and providing insight into how to make changes to the system, applications and require HR support for training that can improve the situation. The report was conducted by Mr. Ted and is documented in CVS Pharmacy Aspect Technology Training Project. Aspect Technology Training Project Lastly Mr. Ted identified issues in the Human Resource department that contributed to the problems with customer service. The ability to train and staff knowledgeable employees needs to be addressed. This analysis reviews the issues and proposes a solution to getting well trained staff that remains with the company for the long term. It is proposed by Mr. Ted who worked with the Director of Government Services at CVS. The problem question is how to improve the level of customer service at CVS reducing complaints. The main goals of the leadership in the technology department were to retain the position of industry leader while continuing to improve operations with a higher standard or quality. This will mean addressing issues of slow response times and getting the HR and technical solutions that correct the problems with order processing.

Defining the problem There are issues related to timeliness in responding to customer prescription orders. There are also concerns that misinformation has resulted in customer dissatisfaction in getting updates as to the status of their orders. There are too many cases being reported where customers orders are misplaced or left unfulfilled. This too is an area that needs to be addressed. How can CVS OD team, specifically HR work to leverage technology in order to improve the organization by resolving issues of efficiency and responsiveness to customer service?

1. The nature of the problem is rooted in technological processes. 2. Related problems are the hiring process. As HR manager your role is to review the hiring process and become more proactive to aligning with customer service needs. In addition HR needs to communicate with the IT department to research how technology and training can improve the prescription order processing system. HR can address the problem of improving customer satisfaction with better trained workers to reduce the issues related to response times and error tracking using these systems. This will be effective in improving the OD goals of raising the level of efficiency while reducing customer service complaints to response and errors in processing orders. 5

Analysis CVS Technology The OD Team including Team leader the HR manager, Mr. Ted at CVS has attempted to improve customer service by working with the IT technical department to investigate implementing several technological solutions. Mr. Ted has also reviewed how the call center can update its resources through Voice Interaction Response to reduce customer complaints. Some of the features recently under consideration are a Voice interaction response system across all customer service platforms to accept incoming customer calls. Another resource may be a voice response system to dial out to customers informing them of the status of their pharmaceutical orders. In addition the team is looking into how to respond to online requests from customers. Under consideration are automated and interactive email auto-response handlers. Causes Each of these customer service response systems acts independently and often results in customer complaints of poor service with many customer needs left unmet and others being lost in the process. At CVS this was unacceptable and management was charged with devising an organized approach to meeting the needs of customers that presents a single solution to handle all aspects of customer service issues (Thies, 2010). The reporting generated by the different systems failed to give an accurate picture of the volume and type of service necessary to improve customer satisfaction. Because the systems were different they did not provide the data required to make informed decisions of how to improve matters. The number of customer service workers hired to service customers had high turnover due to the stress associated with meeting the customer needs. The combination of high turnover and poor systems has heightened the issues of errors and discrepancies of order tracking. Training was not provided 6

in a consistent manner to new and existing employees as there was no formal training available. Without proper training on the new systems tracking in operations, order processing was inefficient and resulted in many complaints in the customer service area. The hope is that by stabilizing the HR department with adequately trained technical and customer service staff, the level of operations efficiency will improve. This will ultimately positively affect the customer service. When we look at leadership and organization development, it was clear to leadership at CVS that the traditional organizational structure of multiple systems to meet individual managerial functionality was an inefficient and unsatisfactory manner to resolve the customer service issues. They decided to implement a single technological system to handle all customer service issues in an integrated delivery support system. Solution The solution was a vendor that has developed a single application with a unified approach to handle multiple customer service functions. The product has integrated the administrative, training, delivery, task flow and reporting functions. It also handles Internet, phones, email, and fax customer requests under one technological platform, Aspect. CVS is now able to consolidate customer service functions while providing an efficient service delivery application (Thies, 2010).

CVS Corporation is the number one convenience and pharmacy retailer in the country. They currently have more than 100,000 employees. In order to keep pace with a growing customer base and aggressively achieve corporate leadership goals and objectives a Government Hiree

Program was implemented at CVS. This Human Resource strategy allowed the company to meet objectives while supplying a high level of quality customer service. Alternative 1 Achieving Optimal Results - Technology The result of using Aspect has been faster email response times ranging from 2 days to less than an hour. The costs of rolling out a new system have been lowered by over 50 percent. A higher volume of calls can be handled in less time with minimal callbacks. Fewer calls are being dropped due to long wait times which have been reduced 25%.

The ability to improve the level of customer service in areas of wait times, responding accurately to customer concerns and lowering operating costs allowed CVS to maximize efficiency while remaining effective in meeting organizational goals. Alternative 2 HR at CVS The HR program called the WelfareWork program initiated in the late 1990s. There has been 21,000 hirees of former welfare recipients and as many as 12,500 have remained with the company and received promotions. Meaning the managers have trained these employees and supported the transition to a long term career path for over 60% of workers. Compare this to many retailers experience turnover rates of more than 150% annually. This rate is also higher than the entry level recruitment of CVS workers from sources outside of the program by around 30% (Wing, 2006). The difference according to Steve Wing, Director of HR Hiring Programs for CVS, is that these employees realize the importance of teamwork and maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction. In training keeping your position in the company depends on these 8

two objectives (Wing, 2006). These workers also recognize the importance of employment as they have experienced the alternatives. Once the workers realize this, they readily commit to the training and many find high levels of job satisfaction as well. Achieving Optimal Results - HR While the opportunity to launch a career through the Welfare to Hire Program at CVS has been instrumental in retaining employees. It is also a credit to the willingness of the CVS organization to recognize the functional significance of partnering with governmental agencies in meeting their business objectives. Although career paths get some of the credit for CVS inner-city success, the real secret of success is CVS emphasis on developing partnerships with agencies that supply workers and the top-down support of those partnerships. The OD Team has taken a cooperative approach to organizational management at CVS. This has allowed all the players to contribute to the analysis and resolution of the problem through a collaborative approach. Sharing resources, applications, and knowledge management to gather experience from the expertise of each business component (i.e. HR, IT, and OD leadership). By each expecting to partner with the other in finding a way to meet the organizational goal of streamlined processes, improved efficiency, and customer satisfaction. The results speak for themselves.

HR The CVS organization has found a way to maintain efficiency in the technological, hiring and recruitment process based on a combined OD team strategy that meets the needs of CVS business goals of order fulfillment, and customer satisfaction. In addition they have achieved

beyond those objectives to be effective in supporting jobs for working families in local communities. According to Teds, Senior Vice President of HR, V. Ferdinandi, through partnerships to recruit and retain better trained employees, these strategic partnerships have will help to alleviate current systems supporting human resources transactions (Emery, 2006). It is hoped that through integration with HR, Aspect Technology and IBM, CVS Pharmacy can combine the skills with the technology necessary to enhance HR capability. With a well trained staff and the order tracking and inventory systems to assist employees, it is expected that this capability and level of efficiency will continue to grow, he says (Emery, 2006). The need to re-evaluate systems and HR processes is not totally a result of the need to reduce costs but also to make the smart moves within the organizational structure and service delivery component that makes sense to achieve efficiencies for us, V. Ferdinandi added.

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References CVScaremark.com. (2010). CVS Caremark: Our vision, mission, and values. Retrieved July, 23, 2010 from http://info.cvscaremark.com/our-company/ourculture/vision-mission-values

Thies, G. (2006). CVS Pharmacy: Aspect Technology. Retrieved July 25, 2010 from http://www.aspect.com/casestudies/Aspect_CVS-Pharmacy_CS.pdf Wing, S. M. (2010). WinWin CVS Pharmacy Human Resources. Director of Government Hiring Programs, CVS Corporation. Retrieved July 23, 2010 from http://winwinpartner.com/Human%20Resources/ssCVSPharmacy.html

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