Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Summary
Applebee's international is a large restaurant chain, with roughly 2,000 restaurants in the US and two
other countries. The business is growing over time opening 100 restaurants per year. for monitoring
purpose Applebee's staffs have to travel a lot. For that traveling purpose applbee's HR manager
introduced a system which was to control the travelling booking system. But the clash is, the employees
dont follow the company policy for booking and also not encouraged to use the system. For that reason
the travelling cost of Applebee's is increasing day by day. In this case it was to figure out how should
the HR manager Andrew Face, motivate the employees to use the booking system in the former way
maintaining all the policies of the company and minimize the cost.
Q#1: Consider the variable pay programs discussed in this case, of which type of programme is
Applebee's program an Example? Explain.
Ans: Variable pay is a team or group incentive plan that ties pay to some measure of the firms overall
profitability and profit sharing plan. It has some classes to pay the benefits. In this case Applbee's
example is an example of piecerate plans. According to the system of Face, he decided to give a pair of
domestic air ticket if an individual flys for 6 or more times. It is certain a picerate plan of profit
sharing, and the standard of cost minimization was established at
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Q#2: If you were asked to revise the applbee'sprogram to include more individualincentives, how
might you do that?
Ans: Employee motivation is a vital process to increase a company's profitability. To motivate
employees there is lot of ways . We can use financial or intrinstic rewards to motivate the employees. In
some extend financial rewards fall back, and intinstic rewards get the employees motivation. In this
case, motivating the employees to use a proper system and fly more than six times a year is a great deal
of management. For this purpose we have to develop a incentive system that will motivate the
employees individually to fly according to the system. For individual incentive, if an employee fly more
than five times a year they will get discount in their next flight tickets. And the discounted price will be
added in their salary. By this approach the employees will be motivated more to get the financial reward
and use the system voluntarily.
Q#3 How would you react to such a program? Explain your reactions.
Ans: The individual incentive system is mainly a financial reward. So ther can be a confusion regarding
such system. But if we communicate the programme in detail with the individuals at would be effective
beyond the concept. We would send mail to every single individual of the organization through the
intranet and the internet regarding the incentive payment system in detailso that they can get it at
anywhere in anytime. There would an opportunity to consult with their respective supervisors about the
system's conditions and benefits.
Q#4: Why do you think more companies do not use these sort of incentives?
Ans: Companies have different chain regarding their business strategy and decision making process
about their incentives. In this Case Applebee's is a international and a huge chain restaurant which has a
large number of branches. Though it is a food business so proper monitoring is mandatory. That is why
the travelling is so frequent as well as the cost is remarkable. So it is the nature of business that
indicates the monitoring purpose and the incentives paying system. Other companies might has
different business strategies, different business purpose. So most of the companies dont follow this type
incentive system for travelling to motivate the employees more
Case2: Abusive Customers Cause Emotions to Run High
Summary
Telephone Customer service representatives have a tough days with the automated telephone system
that create a labyrinth for the customer. It keeps the awaiting for a long peroid even though when it is
urgent. For this system customers become stressed out and fall into abusing the CSR( Customer Service
Representatives) in this higly psychologocal case we have seen how the agents become emotionally
regreted after being abused by the customers. Most of the customers attack these agent with slangs and
other abusing words, even though they try to apology or handle the situation cordially. Then its a huge
challenge to overcome the situations for the agent. In the whole case there are some examples of how
the employees get themselves emotional for the abusive matters. In some certain level these cases affect
the employees personal family life badly also. Employees go through some mental sickness and also
compel them to resing from the job. So it is a huge challenge for Customer service industry to handle
the abusive customer with a service mindset and with the proper dealings as they want.
Question1: From an emotional labor perspective, how does dealing with an abusive cusomer lead
to stress and burn out?
Answer: The customer service representative mainly deals with the customers through telephone.
While dealing with them, the employees have to face with many abusive customers as a result they
have to pass through lots of mental pressure and burn outs. This leads the employees to become
emotionally frustrated, this temparature raises and it raises their negative emotion. The employee then
starts to behave rudely at his or her home, they express their anger to some one else. Also this stress
causes them to take irrational decision. They remain absent more frequently and are more prone to
illness and ultimately they want to turnover from their job.
Question2:If you were a recruiter for a customer service call centre, what personality types
would you prefer to hire and why? In other words, what individual differences are likely to affect
whether an employee can handle customer abuse on a daytoday basis?
Answer: Customer service center's objective is to satisfy the customers. If I were a recruiter of such a
call centre then I will prefer a less tempered, mental stress capable, patient and high tollerence capable
employee. The employee should also have strong interpersonal skills, be more courteous and less
hostile. Since the employees have to handle the abusive customers as well as the other customer so they
must be calm and quiet in nature.
Question3: How might emotional intelligence play a role in responding to abusive customers?
What facets nof emotional intelligence might employees who are able to handle abusive customers
possess?
Answer: Emotionally intelligence is one's ability to find out and manage emotional cues and
information. If the customers are not happy and satisfied, then they behave abusively with the
employees. Therefore these abusive customer influences other customers with a bad impression about
the company. Emotional intelligence play a role in responding to abusive customers in a sense '' dont
take it personally. Whatever they get from customer is about company not about them. In this way the
employee can handle abusive customer easily.
Question4: What steps should companies take to ensure that their employees are not victims of
customer abuse? Should companies allow a certain degree of abusive if that abuse results in
satisfied customeres and perhaps greater profit? What are the ethical implications of this?
Answer: The company should take steps to ensure that their employees are not victims of customer
abuse. The implication will goes through controlling on waiting time, cca management capacity,
information system, effective training high employee motivation, team discussion about abusive call,
entertainment break during work time etc. Entertainment break means should provide them temporary
outlet where they can decrease their stress.
Case Study Report on Industrial Psychology