MOUNTAIN WEST HEALTH INC.

Report Proposal: Mountain West Health Inc.

Yamen Makdad

Bellerby's College, London

Table of Contents

Introduction3

Importance of Customer Service Department3

Findings and Evaluation4

Recommendations6

Conclusion7

References8

Report Proposal: Mountain West Health Inc.

Introduction

West Health Plans, Inc. is a health insurance company, marked by its ability to deliver quality services to its customer, until there came a change in the management. Evelyn Gustafson, the director of customer services, retired last year. Martin Quinn, senior vice president for services and operations, considered it as an opportunity to bring the long awaited change in person at that level. Quinn wanted to increase the efficiency, while the former director, Evelyn, wanted to make sure that no customer is left with problem unsolved (Yukl, 1998).

Importance of Customer Service Department

The health insurance company is a service oriented firm. This industry is marked by the ability of the firm to deliver the best services to its customers in a unique way which can be copied by competitors. The only sustaining advantage a firm can obtain in today's situation is, the culture of an organization. Functional and technological benefits can be copied by the competitor with little efforts as compared to matching the culture within an organization.

The culture is itself a function of managements' leadership style and policies governing the norms of the organizations. In service oriented firms, the need of such customer services to effectively cater the need of customers is of immense importance.

Democratic leadership style is preferred in case of service oriented firm. Unless the managers are going to listen and understand the problems of their representatives, these representatives are not going to carry the same philosophy of listening down the line to customers (Leaderships styles, 2010). Since, it requires creative efforts with patience to listen and tailor the solution to each customer request. Every customer is unique in a sense. They cannot be treated like a product in the manufacturing line. Therefore, task oriented leadership style of leadership, which might be suitable in other setups, is not the best option to follow here.

Autocratic style involves little consideration in making joint decisions with the group or subordinates. In case of business focusing on services, employees treated with this type of leadership style, is going to hurt the performance (Hall & Jones, 2008).

Findings and Evaluation

Evelyn was clearly a people oriented leader. This is evident from the fact that she managed to keep the turnover rates low in the company as low as 10 percent while the average rate in industry was 25 to 40 percent. How she managed to do that, is reflected in her way of leading and handling subordinates. First of all, she came from bottom to up. She knew what it takes to perform at that level, what it feels to be there and what are the factors that employees on those seats value most. Even though, the company was paying the customer services representative lower salaries as compared to what they could earn elsewhere, she managed to overcome it by understanding their needs. The women's need of ...