“How May I Help You?” Improving Telephone Customer Service in a Medical Clinic Setting

The current study was carried out per management request to improve the overall quality of telephone customer service among appointment coordinators in a medical clinic. Exceptional telephone customer service included (a) using a standard greeting, (b) speaking in the appropriate tone of voice throughout the call, and (c) answering every call received by the unit. A preintervention analysis suggested that performance deficiencies resulted from weak antecedents, poor knowledge and skills, and weak performance contingencies. Task clarification, goal setting, feedback, and performance-contingent consequences were combined to improve these customer service behaviors for 20 full-time appointment coordinators at the clinic. The study used an ABÁ reversal design with weekly maintenance and 5-month follow-up observations. Introduction of the multicomponent intervention produced visible improvements in greeting (38% increase) and friendly voice tone (22% increase) behaviors; performance was maintained above baseline levels at 5 months postmaintenance. Abandon rates (the percentage of calls not answered by a live voice) remained fairly stable, on average. Findings support the use of a multicomponent intervention to increase telephone customer service behavior in medical clinic settings.     

流程、合规与操作风险管理

商业银行风险管理研究中“违规活动—操作风险—信用风险”风险链条尚未得到足够重视． 巴塞尔委员会全面风险管理框架下的众多风险是分层次的,最底层是合规与操作风险,合规与操作风险做到位能极大降低其他风险发生的概率． 以往由于缺少数据支撑,信用风险的合规与操作风险动因无法建立,本文基于“流程—节点—风险点—控制措施—违规事件”关联模型,建立了合规与操作风险的动因库和损失数据库,并在理论上对风险链条上的风险传递关系进行初步探索． 首先基于流程对合规与操作风险动因进行解析,寻找深层次的人员违规和操作风险动因; 其次,探讨了金融机构如何通过业务流程再造改善合规与操作风险管理; 最后是基于流程的操作风险量化建模． 基于实践,总结提炼了“三位一体”的金融机构合规与操作风险管理模式,包含理论基础、信息系统和保障机制,该模式在诸多金融机构中得到运用,并取得显著成效．     

Impact of customer loyalty and service operations on customer behaviour and firm performance: empirical evidence from UK retail sector

Abstract

Retail networks are striving to achieve competitive advantage by increasing value through loyalty and efficiency with a focus on service operations. As sales promotions have become an integral part of the retail supply chain planning, customer behavioural aspects based on loyalty and service operations have been challenged greatly. Subsequently, management capabilities, such as planning and timely replenishment, have become complicated tasks for many retail store managers. This study develops a model integrating retail network value and efficiencies with customer behaviour and performance. We validate the model using survey data from prominent U.K. retail store customers. Our data analysis shows that both loyalty and service operation attributes have positive significant impact on customer behaviour, while the service operation mediates the relationship between loyalty and customer behaviour. This result gives a new outlook to build managerial capability based on customer loyalty and service operations. Our results specifically show that the service operation attributes will indirectly influence the customers’ buying behaviour even in the presence of loyalty attribute such as promotion schemes. This result sends a strong signal to retail supply chain managers to offer customised promotions considering local community rather than having uniform sales promotion nationwide.     

Shared service center research: A review of the past,present, and future

More than 75% of Fortune 500 companies have established models of shared services with the aim of gaining superior performance by cost savings and service enhancements. Despite scholars' complaints about scant shared service center (SSC) research, this study shows that the actual shortcoming in this stream concerns a high fragmentation of the academic literature (e.g., we found 137 works in the initial search and 83 works in a refined screen). In this first comprehensive literature review, we synthesize peer-reviewed articles and classify them into 4 perspectives according to their research questions (i.e., determinant, process, control, and outcome). We identify 17 major research areas across these perspectives. Additionally, we provide information on methodologies and theories. On the basis of the literature synthesis, we discuss opportunities and gaps and propose an agenda for future research. Specifically, we suggest 3 potential research directions (i.e., direct relationships, mediating, and outcome effects) regarding SSCs during their operational maturity phase.     

连续生产模式下的不常用备件联合采购优化分析

针对连续性生产企业不常用备件管理缺货费用难以确定的实际情况,讨论了服务水平约束的基于随机连续盘点策略的联合补充(s,C,S)随机库存问题,经与单独补充策略相比,发现其经济效益明显。同时对影响备件联合采购费用节约的因素进行敏感性分析,指出了进行此类备件库存优化的方向。     

Dynamic Assignment of Flexible Service Resources

Resource flexibility is an important tool for firms to better match capacity with demand so as to increase revenues and improve service levels. However, in service contexts that require dynamically deciding whether to accept incoming jobs and what resource to assign to each accepted job, harnessing the benefits of flexibility requires using effective methods for making these operational decisions. Motivated by the resource deployment decisions facing a professional service firm in the workplace training industry, we address the dynamic job acceptance and resource assignment problem for systems with general resource flexibility structure, i.e., with multiple resource types that can each perform different overlapping subsets of job types. We first show that, for systems containing specialized resources for individual job types and a versatile resource type that can perform all job types, the exact policy uses a threshold rule. With more general flexibility structures, since the associated stochastic dynamic program is intractable, we develop and test three optimization‐based approximate policies. Our extensive computational tests show that one of the methods, which we call the Bottleneck Capacity Reservation policy, is remarkably effective in generating near‐optimal solutions over a wide range of problem scenarios. We also consider a model variant that requires dynamic job acceptance decisions but permits deferring resource assignment decisions until the end of the horizon. For this model, we discuss an adaptation of our approximate policy, establish the effectiveness of this policy, and assess the value of postponing assignment decisions.     

带工期指派的产品服务系统订单随机调度问题研究

针对由一个制造工厂和多个区域服务中心组成的服务型制造企业,研究了考虑生产时间和服务时间均具有随机性且工期可指派的产品服务系统（PSS）订单调度问题。首先以最小化订单提前、误工和工期指派费用的期望总额为目标构建问题的优化模型,然后分析目标函数近似值的最优性条件,据此提出加权最短平均生产时间排序规则,并结合该规则与插入邻域局部搜索设计了启发式算法对问题进行求解,最后通过数值仿真验证算法的可行性和有效性。研究表明,提前费用偏差对PSS订单调度与工期指派决策的影响很小,因此企业管理者无需准确估计库存费用也能制定出比较有效的PSS订单调度策略;而工期指派费用偏差对决策结果的影响非常大,因此企业管理者在决策时必须谨慎估计该项费用。     

基于多目标加权灰靶决策模型的节能服务公司选择研究

用能方对节能服务公司（Energy Service Company,ESCO）的选择关系到合同能源管理（Energy Performance Contracting,EPC）能否顺利实施。从用能方的角度,采用灰色系统理论中的多目标加权灰靶决策模型,对存在多决策目标的ESCO选择问题进行研究。通过层次分析法确定ESCO的11个决策目标的决策权数,根据综合效果测度值的比较,最终实现最优对策的选择。本文为用能方的ESCO选择问题提供了一种新的思路。     

数据驱动下收货方质量偏好与电商配送服务质量优化

针对"互联网+大数据"优化电商配送服务质量问题,明确不同收货方的质量需求稳定性,引导电商根据收货方不同质量敏感性提供相对精准服务,提升配送服务质量。模拟投票结果的形成过程聚类得到收货方对服务质量偏好的记忆性特征：（1）"无记忆"型收货方;（2）"记忆"型收货方;（3）"不确定"型收货方;（4）收货方总体。进一步推导不同规划类型求解空间,设计得到"无记忆"型收货方动态规划精确求解方法,及其他三种类型近似求解粒子群算法。研究过程中,配送资源质量感知度被嵌入到模型约束;"无记忆"型收货方的质量需求规划问题转化为零库存策略最优解问题,进而证明存在精确解;"记忆"型收货方呈现出对质量感知的累积;"不确定"型收货方模型通过赋值即可得总体收货方表达式。结果表明：数据驱动研究框架借助大数据资源,使得电商更易通过收货方的质量偏好设计更加匹配的配送方案;不确定服务需求得到有效满足,投入成本的利用率更高;通过特征分类的方式,尽可能地抽取能够精确最优化的部分,缩小NP范围,提高整体求解的精确度。