Term Project Rubric

Term Project Rubric

Part II – Research Design

Introduction

Previous studies show that many of the customers are once or twice faced with the dilemma of waiting in line for a substantial amount of time to get a service or a product. With the idea that people are always in a rush due to family, work or other things, it is a critical issue when their routine is affected and caused to move in a slower pace than normal. Admittedly, this problem does not only affect the customers but poses a significant impact on the business as well. In most cases, businesses tend to lose customers, becomes less efficient and earns a bad reputation. The results of all these effects posed on businesses as a result of delayed services or wrong waiting time are the closure of the business.

Research Question

What can be done to improve the “wait time” at the point of customer contact (call center) in Bose Corporation without putting a major investment in expanding the call center and the number of staffs answering telephones?

Problem Statement

Response to calls within Bose Corporation seems to have a problem in the sense that the callers have to wait for a long time before their calls are answered something that has resulted in sales drop. This is because customers are opting to find services and products from elsewhere. Customers are complaining about this issue, and there is a need to come up with the remedy of this problem. However, the enterprise does not want to increase efficiency in responding to customer’s calls via increasing the staffs who will be answering calls or by expanding the call centers. The variable to be determined in this research is accountability of staffs, stewardship, the effectiveness of the contact system, courage, empowerment and the commitment of the workers at the contact center and motivation.

Research Hypotheses;

H1: The primary issue appears to be perceived wait time; how long people feel they have been on hold (in a queue), waiting for service. As customer satisfaction is essential to Bose Corporation, they are interested in improving it at this point of customer contact (the call center).

The Significance of the Study

The importance of this research is that it can manage to alter the future contact center in terms of faster response to the customers’ calls. Moreover, it can help Bose Corporation to adopt measures that will influence employees to be committed and engaged in organizational activities. Moreover, the findings of this research will remain helpful to entrepreneurs who will seek to improve their businesses in this line.

 

Research Plan: Research design

Nature of the information to be gathered

Nature of the information to be collected

During this study, the researcher will consider the nature of the information to be collected to come up with the appropriate methodology that fits this research. The data will be collected from any good speakers of the language being deployed in the study. This will mean that the participants will be able to communicate adequately and fluently with the researcher. Also, the participants who will participate through electronic media will be able to communicate via writings. English will be the preferred language to be used in this study. Materials will be gathered in such a way that places the specific language used in the study in a wider context. Even if materials are recorded from one language, information will be collected regarding neighboring languages. However, information provided by the respondents will remain confidential between the researcher and the participant. Also, the research will exercise high levels of confidentiality to the information and evidence provided by the employees to avoid tarnishing their name to their employer.

Population

The research will at first chose the best participants for the study. The research will ensure that it has selected the samples that are thought to be best qualified to provide the needed information to complete the research. In that regard, participants of this study will be drawn from about 100 royal customers and ten employees from the Bose Corporation. The first criteria to be deployed to determine the working sample would be grounded on; the staffs selected to participant in the study must have worked in this company for more than three years in a prominent position that involves direct interaction with the customers. For example, receptionists, customer care personnel and sale representatives. Another criterion will be that the loyal customer who will participate in the research must have a reputable shopping profile for at least one and half years and hold a customers’ loyalty card that has more than 1000 points.

Instruments

This research will use a survey designed to establish the customers and staffs’ perception toward their customer service especially on the telephone waiting time. Customer service will be determined within defined service response on the multifactor customer service questionnaire and featured as transformational, instructional or passive-avoidant. This forty-five item instrument will contain four questions added on it to permit the researcher to have a customer’s demographic information that may have affect perception of customer service personnel. Again, one open-ended question will be incorporated into the research to offer an opportunity for the participants to provide the necessary information that is not requested in the survey. Therefore, the instrument will contain approximately ten survey issues that will offer aggregate information regarding the customers’ calling waiting time.

Following the purpose of the research, the customer’s calling waiting time will be gotten from the call history from the calling system that was recorded after the client has called the Bose Corporation customer care. This system records the time the client waited before their calls were answered.

Design

This study will be exploratory, non-experimental and correctional. Also, the study will be classified as non-experimental due to the researcher being unable to control any aspect that may influence the participants and have the ability to introduce the relationship amongst the variables. The correction design will permit the researcher to investigate the connection between the variables of the research. Therefore, these design models will be utilized to provide an in-depth analysis. The design of this study will use a quantitative survey instrument that will make it possible to gather data from customers’ perception of the delayed response by the customer service personnel when they call for help. Note that the research will also deploy electronic survey due to its prompt responses, anonymity and easy data aggregation and analysis.

Limitations of the design used

It is anticipated that this research will encounter some shortcomings. First, since this research will involve some employees of the Bose Corporation, time will be insufficient to conduct the research. This is because most of these employees are at work and having time to answer the research question may be a challenge. Moreover, resources may be limited considering that this research is involving a vast range of population (customers) who are from different geographical areas. This research may fall short of different indicators of customer care employees’ performance which may not be centered in this paper due to time limitation and the fact that not all employees will be involved as respondents in this research.