By implementing cross training as well as ongoing customer service training, it would eliminate costly mistakes as well as cut down on the high turnover rate of customer service agents. It would eliminate new agents from feeling inadequate and help seasoned officers at implementing new services or products. Cross-trained employees are hardworking, capable individuals who are reasonably good at their jobs become outstanding leaders with unique strengths. Then you will produce specially trained employees who can do the work effectively as well as efficiently. By pooling different departments together,
you have the potential to negatively affect the impact of customer service as well as positively affect the impact of customer service. By changing the service strategy, a company can lower turnover rate and upgrade its service plan. At Apria healthcare they are slowly implementing the cross training, but need to increase ongoing customer service training.
“Organizational success is a never-ending challenge” (Manning & Curtis, 2012). By confronting the truth of failing sales and loss of business, Apria has shut down some locations and restructured many job titles and eliminated several key positions within the company. Management took a look at the top selling equipment for the business and removed products and goods that weren’t beneficial to the bottom line of the enterprise. With the changing Medicare system and the competitive bid contract market, it has become hard for the company to continue to provide supplies in remote areas, making it hard to justify running a truck to a location 150 miles to deliver a $75.00 walker. So management made the hard decision and decided not to pursue remote areas because it was not beneficial to company survival.
Dr. Gregg Steinburg spoke on how to transform a tragedy into transcendences (G. Steinberg, personal communication, March 4, 2017). Dr. Steinberg stated one of the stages of transcendence is the “wake up call.” Metaphorically Apria got a wake-up call when its consumers started dropping their services and switching providers. So they had to make structural changes in the way they conduct business. By implementing cross-training to speed up the process rate. And by reducing some of the areas, they service by outsourcing to smaller local companies.