Tiffany Franks

CVS OD Dilemma

GM591 Leadership & Organizational Behavior

Tiffany N. Franks8/26/2012

Table of Contents

Overview 3

Identify the Organization 3

Aspect Technology Training Project 4

Defining The Problem 5

Analysis 6

Causes 6

Solution 7

References 11

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Overview

CVS Pharmacy is considered one of the top pharmacy nationwide chains in the country. There are more

than 7,100 stores total, located in nearly every state. The stores retail medication, toiletries and sundry

merchandise that is purchased by consumers such as snacks, beverages, skin care and personal care items,

holiday merchandise and convenience goods. There is also an online site where products can be ordered

and shipped directly to consumers. Some of the CVS pharmacies have medical services that operate out

of the retail stores.

Identify the Organization

CVS recognizes the importance of establishing a culture that will have an effect on its people

and their performance. The organizational development functional management at CVS realized

that sharing a common vision would assist each individual in understanding what the company

stands for, commit to the same vision, and then work toward supporting the mission each and

every day.

The vision at CVS is simple “to strive to improve the quality of human life” (CVScaremark.com,

2010). Taking a look at two of the organization’s functional goals in the Technology and Human

Resource business areas, it is easy to see how CVS is an industry leader.

The organizational structure or team at CVS involved in working on this issue from the HR area

includes the Senior Vice President of HR, Training Specialist, and local HR managers. From

organizational operations there is a technology manager, and procurement managers.

The role of the organizational development team is to identify areas where issues remain

unresolved even though there have been some changes made to management or system

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processes. The goals of the technology department are to remain at the forefront of the industry

and continue to meet objectives set to improve operations quality with the organization.

As HR manager and part of the Organizational Development team, Mr. Ted has recognized that

the IT technical department is needed to assist in the problem task. In turn the technical

department has brought in Aspect Technology to assist in analyzing the issues relating to

customer complaints and the inefficiencies in the level of customer service from a systems

standpoint. A report completed on the systems in place at CVS help in identifying the problem

areas and providing insight into how to make changes to the system, applications and require

HR support for training that can improve the situation. The report was conducted by Mr. Ted and

is documented in CVS Pharmacy Aspect Technology Training Project.

Aspect Technology Training Project

Lastly Mr. Ted identified issues in the Human Resource department that contributed to the

problems with customer service. The ability to train and staff knowledgeable employees needs

to be addressed. This analysis reviews the issues and proposes a solution to getting well

trained staff that remains with the company for the long term. It is proposed by Mr. Ted who

worked with the Director of Government Services at CVS.

The problem question is how to improve the level of customer service at CVS reducing

complaints. The main goals of the leadership in the technology department were to retain the

position of industry leader while continuing to improve operations with a higher standard or

quality. This will mean addressing issues of slow response times and getting the HR and

technical solutions that correct the problems with order processing.

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Defining the problem

There are issues related to timeliness in responding to customer prescription orders. There are

also concerns that misinformation has resulted in customer dissatisfaction in getting updates as

to the status of their orders. There are too many cases being reported where customer’s orders

are misplaced or left unfulfilled. This too is an area that needs to be addressed.

How can CVS OD team, specifically HR work to leverage technology in order to improve

the organization by resolving issues of efficiency and responsiveness to customer

service?

1. The nature of the problem is rooted in technological processes.

2. Related problems are the hiring process.

As HR manager your role is to review the hiring process and become more proactive to aligning

with customer service needs. In addition HR needs to communicate with the IT department to

research how technology and training can improve the prescription order processing system.

HR can address the problem of improving customer satisfaction with better trained workers to

reduce the issues related to response times and error tracking using these systems. This will be

effective in improving the OD goals of raising the level of efficiency while reducing customer

service complaints to response and errors in processing orders.

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Analysis

CVS Technology

The OD Team including Team leader the HR manager, Mr. Ted at CVS has attempted to

improve customer service by working with the IT technical department to investigate

implementing several technological solutions. Mr. Ted has also reviewed how the call center

can update its resources through Voice Interaction Response to reduce customer complaints.

Some of the features recently under consideration are a Voice interaction response system

across all customer service platforms to accept incoming customer calls. Another resource may

be a voice response system to dial out to customers informing them of the status of their

pharmaceutical orders. In addition the team is looking into how to respond to online requests

from customers. Under consideration are automated and interactive email auto-response

handlers.

Causes

Each of these customer service response systems acts independently and often results in

customer complaints of poor service with many customer needs left unmet and others being lost

in the process. At CVS this was unacceptable and management was charged with devising an

organized approach to meeting the needs of customers that presents a single solution to handle

all aspects of customer service issues (Thies, 2010). The reporting generated by the different

systems failed to give an accurate picture of the volume and type of service necessary to

improve customer satisfaction. Because the systems were different they did not provide the data

required to make informed decisions of how to improve matters. The number of customer

service workers hired to service customers had high turnover due to the stress associated with

meeting the customer needs. The combination of high turnover and poor systems has

heightened the issues of errors and discrepancies of order tracking. Training was not provided

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in a consistent manner to new and existing employees as there was no formal training available.

Without proper training on the new systems tracking in operations, order processing was

inefficient and resulted in many complaints in the customer service area. The hope is that by

stabilizing the HR department with adequately trained technical and customer service staff, the

level of operations efficiency will improve. This will ultimately positively affect the customer

service. When we look at leadership and organization development, it was clear to leadership at

CVS that the traditional organizational structure of multiple systems to meet individual

managerial functionality was an inefficient and unsatisfactory manner to resolve the customer

service issues. They decided to implement a single technological system to handle all customer

service issues in an integrated delivery support system.

Solution

The solution was a vendor that has developed a single application with a unified approach to

handle multiple customer service functions. The product has integrated the administrative,

training, delivery, task flow and reporting functions. It also handles Internet, phones, email, and

fax customer requests under one technological platform, Aspect. CVS is now able to

consolidate customer service functions while providing an efficient service delivery application

(Thies, 2010).

CVS Corporation is the number one convenience and pharmacy retailer in the country. They

currently have more than 100,000 employees. In order to keep pace with a growing customer

base and aggressively achieve corporate leadership goals and objectives a Government Hiree

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Program was implemented at CVS. This Human Resource strategy allowed the company to

meet objectives while supplying a high level of quality customer service.

Alternative 1

Achieving Optimal Results - Technology

The result of using Aspect has been faster email response times ranging from 2 days to less

than an hour.

The costs of rolling out a new system have been lowered by over 50 percent.

A higher volume of calls can be handled in less time with minimal callbacks.

Fewer calls are being dropped due to long wait times which have been reduced 25%.

The ability to improve the level of customer service in areas of wait times, responding accurately

to customer concerns and lowering operating costs allowed CVS to maximize efficiency while

remaining effective in meeting organizational goals.

Alternative 2 HR at CVS

The HR program called the WelfareWork program initiated in the late 1990s.

There has been 21,000 hirees of former welfare recipients and as many as 12,500 have

remained with the company and received promotions.

Meaning the managers have trained these employees and supported the transition to a long

term career path for over 60% of workers. Compare this to many retailers experience

turnover rates of more than 150% annually. This rate is also higher than the entry level

recruitment of CVS workers from sources outside of the program by around 30% (Wing,

2006).

The difference according to Steve Wing, Director of HR Hiring Programs for CVS, is that

these employees realize the importance of teamwork and maintaining a high level of

customer satisfaction. In training keeping your position in the company depends on these

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two objectives (Wing, 2006). These workers also recognize the importance of employment

as they have experienced the alternatives. Once the workers realize this, they readily

commit to the training and many find high levels of job satisfaction as well.

Achieving Optimal Results - HR

While the opportunity to launch a career through the Welfare to Hire Program at CVS has been

instrumental in retaining employees. It is also a credit to the willingness of the CVS organization

to recognize the functional significance of partnering with governmental agencies in meeting

their business objectives. Although career paths get some of the credit for CVS’ inner-city

success, the real secret of success is CVS’ emphasis on developing partnerships with agencies

that supply workers and the top-down support of those partnerships.

The OD Team has taken a cooperative approach to organizational management at CVS. This

has allowed all the players to contribute to the analysis and resolution of the problem through a

collaborative approach. Sharing resources, applications, and knowledge management to gather

experience from the expertise of each business component (i.e. HR, IT, and OD leadership). By

each expecting to partner with the other in finding a way to meet the organizational goal of

streamlined processes, improved efficiency, and customer satisfaction. The results speak for

themselves.

HR

The CVS organization has found a way to maintain efficiency in the technological, hiring and

recruitment process based on a combined OD team strategy that meets the needs of CVS

business goals of order fulfillment, and customer satisfaction. In addition they have achieved

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beyond those objectives to be effective in supporting jobs for working families in local

communities.

According to Ted’s, Senior Vice President of HR, V. Ferdinandi, through partnerships to recruit

and retain better trained employees, these strategic partnerships have will help to alleviate

“current systems supporting human resources transactions (Emery, 2006). It is hoped that

through integration with HR, Aspect Technology and IBM, CVS Pharmacy can combine the

skills with the technology necessary to enhance HR capability. With a “well trained staff and the

order tracking and inventory systems” to assist employees, it is expected that this capability and

“level of efficiency will continue to grow“, he says (Emery, 2006). The need to re-evaluate

systems and HR processes is not totally a result of the need to reduce costs but also to make

the smart moves within the organizational structure and service delivery component that makes

sense to “achieve efficiencies for us”, V. Ferdinandi added.

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References

CVScaremark.com. (2010). CVS Caremark: Our vision, mission, and values. Retrieved July, 23,

2010 from http://info.cvscaremark.com/our-company/our- culture/vision-mission-values

Thies, G. (2006). CVS Pharmacy: Aspect Technology. Retrieved July 25, 2010 from

http://www.aspect.com/casestudies/Aspect_CVS-Pharmacy_CS.pdf

Wing, S. M. (2010). WinWin CVS Pharmacy Human Resources. Director of Government Hiring

Programs, CVS Corporation. Retrieved July 23, 2010 from http://winwinpartner.com/Human

%20Resources/ssCVSPharmacy.html

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