Summative Assessment: Individual Essay Assignment Sample

Introduction

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Customer Service Representatives are known to be the face of an organization. Therefore, working as a Customer Service Representative in the Banking sector comes up with different kinds of experiences throughout the journey of an employee. While working as a customer service representative, I have to perform different tasks that include answering the queries of the customer about the different kinds of services that are offered to the customers by the organization. This also includes aiding customers to find the exact resolution along with the required information for their queries. These queries of the customers were mainly related to the account balances, rates of interest the different kinds of fees, and many more. Moreover, my responsibilities also include helping the customers to protect their accounts by reviewing suspicious activities, reversing the transactions along reissuing the compromised debit as well as credit cards. 

Throughout this essay, the skills, knowledge along with different kinds of abilities that are required for performance as a customer service representative have been described. Apart from that, the illustrations of the difficulties along with the challenges that are being faced while working as a customer service representative are also provided in this essay. The causes of these difficulties that take place while working in the organization are also highlighted in this essay. Moreover, an overview of the changes that are required in the inner environment in order to maintain a positive work culture in the banking organization is also provided in this essay. 

Task, Skills, and Knowledge Required

Customer Service Representatives can often expect to work for either the call centre or the local branch of a bank. The working environment can be considered to be well maintained through the facilities team of the organization along with the climate control technologies to provide a comfortable environment for the employees (Rahi et al. 2020). While providing face-to-face service to the customers in the local branch you have to work in the daytime however while working in the call centers might tend to work in different shifts that can include night shifts as well. This might often lead to weekend shifts along with late-night or overnight work as well. 

Being a customer service representative it is essential to have the ability to interact with the customers along with quick problem-solving skills. While providing customer service the customer service agents need to have adequate knowledge about the products and the services that the organization is offering to its customers. Moreover, this is also essential for providing efficient resolution to the customers without making them wait for a longer period (Al-Abdullat and Dababneh 2018). Besides that, there might be some instances where the issue of the customer surpasses the authority of the customer service representative, therefore it is also essential for the customer service representative to understand or have proper knowledge about the escalation matrices of the organization for escalating these kinds of issues to the senior level of employees. Following up and keeping a note of the progress of these problems also come under the responsibilities of the customer service representative.

Customer service representatives need to have adequate knowledge about the latest technologies along with the latest software that is implemented for providing a more efficient kind of service to the customers. This helps the customer service representatives to solve complex kinds of problems in some instances along with supporting the other team members in adapting to the working environment of the organization.

The ability to multitask is considered to be another important feature that is required by a customer service representative to provide efficient service to customers. The customer service department is considered to be one of the most chaotic departments within an organization (JAIN et al. 2018). Therefore a customer service representative needs to multitask seamlessly between other tasks like handling the tickets that are under high priority along with documentation of the solution articles and also preparing the notes for the events and meetings in a way so that the time and energy is divided optimally.

Paying attention to the details of the customers along with the verification of the details of the problems or the queries that the customer has come up with is considered to be one of the essential responsibilities of a customer service representative. Before providing a resolution to the customers the customer service representative needs to verify the solutions personally and then convey the same to the customers without making any kind of lapses in communication

Difficulties in Performing the Task

A few of the major challenges faced by human resource management are as follows:

• Recruitment process: human resource management has the responsibility of providing a well-knowledge employee to the industry which results in the proper outcome for the company. It has to choose only a few candidates from a large number of candidates who applied for the job. It makes suitable changes in the recruitment process so that it can see the candidate's performance in every situation (Mala, 2020). Failing to meet the needs of the recruitment process will result in candidates' rejection. This maintains the decorum of the company because it follows the same process of recruitment. The appearing candidates will be prepared for the same pattern of questions and the selection will be tougher for them. To get quality results if required it provides training to the candidates. 
• Maintain a balance between management and the employees: the wage strategy provided by the company does not satisfy the requirements of the employees. Nowadays it is becoming harder to survive in such a poor wage structure so human resource development develops an emotional balance with the employees ( Tiwari, et al. 2019). They try to understand the problems of the employees and motivate them to work dedicatedly. The motivation helps them work regularly for the organization and this leads to good productivity in specific industries.
• Maintain a stable balance in the Emotional and physical attitudes of employees: It balances the interest of both the employee as well as the management. A few of the things that should be taken care of by the organizations are they must provide better salaries or wages, providing the best security service, and look for the proper safety of every employee. They have to look after their health problems and provide a proper leave period so that they get ample time to recover themselves to provide a better service to the company. Employees have a b belief that the company has good growth and they will have good career development. The management has a proper emotional attachment with the employees so that they participate in every problem of the employees.
  On the other hand, the organization also has a few requirements from the employees that it expects loyalty from the employees. The main requirement of the organization is that employees must generate a good profit. It also expects that the employees have to follow the commitment that they give at the time of joining. Employees must cooperate with the company regarding their rules and regulations and also respect their rescheduling management. The employee's motive for working in a company is that they try to work sincerely in the company which is the most important part of the development of the company.
• Performance appraisal: this is the process that is kept as a routine in the management where the human resource management has set it as a regular process every year. This has a huge impact on the employees. It is checked regularly and this shows a good relationship between the employees and the organization. This appraisal targets the work performance of every employee.
• Training, compensation, and development: these are the few requirements of the company that give special attention to the employees regarding their growth (Poorani, and Thiyagarajan, 2018). This process provides special skill development to the employees as well as proper knowledge development which makes them sharp. Compensation in terms of salary, incentives, and bonus allowance has to be given for the good performance of any employee. The word appraisal must be used for the employee who has done his job beyond their limit for motivation.
• Dealing with the trade union: union leaders are handled properly as they are the only person who has problems regarding the rules of the companies (Dello Russo. et al. 2020) They oppose the rules of the company so human resource development has to meet the needs of the company as well as the union leaders. Meeting the needs is not enough; the company's rules should not be broken.

Theories and Concepts: Cause of Difficulties

• Management changes: this is the problem caused by small companies or newly made organizations. To achieve proper development and have a good output for the organization, the management tries different rules (Mar?, et al. 2019). But these rules harass the employees and few won't be able to cope with the rules which results in resignation. This damages the productivity of the industry and the failure of the management as well as the human resource development.
• Compliance with rules and laws: This problem is created by the organization itself whether it generally occurs in a small company. The company has a view that it does not have to maintain the laws of employment, thinking that it is a small company (Epstein et al. 2021). This problem also is faced by human resource development which leads to a bad image of the company.
• Workforce and training development: The main cause for sending the employees into the training process is they are not proficient in their jobs. This problem occurs in the back-end employees because they can't cope with the company's demand regarding their service. Finding these employees is also a difficult task as they stay away from HR only the front-end employees are in the eyes of HR. 
• Adapting innovation: Innovation is one of the basic concepts followed by every industry. While innovating the main problem occurs with the employees and as human resource development is a link between management and the employees they also have to face it. The backlog of weak employees who can't follow the speed of innovation leads to the failure of HR as well as the organization.
• Compensation: Many organizations are struggling with the compensation structure and human resource development is a good participant of compensation. Some of the things are to be maintained such as the greater size payroll budget, training, taxes, cost of benefits, and other expenses. This is because small companies compete with the market as well as large companies in a similar field.
• Recruitment of talented employees: There is a full load in human resource development regarding the recruitment of the companies such as dealing with trade unions and meeting the needs of companies and employees. It has to manage all the needs of the companies as well as the employees with this responsibility it has to recruit the best intelligent employees. After recruiting an intelligent employee it is not sure that the employee is good at their job in the upcoming sessions. The problem is with the employees but it targets human resource development.
• Workplace diversity: It has to be maintained by the employees themselves as they must maintain peace and respect. Though there are lots of age gaps between the employees they have to follow the rules and maintain the decorum of the company. To maintain the decorum, human resources development should assign training programs and some extracurricular activities.

Theories and Concepts: Recommendations For Change

• Manage business strategies along with internal and external factors: human resource management has to align these two factors in such a way that they run in a well-maintained way. Internal factors include the training expenses that are paid. During this training period, the organization has zero output and paying without any output the company is at a loss. So these are the processes to be looked after that satisfy both parts of the organization that is the management and the employees. It should also dissolve the problem faced by a big payroll budget and have a proper balance in the other expenses. 
• Talent strategies and alignment of talent strategy along with the organizational plan: human resource management has to manage a provocative workforce with an organizational plan. The proper management of this part will lead to peaceful progress (Zhao et al. 2018). Many times news arises that there's a strike in the organization. This is the result of the improper balance between the management and the employees. This is the problem of human resource management. It has the responsibility to meet the needs of the management and the employees.
• Share of responsibility: this part of the recommendation will lead to the fast development of the organization. Human resource management has to assign some responsibility to the managers that is they should keep motivating the employees so that they perform better regularly. Human resource management should harness the talent of the employees so that they get moral support and give an extraordinary result that results in the rapid growth of the organization. With the regular following of certain recommendations all the employees will lie on the same page this will motivate each employee to work together and grow together. This will not lead to discrimination among the employees.
• Focus on human resource development: HR has to spend a lot of time developing the HR management it needs to focus on a few things such as 

i) Developing a competitive compensation that encourages the employees to perform better.

ii) Few programs that reward the top performer and retain the low performer.

iii) Best able to measure the performance 

iv) Prepare a succession plan for the future

v) Maintain employee administration so employees maintain the decorum of the organization without any failure.

vi) Self-service of employees and managers regarding their function 

vii) Tax compilation has to be taken care of because any negligence regarding taxation leads to sudden failure of the reputation of the organization. These taxes are important because these are government-related parts that will damage the time as well as the money.

Conclusion

Human resource management plays a major role in an organization's growth as well as the failure of the organization. Starting from the recruitment of the employee to the retirement of the employee the companies need good support from the human resource management. It looks after every problem of the employees and the management of the organization is small it will compete with the market and try to cope with a similar big organization. Human resource management has to look after the problems faced by every employee because as the organization changes a few rules many employees won't cope with the changed rules. Human resource management has to deal with trade unions. That is the most embarrassing part because it means dealing with people who don't have any idea about working in an organization. The next moment the trade union gives such a proposal that does not relate to the organization's rules. After hearing the proposals of the organization and the trade union HR has to make a decision that must meet the needs of the organization and the trade union. A few things that are to be looked after is that HR has to motivate the employees in every aspect by giving them every possible facility they need. The top performer has to give special attention so their morale is always high.

Referencing

Al-Abdullat, B.M. and Dababneh, A., 2018. The mediating effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between organizational culture and knowledge management in the Jordanian banking sector. Benchmarking: An International Journal.

Dello Russo, S., Parry, E., Bosak, J., Andresen, M., Apospori, E., Bagdadli, S., Chudzikowski, K., Dickmann, M., Ferencikova, S., Gianecchini, M. and Hall, D.T., 2020. Still feeling employable with growing age? Exploring the moderating effects of developmental HR practices and country-level unemployment rates in the age–age-employability relationship. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 31(9), pp.1180-1206.

Epstein, D., Korytny, A., Isenberg, Y., Marcusohn, E., Zukermann, R., Bishop, B., Minha, S.A., Raz, A. and Miller, A., 2021. Return to training in the COVID?19 era: the physiological effects of face masks during exercise. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & science in Sports, 31(1), pp.70-75.

JAIN, S., JAIN, V. and DAS, S., 2018. Relationship analysis between emotional intelligence and service quality with special evidence from the Indian banking sector. Revista ESPACIOS, 39(33).

Mala, W.A., 2020. How COVID-19 Changes the HRM Practices (Adapting One HR Strategy May Not Fit to All). Available at SSRN 3736719.

Mar?, M., Bartosiewicz, A., Burzy?ska, J., Chmiel, Z. and Januszewicz, P., 2019. A nursing shortage–a prospect of global and local policies. International nursing review, 66(1), pp.9-16.

Poorani, T. and Thiyagarajan, S., 2018. Assessing value creation of HR consultants on e-consulting implementation. Technology in Society, 55, pp.160-165.

Rahi, S., Ghani, M.A. and Ngah, A.H., 2020. Factors propelling the adoption of Internet banking: the role of e-customer service, website design, brand image and customer satisfaction. International Journal of Business Information Systems, 33(4), pp.549-569.

Tiwari, V., Srivastava, S. and Kumar, D., 2019. Adoption of HRM practices: A practical model-case study of a hotel. IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM), 21(4), pp.59-63.

Zhao, W.X., Zhou, N., Sun, A., Wen, J.R., Han, J. and Chang, E.Y., 2018. A time-aware trajectory embedding model for a next-location recommendation. Knowledge and Information Systems, 56(3), pp.559-579.