Katetutor

The key challenges in the above mentioned situation are that:

1) the communication was weak

2) distrust was among the team members

3) the team was not united and started blaming each other

4) no leader was involved

The main issue which led to the other challenges was that the communication between the sales person and the service person was very weak. Also, the sales person never communicated with the customer for a follow up which resulted into misunderstanding, assumptions and expectations between the sales person and the customer also. The sales person who was responsible for everything was never informed of the customer's problem un till the situation became very complicated for the service person and frustrated for the customer. Strong communication is very important in the business world. The companies need to have a strong communication with each and every department and also with the customer. Even a minor communication glitch can result into the strain productivity of the organization (Writing, 2014) which was evident in this case.

The second challenge is that the team was not united and there was distrust among the team members which shows that although they were all working for the same company but they were not united. They were not trusting each other. If at first step the service person had called the sales person and informed him of the customer's issue, the sales person could have jumped in and at least tried to satisfy the customer by justifying the problem. That would have saved the customer some time and money and he would not have been so much frustrated. Only when the customer realized that the things were not working out for him then he decided to call the sales person with whom he started his business first, and threaten him of not paying and not doing any future's business. Then the service person was forced to inform the sales person of the situation. Until that time, the service person was not willing to trust the sales person and since the situation was concealed from the sales person, now he was too unwilling to put his trust in the service person. I think it was the company's responsibility to fully teach their workers how to work like a team and trust each other in every situation whether difficult or easy. Trust between the team members is difficult to achieve but it is very important for the team success (Bodwell, 2002). This team had lack of trust which resulted in creating a difficult situation for all the parties involved and which also became a reason for the other key challenges.

The third challenge which was actually an outcome of the distrust among the team member was that the team members did not show their unity and started blaming each other for all the problems. The sales person started blaming the service person for mishandling the situation and the service person started blaming the sales person for other reasons. This thing shows that the team was not trained to stay united in the difficult situations nor were they properly aware of taking care of the problems. They were supposed to show their responsibility and instead of blaming the other person involved, each member was supposed to be more responsible and do some part in solving the problem. In a team the most important thing is the member's sense of being responsible and ethical. If every member starts thinking that the work done or not done right was not my fault then the team cannot work effectively. The team members need to be more courteous, professional and respectful towards each other along with being courteous to the customer. This situation was an example of an uncourteous, unprofessional and disrespectful team members. The courtesy and professional work environment is usually noticed by the customer. They notice how the employee are courteous and responsive to each other in regard to the customers issues (World- Class Courtesy, n.d, sec 1.1). Unfortunately in this case, instead of taking a quick action and showing personnel interest in solving the customer's problem nicely and professionally, the sales person as well as the service person started unprofessional argument. They were both putting blame at each other. None of them was found willing to take a step forward and think what they should do next to satisfy the customer and to avoid facing any such situation again.

The last but a very important key challenge was that no leader was involved or informed of the situation. It is interesting that in their own blaming, both the members involved forgot about getting the help of the team leader. There might be two reasons for that, either the team members did not want the leader to know about the situation or they did not feel the leader important enough to know everything which happened under the roof of the workplace. Both the assumptions are absolutely wrong. The team leader always have the importance and should always be informed about the difficult or unusual cases. The main job of team leader is to get the job done with the help of all the resources available (Using Teamwork, 2004, p. 2). The same thing should be considered for a difficult situation like this. The members should have involved the team leader. S/he might be able to handle the case differently, advice something better using the resources available or at least satisfy the customer better.

References:

Bodwell, D. J. (2002). Trust, respect and support. High Performance Teams. Retrieved from http://www.highperformanceteams.org/hpt_trst.htm

Writing, A. (2014). The effect of poor communication in business. Hearst Newspaper. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/effects-poor-communication-business-345.html

World Class Courtesy (n.d). A Best Practices Report. Retrieved from http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/papers/benchmrk/courtesy/chapter1.html

Using teamwork to build a better workplace. (2004). Business Case Studies. Retrieved from http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/cmi/using-teamwork-to-build-a-better-workplace/the-role-of-a-team-leader.html#axzz3FeyVuQKn