Team Conflict: The 'Chatty' Accusation at the Customer Support Call Center

Abstract

This case is used in Darden's core Leading Organizations course and is appropriate for MBA, Executive MBA, GEMBA, and executive education programs. The manager of a baby product company's global customer support center observes friction among her staff about the only non-American on the team, whom the others accuse of increasing their call response rate time—thus effectively lowering their pay. When conflict arises on a multicultural team, to what extent can it be attributed to cultural differences and when should a manager become involved? Excerpt UVA-OB-1046 Rev. Jun. 30, 2014 TEAM CONFLICT: THE “CHATTY” ACCUSATION AT THE CUSTOMER SUPPORT CALL CENTER In a rare moment alone in her office, Jennifer Ames reflected on the past 10 years of her career at BabyProduct Corporation (BPC). She could easily chart her successes: She had taken on challenges and produced results where her colleagues had failed; she had increased the diversity of the work force in every unit she had led; she had successfully launched new products and developed several new markets. In fact, just a few months before, Ames had been part of a team that had led a highly successful launch of several BPC product lines into the Latin American market. That success and the ensuing demand for its products drove BPC to centralize customer support in a call center in Austin, Texas—and to create Ames's new position: senior director for global customer support. Ames had studied other call-center models and created a team of four as a prototype for customer support. She had a goal of scaling up as the business expanded. But as she sat in her office, looking at the latest financials and mentally reviewing the events of a disturbing meeting earlier that morning, she saw the failure of her prototype looming large. The call response times were on an upward trajectory that would quickly plunge her budget into the red if the trend continued. Even worse, only one short month into her new position, Ames was worried that her team was stonewalling her. She was deeply troubled by the interaction she had just observed: there was friction among her staff members that was dividing them along American-versus-non-American lines. . . .