ID Insights

Scenario Background

I started my Verizon Wireless career taking a position that was designed to be the store’s product expert. Titled Experience Specialist, the primary focus in the job description is to be the main resource for store-level learning and development. After my onboarding training, I quickly noticed the duties outlined in my job description were not close to what I was doing. The position was new, and most members of management did not know how to utilize a non-sales, non-commissionable position to its advantage or how to monitor performance without being on a sales report. My primary duties were door greeting, queue management, and tech support. I was given very little time individually with the sales staff to make any instructional content impactful. After reaching out to other stores in the district, I found this was a common theme: experience specialist job duties varied because of management requests, as there was no standardized approach to the expected job duties and responsibilities. 

The Plan to Standardize

examples of these duties are

• managing the store CRM software
• Working outbound sales leads
• Tracking online learning completion
• weekly face-to-face micro-learning
• Weekly customer-facing device training

Once the role had specific measurable duties, the challenge was communicating and training other experienced specialists across a geographical distance with no funding and limited time and resources. Initially, weekly conference calls were held with all the experienced specialists in the district to share successes and challenges that arose since the last call. The calls were successful in fostering collaboration on what is working in the role and what is not working; however, the calls still had very little impact on what store managers made the role in their location. 

The next approach created a hierarchical structure with senior experience specialists, who traveled to other locations in the district for a swap day. Senior experience specialists were provided an observation form for the store managers to review strengths and weaknesses for employee development. 

Lack of Project Management

The project was ultimately unsuccessful due to the lack of project management. The Project Manager develops the project plan and plan with the team and manages the team’s performance of project-related tasks (University of Massachusetts Boston, n.d.). Another important aspect of a project manager is communication with stakeholders. Inefficient communication often leads to a lack of awareness of all responsible stakeholders. In turn, this will lead to a lack of understanding, capability, resources, and timely, cohesive, desired outcomes, resulting in project failure (Goudard, 2022). Two examples of ineffective communication during the project were between higher-level leadership and store-level management.

Stakeholders were not providing information on how the role would change in the distant future. If the information on the new duties and expectations or generic information had been provided, it could have better aligned the in-person training with more up-to-date information or set the stage for an easier transition later.

The project manager also did not involve store management in the development, nor did it address any knowledge gaps managers may have. This would allow store managers to have a universal understanding of standardized expectations and bridge the gap between what is expected and what is being practiced. With a universal understanding of the expectations, store managers would have observable behaviors, work produced, and the overall impact on store sales performance. 

References

Goudard, Y. (2022, March 7). Project communication: Risks and mitigation. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/project-communication-risks-mitigation-yvan-c-

University of Massachusetts Boston. (n.d.). Project Roles & Responsibilities. https://www.umb.edu/it/about/project-management-office/methodology/project-roles-responsibilities/