Running head: AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT

Assessment Scenario
AJ Caiola, Chad Cardin, Roosevelt Cooper, and Leann Weaver
CUR/528
November 3, 2015
Michael Burnett

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

Assessment Scenario
Team D has theorized that the McDonalds Corporation is suffering from poor customer
service in their restaurants in the United States. This poor customer service has adversely
affected McDonalds profits and market share in an increasingly competitive fast food industry.
In this paper, Team D investigates how to repair the customer service issues by using
results of a customer service assessment and what the results indicate about the level of customer
service training at McDonalds restaurants. Team D will outline resources that can be used to
develop a training plan to remedy the customer service issues as well as outlining the costs to
develop a training plan.
Action Plan
The action plan for this scenario and training session is relatively simple. It starts with an
initial assessment and then observation. The initial assessment is intended to determine what
level of knowledge the employee already possesses. These results are found in Appendix A.
Assessing the new employee in the learning environment helps the employer to
understand the mentality of the new employee and if they will be capable of providing great
customer service. The new employee must be kept involved and invested. Thus, simply showing
them a video is not going to attain a level that would be acceptable. The action plan must start at
the beginning level and be followed throughout the training process. Corrections and guidance
must be given at each step, allowing the new employee to gain more confidence before hitting
the floor for real. For the beginning level of watching videos, the employer needs to observe the
new employee. While they may not be able to stand over them the whole time, they must take the
opportunity to check in on the employee. If the employee is not paying attention or has no

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

interest in learning what the videos have to say, it may be necessary to remove the employee
from training and send them on their way.
Throughout the scenario training and field level training, which is the new employee on
the floor, they need to be partnered with a trainer. The trainer needs to observe the new
employees actions and correct problems as soon as they happen. Scenario based training needs to
include potential negative encounters with customers, giving the new employee the opportunity
to experience this behavior before experiencing it for real. At any point during the action plan if
the new employee cannot conform to the needs of the company, they can be released from
employment or returned to the previous level for remedial training.
Resources
The website offers many great resources for improving and building good Customer
Service Skills. Here are a few with details of what will be used in this training session. Then
included in the article are some activities or games that may be used to build some team support.
Survey Monkey offers some key information to improving customer service skills. Their
article, 6 Keys to Improving Your Teams Customer Service Skills includes ideas to work on
Empathy, patience, and consistency (Survey Monkey, 2015). We will use another idea from
Survey Monkey, which includes teaching basic and good Work Ethics.
The next website to offer us support with training to customer service is Fast Company.
In their article, 4 Practical Ways to Improve Your Customer Service Right Now they offer the
suggestion of offering choices, Empower Employees and Customers with Choices (Kelly,
2015). McDonalds offers lots of choices so offer these choices to employees and customers
alike. When management is dealing with employees, offer them a choice of how to correct the

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

situation and let them make the choice of how they want to fix the issue. In return, the employee
will then offer choices to the customer to fix a situation. May be as simple as, Im sorry; we
dont have that item available right now. We can offer you this item instead, or we can refund
your money, which would you like?
Maggie Hodges, with the National Federation of Independent Business, brings an
important training point, I think customer service often begins at the hiring level (Truesdell,
2013). If McDonalds wants to improve their customer service and their business, then they must
start with the individuals the hiring process.
The course would end with a team building exercise as a formative assessment to see
how well the individuals have taken in the information shared. These activities would include
team building and improving communication skills (Examiner, 2012).
Training Plan Budget
Training and training plans are budgeted in a wide variety of ways, so the degree of
estimating the costs will depend upon the organization. While there is a level of uncertainty it is
still important to develop a budget at an early stage. Studies have shown that many projects fail
when there is not adequate effort made to determine a budget (Gray & Larson, 2011).
In this case, our organization is McDonalds. The closer you are to your customers, the
less you have to estimate. For example, a small Training and Development department located
within a manufacturing facility might only have to justify its time and capital expenditures, while
a training vendor will probably have to give a full development estimate before a training
program is approved. So in our case since we are not looking at individual stores throughout, but

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

McDonalds and its entirety we must justify our training plan and its expenses beforehand to
justify our budget.
Listed below are various methods for estimating training costs, these are only estimated, as
they will vary with experience, type of training, skill level, etc. After implementing a few
training programs, we should adjust these estimates by taking into account our actual training
costs. Maintaining a well-organized audit trail is necessary for this. To assure that proper
budgeting and funding are applied to Training Plans and Programs:

Produce a professional video - $1,000 to $3,000 per-finished-minutes (PFM) depending

upon the concept, locations, talent, special effects, etc.

With today's small cameras and video recorders, videos can be produced at a much
cheaper cost. While they may not look as professional, they can often do a quite
satisfactory job.

Produce professional slides - $15 to $50 per slide.

Get photos from Stock.XCHNG (free), iStock, Flickr (click on the Creative Commonslicensed content button to search for free photos)

Produce professional audio tape - $25 to $150 per minute

Make your digital recording - Audacity (free), Wiretap (Mac), Total Recorder (PC).

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

Student Guide - four to eight hours development time to produce 1/2 to 2 pages
depending on technical specifications.

Instructional Designer - $28.00 hour (based on salary of $60,000 per year)

eLearning Designer - $37.00 hour (based on salary of $78,000 per year)

Organizational Specialist - $38.00 (based on salary of $80,000 per year)

Outside Consultant - $90.00 hour

These are just some of the costs that we may account for when creating our budget for the
training program.
Conclusion
Team D investigated the problem of poor customer service at the McDonalds
restaurants in the United States. The team analyzed the data from a customer service training
assessment and outlined a proposed training program to remedy the issue. As part of the
proposal, Team D included training resources that will be used to conduct the training program
and the associated costs of operating the training plan.

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

Appendix A
Initial Assessment
Section I - Skills Required - True or False - Circle the correct answer.
1. An employee must have basic knowledge of all equipment in any McDonald's location.
True or False
2. An employee must be friendly and always remember the customer comes first.
True or False
3. An employee must have a high school diploma or be over 18 years old.
True or False
4. An employee should have basic communication skills to be able to communicate with fellow
employees, upper management, and most importantly the customer, properly.
True or False
5. An employee working at McDonald's should always have on a hat.
True or False
Section II - Personality Basics - Multiple Choice - Circle the correct answer.
1. An employee of McDonald's should have which type of personality.
A. Depression
B. Whiney
C. Friendly

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

D. Selfish
2. An employee working on the front line should always
A. Be somewhat attentive to the counter.
B. Should smile at all customers.
C. Should not speak to the customer until you think they are ready to order.
D. Should finish your current job duty given before acknowledging any customer.
3. If a customer makes a special request an employee should
A. Tell the customer you will have to check on the request and see if you can do that.
B. Tell the customer McDonald's doesn't take special request and move on to the next customer.
C. Do everything you can to meet the customers request.
D. Tell the customer they will have to step to the side and see management.
Section III - Customer Service Answer each question with 1 to 2 complete sentences.
1. Should an employee always have a smile on their face when a customer walks up?
Yes or No and Explain why or why not.
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________
2. The most important role in customer service is and why
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

10

Results

Overall Correct Answers

90
80
70
60

60

50

50

40

50

37

Correct
I-1

I-2

I-3

I-4

I-5

II-1

II-2

II-3

III-1

III-2

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

11

Reference
Examiner.com. (2012). Five fabulous team building activities for your customer service staff.
Retrieved from website http://www.examiner.com/article/five-fabulous-teambuilding-activities-for-your-customer-service-staff
Gray, C. F., & Larson, E. W. (2011). Project management: The managerial process (5th ed.).
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kelly. T. (2015). Mansueto Ventures. Fast Company. 4 Practical Ways to Improve Your
Customer Service Right Now. Retrieved from website
http://www.fastcompany.com/3037201/hit-the-ground-running/4-practical-ways-toimprove-your-customer-service-right-now
Survey Monkey. (2015). 6 Keys to Improving Your Teams Customer Service Skills. Retrieved
From website https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/6-keys-improving-teamscustomer-service-skills/

Running head: ASSESSMENT SCENARIO

12

Truesdell. K. 2013. 5 Ways to Improve Your Customer Service. NFIB. Retrieved from website
http://www.nfib.com/article/5-ways-to-improve-your-customer-service-64366/