Volunteer Services

...

information requests, community service, and clients. This tool will allow me to measure trends in our current process throughout the week and will illustrate which type of interruption we are seeing with the highest frequencies. It will also allow us to formulate a plan that will slow, or even cease these disruptions immensely.

Telephone Interruptions

Reason

Day

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thurs

Fri

Sat

Total

Info Request

III

IIIII I

IIIII IIIII

I

IIIII IIIII IIII

IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII I

55

Location

I

II

IIIII IIIII IIIII III

IIIII III

29

Registering

IIIII IIII

IIIII II

IIIII IIIII III

IIIII IIIII

IIIII IIIII II

IIIII

56

Login

II

I

I

III

IIIII IIIII

17

Scheduling

IIIII IIIII IIIII IIII

IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII I

IIIII IIIII IIIII II

IIIII IIIII IIIII I

IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII IIIII III

IIIII IIIII IIIII III

123

Client

III

I

I

III

8

CS

IIIII III

III

II

IIIII III

IIIII IIIII II

33

Total

45

46

43

28

78

77

Improvement Ideas- Pareto chart

According to the Pareto Chart,

My first idea would be to improve Open Hand’s website. It currently lacks the adequate information detailing what we do as a non-profit, a question we receive frequently. It also fails to inform people of our different volunteer opportunities, how to register as a individual, family or business, and how to schedule a day to volunteer.

Our general information website and our website for registering and scheduling are on two different websites. This is problematic because volunteers do not realize this, and it is not mentioned on our main website, so they end up calling Volunteer Services. Those that are able to find the website for registering and scheduling find themselves discouraged because our process for that are more difficult than it has to be because of the poor quality of the website. Website costs and our need to spend money on our clients directly are to blame for that. So also propose to either combined both websites together or have a better qualified programmer assemble a new website altogether.

My second idea would be to add an Interactive Voice Response system for our phone lines. It is a technology that handles high call volumes by allowing a computer to interact with humans through the use of voice and DTMF tones input by keypad. This system will respond with prerecorded audio to direct users on how to proceed.

Selection of Improvement to Implement and Why

I choose to implement having Open Hand utilize the Interactive Voice Response System. I conducted a survey involving 100 volunteers. They responded whether or not they look on Open Hand’s website for answers to their question or they call Volunteer Services. 74% said they call first, the other 26% do their research first. Because of the results, I concluded that it would be futile and profitless for Open Hand to spend money on a new website if volunteers did not use it.

I also built Force Field Analysis for both the website idea and the Interactive Voice Response System. This time, my sample came from Volunteer Services and the heads of the departments for Open Hand. Unshockingly, Volunteer Services was for the Response System while the others were for the new website. I gather that since the heads of department do not experience the daily responsibilities of Volunteer Services, that they would promptly go for the idea that saves the most money. Volunteer Services, instead, choose an idea based on quality over cost.

Force Field Analysis

Volunteer Services believes that this plan will ease their roles, increase their efficiency, leave time to finish other jobs, and increase their output of resolving driver call inquiries.

The rest of the department believe that they would have to add/train people to their department to take the calls, cost too much, discourage callers from finishing their calls (nobody likes voice automated systems), and replace jobs elsewhere.

Maintenance-control chart

Challenges and how to Mitigate