games such as chicken at work

http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2007/10/16/game-theory-tuesdays-do-not-hate-people-change-the-game/

In this article, it discusses how the game of chicken which we discussed in class can be applied to different situations such as the work place. For example, it introduces a scenario where an office is so busy that incoming calls cannot all be taken. Thus, the office puts 4 additional people in charge of taking calls. However, the additional people all will think: "there are 3 other people that will take the call, so why should I?" Therefore a game of chicken arises because each person will refuse to answer the call and dare the others to pick up first or swerve out of the way like in chicken. Those that never pick up calls but their colleagues do benefit the most because they did not have to do any additional work for a good reputation.

The conclusion of this article is that managers should not yell at their employees in an attempt to get them to pick up the phone. The employees are simply playing to their best strategy and if the company wants to see results, they should change the game.

Cool post. Bosses could change the game by offering incentives to their operators for each phone call they answer. This could result in a dominant strategy equilibrium of operators answering the calls. Hopefully this wouldn't compromise quality of service since operators might care more about answering more calls to accumulate more incentives.

I feel like the same thing happens when working in groups at school as well. Sometimes I’ll bite my tongue for a while waiting for somebody else to volunteer first instead of offering to do the task myself. For the most part, all of the other teammates are playing their strategies and are doing the same thing. One difference I’ve realized between my high school and Northwestern, however, is that students tend to cave much earlier here, valuing their potential grade over their idleness.

Another way of altering the call-taking game would be to monitor how much time each operator spends idle while there is a call waiting. This provides operators with an incentive to answer calls (to minimize the time they waste) without encouraging them to rush through calls to increase their call count.

Another way is the way some big companies handle it: recording phone calls for the quality of service. I know when I call big companies like HP or AT&T they tell you while you are on hold that your call may be monitored. I'm sure the employees are told this as well, so it is in their best interest to treat you kindly and effectively. As far as being inspired to answer the phone in the first place, a system of incentives would work in this situation...because answering will have benefits. A loss of quality service again, will probably not happen since the employee knows he/she is being monitored/recorded randomly.

I would argue that yelling at the junior employees for not picking up the phone is actually quite effective. Given the example in this article, if I were one of the two employees who got yelled at I would make sure not to miss the next phone call. I'd bet most of you would do the same. I might not like the person who yelled at me and it might even make me think less of them , but it would make me pick up the phone. If I were the boss of these two employees and didn't give a **** about what they thought about me, reprimanding them would be the perfect solution. There is already enough incentive to perform well for promotions, salary considerations and even job retention.

However, I would agree that there are other good ways to create incentives to improve overall customer service quality. From personal experience, there is a huge difference between customer service at Dell Home and Dell Small Business. When you call Dell Home, you will almost certainly be routed to a foreign call center and someone who is only responsible for that one call you make. So if they tell you they can't help you, you are out of luck and need to try calling the same number and see if someone else can help. Or if you want to talk to the same representative at a later date for the same problem, you can't nor will they let you and that person is now off the hook from helping you. When you call Dell Small Business, you will actually have a personal customer service representative help you from the beginning to the end of your case. They will even give you their full name and direct line should you need to contact them. Occasionally, their managers will even contact you to see if everything went smoothly and ask you to fill out a survey for that particular customer service representative. Now, not all companies and even all parts of a company (like Dell in this case) will have the resources to do all of that, which is why I think a solid reprimand/good yelling will suffice at times.

I think the important part here is the number of people playing the game. The more people there are, I feel like the more people play differently. Our games in class about game theory, we think of it as between two people, however, a lot of games are played with large number of people. When we play with more people, the payoff matrix might not change, though the way we play might.

Take picking up the phone in a company. If you pick up the phone, you are mildly unhappy because you have to deal with that person and their problem. If someone else pick up the phone, you are happy because you don't have to do it and it helps your company. If no one picks up the phone, you are very unhappy because it is bad for the company and your boss screams at you. The more people playing the game/the more people that are suppose to pick up the phone, the less likely each person is to do picking up the phone. The game itself is the same, however the option people pick is different.

The reason behind it is called Bystander Effect or Diffusion of Responsibility. The more people there are, the more likely they think someone will deal with the problem and thus are more likely not to do anything. Also the more people there are, the less each individual person is responsible and thus feel less likely that they need to do something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

The diffusion of responsible could be seen the game we played in class last Friday with the choice of hoping everyone goes for 4 or being safe and going for 1. We knew our names would remain anonymous so if we picked 1 when everyone else picked 4, we would not be held responsible. If we played the game differently and anyone who picked a low number would be brought in front of the class so everyone could see who it was, then I bet a lot more people would pick 4 (because we knew we would be responsible).