Agero, formerly known as Cross Country, is in the call center operations industry for years. The company's primary clientele are independent towing companies. The company renders roadside assistance services to qualified motorists. This case study analysis describes the growth of Cross Country over the years and looks into its future growth strategy.
Robert L. Simons and Natalie Kindred
Harvard Business Review (113001-PDF-ENG)
February 21, 2013
Case questions answered:
- Why was Agero (Cross Country) successful in the roadside assistance services business? Consider the characteristics of the business.
- Evaluate the two parts that Agero (Cross Country) went through in changing its organization design.
- Describe your view of Agero’s future growth strategy, including whether or not to enter the telematics business.
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Agero: Enhancing Capabilities for Customers Case Answers
1. Why was Agero (Cross Country) successful in the roadside assistance services business? Consider the characteristics of the business.
For me, there are three factors that contributed to Agero’s success in the roadside assistance service.
a) They were able to strategize and redirect the service in-ward to focus on important employee groups.
Sidney, being the cross-country group leader, showed his care for the “business family” and assured the employees of fair treatment and constant appreciation of their contributions.
In 1998, Wolk also transformed the company by adopting a few changes that would make the company grow and compete with others in the service industry. They reinvested, gathered new ideas, and hired brilliant people.
b) They give a big emphasis on quality control based on the company’s shared values, group status meetings, and incentives by using new technologies in business analytics.
When it comes to its value proposition, it uses data analytics and maximizes its capability. The company invested millions of dollars in new technologies to collect data from call centers, motorists, and service providers.
In this way, Agero was able to track the interactions of customers with their service providers and were able to determine the customer satisfaction index (CSI). This is a way of maintaining their values of integrity and customer satisfaction.
With the help of new technologies, they were able to collect monthly incident data and other information mentioned in the contract and provide this information as an early warning to OEMs and other partners.
By applying the new business analytics capabilities in the cross-country group, they were able to enhance the performance evaluation of their service providers.
c) They formed a good relationship with customers and tried to substitute information for their other assets.
The company wanted to solidify the service provider network. That is why the cross-business model was there to create a closer relationship with OEMs and roadside service providers.
Cross-country managers know that strengthening the network could help them increase their competitive advantage in the saturated marketplace. They came up with the idea of tie-in promotions and even created an elite group of service providers.
2. Evaluate the two parts that Agero (Cross Country) went through in changing its organization design.
Part I. The issue is that Agero (Cross Country) operated with a…
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