mcq on managerial problem solving

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MCQs on Principles of Management

Principles of Management are guidelines and frameworks that help managers to run their organisation efficiently and effectively. It helps them in the day-to-day functioning and while framing the organisation’s goals and objectives. It is the best tool for decision-making purposes, and it can also help distribute duties and responsibilities among the employees.

Below is a list of multiple-choice questions and answers on Principles of Management to help students understand the importance of this process in a company’s overall decision making.

• The principles of management are in a continuous process of evolution
• The principles of management have evolved
• The principles of management have not evolved
• None of the above
• They help managers take decisions while performing managerial functions
• They denote a cause and effect relationship
• They are guidelines for further action in management functions
• All of the above
• They act as general guidelines for business-related issues
• The real business issues are pretty complex
• The real business issues are very dynamic
• Behavioural
• Cause and effect relationships
• Use of resources and effective administration
• Scientific decision making
• Providing managers with a valuable information
• Meet the changing requirements of a business environment
• Cooperation not individualism
• Harmony not discord
• Science, not a rule of thumb
• Management skills apply to managers at top levels in an organisation
• Management skills apply to managers at all levels in an organisation
• Management skills apply to managers at middle levels in an organisation
• Management skills apply to managers at executive levels in an organisation
• The vision of an organisation
• The mission of an organisation
• The objectives of an organisation
• The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an organisation
• It is a broad concept that consists of business and corporate strategy
• It is an overall concept that consists of strategy formulation and implementation
• It is a broad concept that consists of environmental and internal analysis
• It is a general concept that consists of business inputs and outputs
• The company would not be able to complete its tasks efficiently
• The company would not be able to complete its tasks effectively
• Both a and b are correct
• Both a and b are incorrect
• The management should properly investigate any task
• The management should engage in scientific enquiry
• The management should focus on observation and analysis
• The management should share the gains or profits of a company with their workers
• To separate the top-level management of a company from its Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
• To separate the planning functions from the executive functions
• To provide zero free time to workers in a company
• To not divide or delegate the work within an organisation
• It helps to calculate the standard output for employees within a task
• It helps to calculate the expected time taken for employees to complete their tasks
• It helps to calculate the duration of rest intervals given to employees
• It focuses on providing orderly arrangements for the resources within an organisation
• It concentrates on building a framework for giving orders to the employees within an organisation
• It focuses on creating a framework for receiving orders from the top management within an organisation
• It helps to establish standards of excellence within a company
• It helps to reduce products to fixed sizes, features or types
• It helps to bring in more significant exchangeability of various parts
• Decision making
• Managerial actions
• The father of general management
• The father of shop floor management
• The father of scientific management
• Proper application of penalties
• Good superiors across all levels in an organisation
• Agreements between two parties that are always clear and fair
• Coordination
• Unity in action
• Span of management
• Centralisation
• Decentralisation
• Difference between Fayol’s and Taylor’s theories of management
• Difference between Entrepreneur and Manager
• Difference between Businessman and Entrepreneur

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250+ Management Science Solved MCQs

Management Fundamentals MCQs

Management fundamentals mcqs topics.

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Our team has conducted extensive research to compile a set of Management Fundamentals MCQs. We encourage you to test your Management Fundamentals knowledge by answering these multiple-choice questions provided below. Simply scroll down to begin!

1: The most important conclusion from the leader-participation model is that ________.

A.   A leader must keep the same leadership style no matter what the situation is

B.   A leader must change his or her leadership style depending on the situation

C.   A leader must try to change the situation if it does not suit his or her leadership style

D.   All situations are similar

2: Efficiency refers to ________.

A.   The relationship between inputs and outputs

B.   Decreasing inputs only

C.   The additive relationship between inputs and outputs

D.   The inverse relationship between inputs and outputs

3: Managers who fail to plan may ________.

A.   Be adversely affected by change

B.   Stimulate change

C.   Be positively affected by change

D.   Take advantage of change

4: When working in the navigation pane, you ____ a folder to open it.

A.   Archive.

B.   Click

C.   Link

D.   Large icons

5: Informal planning is ________.

A.   General and usually lacks continuity

B.   More specific than formal planning

C.   Always performed at the lowest organizational level

D.   Performed exclusively by middle managers

6: Taylor began to develop his theory of ________ as a result of viewing workers in steel companies.

A.   The functions of management

B.   Ethics-based management

C.   Management skills

D.   Scientific management

7: ____ art is a collection of graphic images, which may come with office productivity software.

A.   Driver

B.   .docx

C.   Tiles

D.   .net

E.   Clip

8: In the context of the reinforcement theory, reinforcers are ________.

A.   Those consequences that immediately follow a behavior and increase the probability that the behavior will be repeated

B.   Job enlargement

C.   Performance-reward linkage

D.   None of these

9: Emotions and feelings ________ decision making.

A.   Always decrease performance in

B.   Can improve

C.   Often have no effect on

D.   Are more important than facts and logic in

10: Escalation of commitment can occur when people don't ________.

A.   Understand that conditions have changed

B.   Want to admit that an earlier decision was flawed

C.   Want to make a decision

D.   Accept current conditions

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How to Solve Your Company’s Toughest Problems

A conversation with Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei on how to solve any problem in five clear steps.

• Apple Podcasts

You’ve likely heard the phrase, “Move fast and break things.” But Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei says speed and experimentation are not enough on their own. Instead, she argues that you should move fast and fix things. (That’s also the topic and title of the book she coauthored with Anne Morriss .)

In this episode, Frei explains how you can solve any problem in five clear steps. First, she says, start by identifying the real problem holding you back. Then move on to building trust and relationships, followed by a narrative for your solution — before you begin implementing it.

Key episode topics include: leadership, strategy execution, managing people, collaboration and teams, trustworthiness, organizational culture.

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Learn more about HBR’s “ Future of Business” virtual conference (November 2023)
• Find more Harvard Business Review live events
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

Maybe you’ve heard the phrase, “move fast and break things.” It refers to a certain approach for rapid innovation that was popularized in Silicon Valley and invoked by many tech firms. But Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei says that speed and experimentation are not enough on their own. Instead, Frei argues that you should “move fast and fix things.” That’s the topic and title of the book she co-authored with Anne Morriss.

In this episode, Harvard Business Review’s editorial audience director Nicole Smith sits down with Frei to discuss how you can solve any problem in five quick steps. You’ll learn how to start by uncovering your true problem. Then, move on to build trust, relationships, and a narrative for your solution before you dive in on the actual work of implementing your fix.

This conversation was originally part of HBR’s “Future of Business” virtual conference in November 2023. Here it is.

FRANCES FREI: So, I would love to talk to you about how to move fast and fix things. And I’ll tell you the reason that Anne and I wrote this book – and it’s really a quest we’ve been on – is that Mark Zuckerberg, in his IPO for Facebook, famously said, “we’re going to move fast and break things.” And the problem with that is that it gave the world a false trade-off. It convinced so many of us that you could either move fast and break things or you could take care of people, one or the other. And we have found that there is a third, much better way. And that is, we can move even faster if we fix things along the way. And so, that’s what I’d love to talk to you about right now. And the way that we think about this is that if you want to move fast and fix things, we have to do it on a foundation of trust. And so, the first thing to do is to experience high trust. And we’re going to talk about how to build trust. But the way we see the world can be described in this grid. And in the presence of trust, we can move really fast. That’s how we move fast and fix things. We call it accelerating excellence. It’s only when we’re in the presence of low trust that we move fast and break things, or what we call being reckless disruption. And as I said, so many organizations are afraid of reckless disruption that they actually end up in this state of responsible stewardship, which is really just going slowly. And so, we wrote the book to get those that are in responsible stewardship to realize that we could go across the way to accelerating excellence. And we didn’t have to go down to reckless disruption. So, the way that we think about this, and it’s the way we wrote the book, is that there’s a five-step plan to do it. We organized the book for days of the week. We think that the metabolic rate of organizations can be improved significantly and that many, many hard problems can be solved in just one week. So, we wrote the book in the structure of a week. Step one is we have to find our real problem, that if we’re… for far too many of us, we’re addressing the symptom and not the cause. At any problem, there’s going to be trust broken at the bottom of it. And we’re going to solve for trust. We’re then going to learn how to get more perspectives to make our plans even better. Learn how to tell a narrative that works. And then, and only then, on Friday, do we get to go as fast as we can. And what typically happens in the move fast and break things is that we move Friday too forward in the week. So, our goal is to put ourselves in a position to move fast. And you have to wait till Friday to do that. So, what do I mean by finding the real problem? Most of us, a problem gets presented as a symptom. So, I’ll give you a recent example that got presented to me and Anne. We got called by a company. And they said, we’re having a gender problem. Will you come in and help us? And we’ve been able to help many organizations solve gender problems. So, we go in there. And we just wanted to make sure that they really did have a gender problem. The symptoms were super clear. There were no women at the top of the organization. Not very many women were coming into the organization. And great women were leaving the organization. So, they had… it looked like a gender problem. But it took, I don’t know, an hour. It took 60 minutes, certainly not even all of Monday, to uncover that their actual problem was not a gender problem. Their actual problem was a communication problem. And if we did all of the things that we know exist in our gender tool kit on how to fix gender, that would have all been wasted effort. But instead, what we found out is that the founders of this organization, and they were two cofounders, and they were very similar to each other, and they’d worked together and known each other for decades. They had a really uncomfortably and aggressively direct communication style. That communication style repelled all women and most men. So yes, the symptoms were gender. But oh, my goodness, the cause was that the two founders were succumbing to a problem many of us succumb to, which is, we were treating others as we like to be treated. They loved to be treated with aggressively direct communication. But nobody else loved it. And when we simply confronted them with that and taught them that instead of treating others as you want to be treated, now it’s a puzzle. Find out how they want to be treated, and treat them that way. Gets fixed. And all of a sudden, women and lots of other men are flowing to the organization. So, Monday… and we take a whole day for this. Let’s make sure we’re solving the real problem. And symptoms are rarely the cause. So, we just want to do some due diligence, some due diligence there. Once we know we’re solving for the real problem, there’s going to be trust broken down somewhere in the… amidst the problem. Well, very fortunately, we now understand trust super well. If I’m going to earn your trust, you will have an involuntary reaction of trusting me if you experience my authenticity, logic, and empathy all at the same time. When these three things are present, you will trust me. But if any one of these three is missing, you will not trust me. And here’s the catch. If trust is broken, and we know it’s only ever broken for one of these three reasons, we need to know which of the three, because the prescriptions to solve a broken authenticity pillar versus logic pillar versus empathy pillar, they’re entirely different from one another. So, you can think about rebuilding trust. It’s just a matching game. Know which one is at stake. And then bring in the curated prescription for that. There is a myth about trust that it takes a lifetime to build and a moment to destroy. And then you can never rebuild it. None of those things are true, that we can actually build trust very quickly when we understand the architecture of it. We can rebuild it quickly and just as strong as it was before. So, this notion that trust is a Faberge egg, it’s catchy and not true. Trust is being rebuilt all the time. But we want to do it with a deep understanding of the stable architecture. So, Tuesday takes all day. We solve for trust. On Wednesday, we call Wednesday making new friends. And what we mean by that is whichever collection of people you bring to the table who are the people that maybe are on your senior team or the people that you bring to the table to solve problems. And here, I’ve represented a table. And there’s eight check marks for eight seats. I encourage you to bring four extra chairs to that table. If you have eight seats, bring four extra chairs. Point to the extra chairs and ask yourself, who’s not here? Who has a stake in our problem who’s not represented at the table? I was recently in a conversation with our senior colleagues at the Harvard Business School. And we were talking about how to do junior faculty development. And we came up with what we thought were great ideas. And then we looked around and we were like, Oh, my goodness, there’s no junior faculty here. How on Earth do we know if these are good ideas? So, we got the empty seats. We invited people in. And sure enough, the junior faculty helped improve our plans dramatically. The equivalent of that always happens. So, on Wednesday, we want to make new friends. So, one is inviting them into the room. But then the second part is, how do you make sure that their voices are heard? And what we need to do is that when someone comes to the room, they’re going to be awfully tempted to say things that they think we want to hear. They’re going to be awfully tempted to conform to what we’re already saying. So, what we need to do is learn how to be inclusive of their unique voices. And the way we do that is by going through this four-step progressive process, which is, first, we have to make sure they feel safe and that they feel… they’re going to feel physically and emotionally safe, I’m sure, but that they feel psychologically safe. And that’s a shout-out to Amy Edmondson and all of her beautiful work there. But we have to make sure that we feel safe. Once we feel safe, then it’s our job to make sure that the new voices feel welcome. You can think of that as table stakes. Then when we’re doing is we’re really trying to move people up the inclusion dial. And here, this is when it really starts to make a big difference. And now what we want to do is make sure that they feel celebrated for their unique contribution. And so, what we’re doing is moving them up the inclusion dial. Now, here’s why that’s kind of hard. Most of us tend to celebrate sameness. And here, I’m asking you to celebrate uniqueness. And what I mean by celebrating sameness is that for the most part, like, when I watch my students in class, if one student says something, and then another student was going to say that, after class, they go and seek out the first person. And they’re like, you’re awesome. You said what I was going to say. They didn’t realize this. They’re celebrating sameness. They’re encouraging sameness. So, what I do is I advise my students to not share that verbal treat, that what we playfully refer to as a Scooby snack. Don’t share that Scooby snack for when somebody says something you were going to say. Share it for when somebody says something you could never have said on your own, and that it comes from their lived experience and learned experience, and how they metabolize successes and failures, and their ambition, if they’re lucky enough to have neurodiversity, their worldview, all of that. It’s a beautiful cocktail. Wait till they say something that comes uniquely from all of that. Celebrate that. When we celebrate uniqueness, that’s when we get the blossoming of the perspectives. And what we want to do to make somebody really feel included is we celebrate them when they are in our presence. But if you really want somebody to feel included, and we bring folks into the room for this, make sure that you champion them when they’re in the absence. So, let’s not just ask the junior faculty to come along. Or if it’s a senior team, and it’s mostly men, and the board of directors is coming in, and we’re like, oh, goodness. Let’s make sure we can show some women too. So, we bring some women along. We celebrate them in our presence. Let’s make sure that we champion them in our absence as well, which is celebrate their uniqueness in our presence and champion them in rooms that they’re not yet allowed into in their absence. So that’s Wednesday. Let’s make new friends. Let’s include their voices. Let’s champion those new voices in their absence. Thursday, we tell a good story. And stories have three parts to it: past, present, and future. It is really important – if you’re going to change something, if you’re going to fix something, it is critical to honor the past. People that were here before us, if they don’t feel like we see the past, we see them, we’re honoring the past, I promise you, they’re going to hold us back. And they’re going to be like The Godfather movie and keep pulling us back. So, we have to honor the past with clear eyes, both the good part of the past and the bad part of the past. Then we have to answer the question, why should we change now? Like, why shouldn’t we change maybe next week, maybe the week after, maybe the month after, maybe next year? So, it’s really important that we give a clear and compelling change mandate that answers the question, why now? Why not in a little while? I find that if you’re a retailer, and you have the metaphor of Walmart just opened up next door, clear, compelling. We have to… that should be our metaphor. How can we be, with as crisp of a language, clear and compelling about why now? And then we’ve honored the past. We have a clear and compelling change mandate. You want people to follow us in the improved future, we have to have a super rigorous and a super optimistic way forward. We have seen so many people be optimistic without rigor. Nobody’s going to follow. And similarly, rigor without optimism, also, nobody’s going to follow. So, it’s our job to keep refining and refining and refining until we can be both rigorous and optimistic. Now, how do we know when our plan is working? Well, here are the four parts of storytelling that we know. Our job is to understand this plan so deeply that we can describe it simply. When we describe it, we want to make sure if I describe it to you, and you describe it to the next person, that the next person understands it as if I described it to them. So, our job is to understand so deeply that we can describe simply that it’s understood in our absence. And the ultimate test is it’s understood when they go home and share it with their family. They have the same understanding we want. We find this to be the four-stage litmus test to make sure we have been effective in our communication. And when people understand it this well, then they can act on it in our absence. And that’s when we’re now in the position to go as fast as we can. And when all of that infrastructure is in place, well, then we can go super fast. And there are all kinds of clever ways that we can do that. So, I look forward to opening this up and having a conversation with you.

NICOLE SMITH: That was excellent. Professor, we got several questions. I want to just dive right into it. Tessa asked, what tools, practices, and skills do you use to uncover the underlying superficial problems? It sounded like you talked a lot about questions and asking questions.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, it’s right. So, the Toyota production system would famously refer to the five whys. And they had… and that was root cause analysis, which we all know. But essentially, what they found is that it’s about five… why does this exist? Well, why does that exist? Well, why does that exist? Like, if you ask why five times, they found that that’s how you got to the root cause. We find, in practice, the answer is closer to three. It’s rarely one. So, it would be, the symptom and the cause are usually a few layers. And you want to keep asking why. So, that’s the first thing I would say, is that we want to have… make sure that you’re doing root cause analysis. But the second thing on a specific tool, the tool that we like the most, we call the indignities list. And what you do is that… and the way we found out the symptom is we went to women in this company, because that’s what… they said they were having a gender problem. And we asked the women, is there anything that’s going on at work that just… it feels like it’s just nicking your dignity? And it occurs for… is it happening to you, or you observe it happening to other women? So, you go in search of the indignities list. Every time we do this, you’ll get a list of issues. Often, they will sound trivial. When you start to get convergence on those indignities, we then ask you to convert those indignities to the dignity list. And in this case, it was the communication style. And you know what the awesome thing about that was? It was free.

NICOLE SMITH: Wow.

FRANCES FREI: You can’t beat free.

NICOLE SMITH: Monique asks, can you speak more about how to amplify others’ ideas and perspectives, especially when they’re from underrepresented stakeholders?

FRANCES FREI: Oh, I love that question. Thank you very much. And so, I’m going to go to… here is my favorite visual on the amplification part, which is the team I’ve drawn in the middle, it’s a three-person team. And each circle represents a person on the team. And I’m showing that there’s three circles in the middle, that those folks are very similar to one another. And then on either side, we have a team where there’s difference among us. And this is where the underrepresented might come in. If we’re not careful, when we have underrepresented voices, we’re only going to be seeking from them the parts that overlap with us. So, this is when we’ve invited them to the table, but we’re not inclusive of their voices. What we want to do is make sure that everybody feels comfortable bringing all of their richness to the table, not just the part that overlaps. And so, what we find we need to do is be very solicitous about… and same with questions. From your perspective, how does this sound to you? What else are we missing? What I’m trying to do is get you off the scent of saying what you think I want to say or even asking you to say what I want to say because it makes me feel better. But I want to be inclusive of all of the gorgeous uniqueness. And this, of course, ties to diversity, equity, and inclusion, which I know has gotten a rocky go of things in the press. But what I’ll tell you is, if I got to rewrite diversity, equity, and inclusion, I would have written it as inclusion, equity, and diversity, because I have seen teams bring… I have seen organizations bring in diverse and underrepresented talent and not get the benefit from it.

NICOLE SMITH: Yeah.

FRANCES FREI: So, diversity may or may not beget inclusion. But I have never, ever seen an organization that was inclusive that didn’t beget gorgeous diversity.

NICOLE SMITH: Right.

FRANCES FREI: So, be inclusive first.

NICOLE SMITH: I appreciate you saying that, not just sitting at the table, but actually including and giving lift to people’s voices. I also want to talk about this friends thing you keep talking about, making new friends. First of all, how do I identify who’s a friend?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. So, in this case, I want the friend to be someone who is as different from you as possible. So, the new friends. Like, who’s worthy of friendship? Not someone who you’re already attracted to, not somebody who you’re already hanging out with. So, here’s the thing about humans. We really like people who are really like us. It doesn’t make us bad people. But it just makes us human. And so, what I want you to do is seek difference. Find people from different perspectives. And that will be demographic difference, different lived experience, different learned experience. And so, if we’re senior faculty, let’s invite in junior faculty. If we’re all women, let’s invite in a man. If we’re all engineers, let’s make sure we’re bringing in the perspective of marketing. So, what I would say is my guiding principle is seek difference. Those are your potential new friends.

NICOLE SMITH: OK, so Steve wants to hone in on Friday, right? And Steve asks, can you paint a quick sketch of what’s going fast after this being slower – a slower, more thoughtful process?

FRANCES FREI: I sure can. Thank you, Steve. And so, here’s how I would think about Friday. We need ruthless prioritization. And what I mean by that is that for the most part, organizations have… that we work equally on everything. We think everything is equally important. But what we know is that organizations that win, they have ruthless prioritization. And they know, this is what I’m designed to be great at. And this is what I’m designed to be bad at. Not bad for sport, bad in the service of great. And if an organization can’t discern between these two, they’re going to end up with exhausted mediocrity. And so, what we have to do for our employees and the rest of the organization is, here’s what we’re going to optimize on. That’s half the story. And here’s what we’re not. So, I’ll give you an example of this. And the example is from Steve Jobs. And if those of you that are a bit techie, and you remember 20 years ago, when Steve Jobs walked out on that Worldwide Developer Conference stage with a manila envelope, and it had a MacBook Air in it. And he slid out that MacBook Air. And the crowd and the world went crazy, because it was the lightest-weight laptop in the world. Well, he very, very openly said, we are best in class at weight because we are worst in class at physical features. We could have been best in class at physical features. But then we would have been worst in class at weight. Or we could have chosen to be average at both. But then we would have had to rename our company. And then he made fun of another company that I won’t say here. So, we will end up… if we aren’t deliberate, we’re going to end up with exhausted mediocrity, constantly getting better at the things we’re bad at, which, without realizing it, means we’re getting worse at the things we’re good at. So, the most important thing we can do on Friday is to articulate, this is what we want to be disproportionately good at. And thus, this is what we want to be disproportionately bad at. And there’s a whole other series of things. But that’s the most important one.

NICOLE SMITH: Mm-hmm. Speaking of Steve Jobs, we have a question where they ask, do you think that the culture in Silicon Valley is changing from break things to fix things, particularly as it pertains to not only their own companies, but broader societal problems?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, so I – not in all of Silicon Valley. So, I think we can famously see, it’s not clear to me that Twitter is moving fast and fixing things. But what I will say is that, look at Uber today. And I had the pleasure of going and working with Uber back in 2017, when they were going to move fast and break things. They are moving fast and fixing things now, and going at a catapulting speed. Or ServiceNow didn’t ever even go through move fast and break things. It’s just moving fast and fixing things. Stripe is doing the same thing. Airbnb is now moving fast and fixing things. So, what I would say is that Silicon Valley can now choose to move fast and fix things, whereas, in the past, I think they only thought they had the choice of going slow or moving fast and breaking things. Today, we have the choice. And more and more companies are making that choice.

NICOLE SMITH: Mm-hmm. And so, Bill asked, which one of these steps do you find the most commonly in need of… that companies need the most help with? So, you laid out Monday through Friday. Is there something that sticks out often?

FRANCES FREI: Well, I’ll tell you that if companies are really pressed for time, they skip Thursday. And that’s to their peril, because if we skip Thursday, that means we have to be present. And we’re a bottleneck for everything. That means people need us to translate why this is important. So, I would say that Thursday is the one that’s most often skipped. And I encourage you not to. And then I would say that Tuesday is the one that’s most often misunderstood because of all of the myths I mentioned that we have about trust. And we just think, oh, if trust is broken, we have to work around it, as opposed to going right through it and rebuilding trust.

NICOLE SMITH: So, Thursday, that’s the storytelling, honoring the past, describing it simply, right? So why do we struggle to describe things simply?

FRANCES FREI: Oh, I don’t know what your inbox looks like on your email. But you tell me how many long emails you have.

NICOLE SMITH: I refuse to deal with my inbox. I’ll deal with it later.

FRANCES FREI: So, Mark Twain was right. I apologize for sending you a long letter. I didn’t have the time to send you a short letter. It’s the metaphor for all of this, that when we understand something in a complicated way, we want to benefit people from the entirety of our knowledge. And we just throw up all of it on people, as opposed to realizing the beautiful curation and skill that’s required to go from understanding it deeply to understanding it elegantly in its simplicity. So, I think it takes time. It’s also… it takes skill. Like, this is… there are professional communicators for a reason. They’re really good at it. But if you’re on your second draft of something, you have no chance of describing it simply. So, I would say, unless you’re on your 10th draft, you’re probably describing it in too complicated of a way.

NICOLE SMITH: Yeah. So, can I ask you a little bit more of a personal question, Professor?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, anything.

NICOLE SMITH: So, Abby asks, how do you apply the essential steps to moving fast and fixing things in your own consulting role? So, Uber and all the places that you go.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. Yeah, so I’ll tell you, when we’ve been successful, it’s when organizations come to us, and they say, here’s our problem. Will you help us? When we’ve been unsuccessful is when we go to the organizations, and we’re like, we think you’re having a problem. So, pull works. Push doesn’t. So, the only thing we can’t provide is the desire to change. And so, I would say personally, make sure there’s an opening. And then you can be super helpful in fixing a problem. And I also would say that all of this applies to yourself. I mean, that ruthless prioritization – so many of us are trying to be good at as many things as possible – at work, at home, daughter, sister, cousin, parent, friend – as opposed to, I’m going to kill it at work, kill it at home. And I am not going to be good… not now. I’m not going to be as good at all of these other things. So, you can either choose exhausted mediocrity, or you can have the nobility of excellence. These things are choices. So, I think all of this applies to ourselves.

NICOLE SMITH: So, let’s go back to Tuesday, where you drew that triangle with logic, and empathy, and authenticity. So, Hung asks, between logic and empathy, which one would you say an individual should develop first? And Hung really describes just having a left foot and right foot and not knowing which one to go forward.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. So, here’s what I would say, Hung, is, ask yourself… I bet you’re trusted most of the time, which means people are experiencing your authenticity, logic, and empathy most of the time. But ask yourself, the last time, or the most recent times you had a skeptic, you had someone who was doubting you, who they were wobbling on your trust, ask yourself, what is it that they doubted about you? And if it’s that they doubted your logic, double click there. If they doubted your empathy, double click there. And that is, each of us has what we call a wobble. Each one of us has a pattern where the distribution of these is higher for one or the other. That’s the sequence I would go in. There’s not some generic sequence that is better. All three of these pillars are equally important. But I bet, for each one of us, one tends to be more shaky than the other. And that’s what I would go after. Now, I will just tell you the distribution in the world. The vast majority of us have empathy wobbles, then logic wobbles, then authenticity wobbles. But that doesn’t help any of us specifically. It just tells us we have lots of company.

NICOLE SMITH: OK. So, we got a lot more questions and a little time. I want to get as many as I can in, but…

FRANCES FREI: OK, I’ll go super quick. Yeah.

NICOLE SMITH: No, take your time. But I just want to let you know, you’re pretty popular in this conversation. Rock star, as Allison said. Tara asks, how can company leadership make sure that their messaging is actually heard and understood? I feel like you touched on this a bit with simplicity.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that the way to do it is, talk to people about your message that didn’t hear it directly from you. And see how well they understood. That tells you whether or not it’s reaching. So, don’t ask the people that were in the room. Ask the people that were spoken to by other people in the room. That will tell you how well it’s there. And if it took you a long time to describe it, I promise you, it’s not going to be heard.

NICOLE SMITH: Mm. Oh, wow. Yeah, thinking about it, probably need to shorten my own stories a little bit here. So, Karen asks you, how do you handle employees who are not willing to accept others’ points of view and be open minded? I mean, you described this uniqueness and diversity. But there are people who are holdouts that don’t see the advantage of that.

FRANCES FREI: So, I often find those folks are an education away, because if I can let you know that if I get to benefit from everyone’s point of view, and you only get to benefit from some people’s point of view, I will competitively thump you. So, let’s say you don’t have the moral imperative wanting to do it. Well, the performance imperative… we have found that organizations that are inclusive get a 200% to 500% boost on employee engagement and team performance with no new people, no new technology, simply the act of being inclusive. So, the person who doesn’t want to be inclusive, I’m going to ask them, can they afford… can their career afford performing so suboptimally?

NICOLE SMITH: Mm. And so, we have a question. The person didn’t leave their name, so I don’t have a name. But how much time do you spend on each stage? Some folks like to spend more time on stages than others. Does the team not move forward until everyone’s satisfied with the current step? What do you do when you hit a roadblock on each stage, and not everyone is in agreement?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. Well, I don’t like consensus, so I’ll just… I’ll say there. And so, what I try to do is work on momentum, which is that I want to make sure that everybody’s voices have been heard. But then you have to leave the decision to someone else. So, we want to do is make sure everybody’s voices are heard, and they had a chance to do it. But we don’t hold out until the very last person. We move forward. And then we can retrace and see if the momentum can bring people forward. So, not consensus. I would consider it not consensus, and we have to make sure that everybody gets to air out what their problems are.

NICOLE SMITH: OK. Well, Christopher asks our last question. How does transparency fit into this model, specifically this trust, authenticity, logic model? Does it have a place?

FRANCES FREI: Yeah. It sure does. And I find that the most important part for transparency is on the logic side. So, if you’re going to say… if you’re going to inspect whether or not I have good rigor, and I have a good plan, I could say, oh, just have faith. I did all of this hard work. Or I could give you a glimpse inside so that you can see the inner workings. Now, I often call it a window of transparency, because there’s actually a cost of full transparency that I’m not always willing to take. But a window of transparency, I think we always need. So, to me, the transparency part is, let’s be transparent about our logic so people can see it for themselves, and they don’t have to do it in too much of a faith-based way.

NICOLE SMITH: Professor, that was all dynamic. And thank you for the illustrations. You made it simple with the illustrations.

FRANCES FREI: Yeah, all right. Awesome. Thanks so much.

NICOLE SMITH: Thank you for your time.

FRANCES FREI: OK.

HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei in conversation with HBR’s editorial audience director Nicole Smith at the “Future of Business” virtual conference in November 2023.

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, you’ll find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Dave Di Iulio, Terry Cole, and Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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Solving the 12 Most Common Customer Problems [Guide]

11 min read

A surefire way to improve engagement and retention is to focus on solving customer problems.

Think about it – what would you do if you needed help but all you got was an incredibly unhelpful customer service agent? Chances are, you would take your business elsewhere.

That is precisely why you need to focus on improving your customer service problem-solving and providing excellent support focused on reducing the number of dissatisfied customers.

Where to get started? That’s what this guide is for, outlining frequent customer service issues and their solutions.

• Customer service problem-solving is the process of identifying and efficiently resolving customer concerns in a timely manner.
• Focusing on solving customer problems is vital because it offers key benefits, like improved retention , satisfaction , and loyalty , along with reduced support costs.
• Common customer service issues include lengthy wait times, inaccessible human reps, slow resolution, inconsistent support quality , and poor communication skills of the support team.
• A few shared reasons, like insufficient training, limited staffing, complex customer issues, and no standardized procedures or centralized knowledge bases , cause these issues.
• Possible solutions for these complaints involve implementing callback systems, simplifying automated menus, establishing clear resolution timelines, and standardizing training.
• Some additional effective techniques for problem-solving include empathizing, active listening, sincerely apologizing, proactively communicating, and offering compensation where needed.
• Improving your self-service resources and ensuring consistent operating hours are also useful best practices.
• Ready to optimize your customer service problem-solving strategy? Schedule a Userpilot demo and see how you can get started.

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What is customer service problem-solving?

Customer service problem-solving is a discipline focused on optimally identifying, addressing, and resolving issues customers encounter with a product or service.

It is important to note that, contrary to its name, customer service problem-solving is not just about fixing customer complaints.

It’s much more complex than that.

It requires effective problem-solving skills along with other key capabilities like communication , empathy , and critical thinking. It’s also about creating a system where all customer issues are prevented or solved as fast and efficiently as possible.

If done right, customer service problem-solving offers great benefits, such as improved customer satisfaction and loyalty .

Why solving customer problems is so important

Providing excellent customer service is a whole art, one that requires you to develop a functional strategy to do it right. But once you perfect your customer service problem-solving and better train your customer service team, the benefits are endless. Here are just a few:

• Increases customer retention .
• Enhances customer experience .
• Builds customer loyalty.
• Encourages customer engagement .
• Reduces support costs.
• Facilitates customer feedback collection.
• Drives customer satisfaction.

12 most common customer service problems (and how to fix them)

Different companies run into several types of customer service issues. However, there are quite a few recurring customer queries and complaints almost all customer service agents face. So let’s deep dive into what these are and learn the golden rules needed to solve customer service problems.

1. Long wait times

When you look at customer feedback, a common problem that frequently comes up is how often customers have to wait for customer support . All these extended hold times and long queues just add to the customer’s annoyance and dissatisfaction .

Main reasons :

• High call volume.
• Insufficient staffing.
• Complex customer complaints.
• Inadequate training .
• Limited self-service options.
• Backlog of unresolved issues.

Implement a callback system so customers don’t have to wait hours to talk to a customer service rep. Next, focus on streamlining your processes and consider increasing staffing during peak hours. Lastly, introduce chatbots for instant support on low-priority issues.

2. Frustration with inaccessible human reps

Customers often get frustrated with complex automated customer service menus and the inability to reach a human representative.

• Cost-saving strategies.
• Fewer customer service representatives.
• Outdated technology .
• Poor menu design .
• Language limitations.

There are several ways to solve this customer service problem. Start by simplifying automated menus and adding a clear option to speak with a human customer service agent.

Additionally, create comprehensive self-service materials so customers can troubleshoot independently. Also, regularly test the system for ease of usability and accessibility.

3. Slow resolution times

The next common customer service problem is customers having to follow up multiple times to get their issues resolved. This need to constantly check up on the issue wastes more of the customer’s time and is a sign of poor customer service.

• High workload and ticket volume .
• Complicated customer issues.
• Poor internal communication .
• Incomplete issue documentation .
• Ineffective prioritization of tasks.

Establish a clear resolution timeline, improve internal communication, and ensure regular follow-ups with customers until the issues are resolved.

4. Inconsistent support across channels

Customers experience different levels of support quality depending on the contact channel they use. So, a chatbot might not offer much help but an email ends up providing effective customer service problem-solving. This inconsistency only leaves customers confused about which channel to trust .

Main Reasons :

• Varying levels of support training.
• Different support team structures .
• Inconsistent use of knowledge bases.
• Lack of standardized procedures.
• Limited integration between channels.

Start by providing consistent training and resources to service reps across all platforms. Next, ensure that all support channels are well-integrated so information and user data flow seamlessly between them.

A good example of such omnichannel communication is Bluehost, which offers the same quality of live chat and phone support.

5. Excessive transfers between departments

Instead of any issue resolution , customers are often transferred several times between departments without making any progress . In the end, all that’s left is an angry customer and their unresolved complaint.

• Poor initial issue categorization.
• High specialization within departments.
• Insufficient cross-department communication.
• Inconsistent problem-solving protocols.
• Miscommunication or misunderstandings.

Instead of having multiple departments handle specific issues, train all customer service agents to handle a wide range of problems . Also, establish clear protocols for when transfers are necessary and explain the procedure to customers as well.

6. Poor communication skills of customer service reps

Sometimes customers feel undervalued and misunderstood because the customer service representatives lack empathy , communication, or problem-solving skills.

• Insufficient training programs .
• Inadequate soft skills development.
• Lack of performance monitoring .
• Limited knowledge of products or services.
• Limited focus on customer empathy .

Invest in your customer support team, training them in skills like empathy, active listening, and clear communication. Introduce regular monitoring and evaluation of customer service interactions , via CES surveys for example, for quality control.

7. Insufficient knowledge among support staff

Oftentimes, support representatives fail at customer service problem-solving because they lack relevant knowledge . In some cases, they even recommend wrong solutions , which only worsen the customer complaint and potentially increase churn and losses.

• Lack of customer service training.
• Limited access to updated product information .
• Complex product or service offerings.
• Rapid changes in products or services.
• Poorly designed knowledge management systems .

Provide comprehensive training to your customer representatives, ensuring that they are well-versed with the product or service.

Next, try maintaining an up-to-date customer service knowledge base that is accessible to all. This way, representatives can refer to it whenever needed instead of suggesting flawed solutions.

8. Conflicting information from different reps

A common customer complaint is how often they receive conflicting information from different support representatives, leading to confusion and greater mistrust.

• Lack of clear documentation and standardized procedures.
• Inconsistent training across different departments.
• Outdated or inaccurate knowledge base .
• Insufficient supervision and monitoring .
• Varying levels of agent experience.

Make sure all customer service agents are on the same page, by standardizing important information and procedures. Moreover, ensure that each team member gets access to the same resources , training, and product information.

9. Perceived difficulty in contacting customer service

Sometimes, the customer service problem-solving quality itself isn’t the issue. Instead, the problem is that some companies avoid direct contact, making customers exert a lot of effort to get in touch with customer service.

• Cost reduction strategies.
• Overreliance on self-service options and automation .
• Limited staffing resources.
• Overwhelmed support infrastructure.
• Challenges in scaling customer support operations.

Make contact information easily accessible, mentioning it clearly at several touchpoints . Also, to cater to varying customer needs , provide multiple contact channels, and ensure prompt responses.

Hostinger does a good job at this, clearly outlining numerous support channels, along with links to other help center resources like tutorials :

10. Difficulty in resolving issues through self-service

Providing self-service options is great, but it shouldn’t be the only way customers can get help . Companies need to consider that not all customers find it easy to troubleshoot and resolve issues on their own.

• Complex or inaccessible UI design .
• Lack of sufficient information.
• Limited types of content (e.g. only blogs, no videos or tooltips ).
• Technical glitches or bugs .
• Inability to handle complex customer complaints.
• No human support options.

Simplify self-service interfaces and ensure easy access to human support as well for customers who prefer it.

Introduce various content types within the resource center , such as comprehensive and interactive guides , FAQs, blogs, case studies , checklists , etc.

11. Unresolved customer issues

Usually, the main reason behind decreasing customer satisfaction is simple: their problems and complaints aren’t getting resolved. When this happens, customers feel neglected and are more at risk of churning .

• Lack of technical skills and training.
• Inadequate knowledge management systems .
• Complexity of the product or service.
• High employee turnover affects resolution continuity.
• Poor integration between departments.
• Ineffective prioritization of customer issues.

To improve customer retention, implement a follow-up system to ensure all issues are resolved and offer timely updates to customers. In addition, provide personalized customer service to build trust and understand specific pain points so you can resolve issues better.

12. Inconsistent operating hours

Last but not least, a recurring customer service problem is when support is not available at consistent or convenient times. This just makes it harder for customers to seek help , causing them to ultimately give up on your business entirely.

• Limited resources for 24/7 support.
• Lack of sufficient staffing to cover all time zones.
• High cost associated with around-the-clock service reps.
• Difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff for non-traditional hours.

To avoid any confusion, standardize your operating hours and communicate them clearly to customers. If customer complaints about operating hours still continue, then consider providing extended hours as well.

Here’s an example by SiteGround that clearly advertises it’s 24-hour support:

Try Userpilot and Take Your Customer Service to the Next Level

The key customer service problem-solving techniques.

Now that you’ve gone over all the common customer complaints and queries, it’s time to focus on making sure they don’t happen again. To help with that, here are the top customer service problem-solving best practices guaranteed to delight customers.

Empathy, active listening, and personalization

One simple technique for providing the best customer support is to listen carefully. This requires that you solely focus on the customer without any distractions, show interest, and ask clarifying questions. Only through such active listening can you truly understand the customer’s needs .

Along with listening intently, you also need to be patient and reflect on the customer’s feelings. In other words, you must empathize with your customers’ experience before jumping to a solution. This helps build trust and rapport necessary for long-lasting relationships.

Lastly, it is important to acknowledge that all customers are unique, and therefore each customer’s problem should be treated individually. This allows for a more personalized solution , best-suited for the customer’s specific complaint.

Troubleshooting based on experience

It’s true – practice does make perfect. So if you want to improve your customer service problem-solving skills, the best way is through hands-on experience . The more practice you get working on and learning from previous cases, the more your ability to diagnose and fix issues will improve.

However, this doesn’t mean you don’t need any training at all. Instead, the two go hand-in-hand. Training provides the necessary foundational knowledge , while hands-on experience refines that knowledge through practical application .

Both these things also help ensure cross-department exchange of information and improved collaboration over time.

Providing sincere apologies

A golden rule of customer service: Never ever argue with the customer. When a customer is upset or in need of help, arguing with them will only make matters worse. Plus, arguing only further ruins the customer experience and could lead to negative word of mouth .

The right thing to do is to apologize sincerely. Often, a genuine apology is all customers need to feel validated, helping de-escalate the situation. Moreover, once you’ve apologized, customers are more open to trusting you, thereby making them receptive to any proposed solutions.

To ensure an apology is effective, it should be timely, specific to the customer’s issue, and accompanied by a clear plan for resolution. If done right, sincere apologies contribute greatly to customer satisfaction , loyalty, and a positive brand reputation.

Consistent follow-up and proactive communication

In order to provide effective customer support, simply resolving the problem is not enough. There are other elements you need to simultaneously take care of as well, to provide customers with a seamless experience throughout.

To start off, the service team must keep customers informed about the progress of their issues. This includes letting them know of any delays or necessary follow-up actions. Such transparency in the resolution process helps reassure the customer and highlights your commitment to customer service.

Even after providing a solution, you must follow up with the customer again to ensure the problem has been fully resolved.

Offer compensation

In certain cases, simply apologizing for the issue is not sufficient. Rather, it is important that you offer compensation for the negative experience.

This helps repair the relationship by demonstrating accountability on your part and showing how committed you are to customer satisfaction . It also provides a tangible gesture of goodwill , which can hopefully reduce any negative impact the issue may have caused.

Glovo (a food delivery app) is a good example to quote here. If your order is missing some parts or has other issues, Glovo often issues instant refunds.

Improving self-service resources

Finally, the last trick to perfecting your customer service problem-solving ability is to create comprehensive self-service options . These can include resource centers, knowledge bases , how-to videos, community forums, help center portals, user guides , and more.

Providing these resources empowers customers to quickly resolve issues on their own, reducing wait times and boosting satisfaction . Additionally, self-service portals also decrease the workload on customer service teams, enabling them to focus on more complex inquiries.

For example, here’s a look at the self-service options Zendesk offers:

Effectively and quickly solving customer problems is crucial for driving retention and enhancing satisfaction. But there are several other facets to customer service problem-solving to keep in mind too, such as empathy, active listening, and other soft skills.

To make things easier, try keeping a few tips and best practices in mind. For example, focus on training your customer service team, proactively communicating, offering multiple channels of contact, and enhancing self-service resources.

With all these techniques in hand, you’ll be able to reduce churn and create a positive customer experience in no time!

Want to get started solving customer problems? Get a Userpilot Demo and see how you can improve customer loyalty.

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North Dakota Student Will Take FEMA Classroom Collaboration Experience to the Workforce

FEMA Region 8 recently partnered with North Dakota State University to engage students in the school’s Emergency Management program by tackling a series of disaster-related problems identified by FEMA staff. Below, North Dakota State University student Kayla Niedzielski shares more about her experience participating in FEMA’s Innovative Problem-Solving course. 

Having the opportunity to be a part of the Region 8-sponsored FEMA Innovative Problem-Solving course was an incredibly eye-opening and insightful experience. Our course instructors, Dr. Carol Cwiak and Dr. Caroline Hackerott presented the class with seven different complex problems identified by FEMA Region 8 staff, with one assigned to each team. To assist with the task, a group of FEMA Problem Sponsors, who developed the problem statements, helped us understand and conceptualize the problems. 

The challenges encompassed a spectrum of concerns that needed to be addressed, including effectively communicating messages in rural areas ensuring thorough after-action reporting and enhancing the capabilities and capacities of rural Emergency Management systems at the local level. The problems were broad and far-reaching, forcing the teams to think outside the box. 

My team’s challenge involved using publicly available datasets to assist FEMA in distributing aid more equitably to underserved populations in Region 8.  Our process started with several subject matter expert interviews with various stakeholders, including members of local, state, and federal government, Tribal Nations and different members of the emergency management private sector. Through these interviews it became clear that our initial scope was not going to meet FEMA’s root challenge. This moved the project toward a conceptual framework based on the emergency management literature surrounding vulnerability, equity and intersectionality. These concepts were fundamental when discussing FEMA’s ability to begin addressing the problem of equitable aid distribution, as datasets are not comprehensive enough and do not reflect the complexity of Region 8’s underserved populations. 

Through the interview and research process, a major theme emerged: Emergency management is most effective at the local level and requires consistent and strong community-level engagement.  The FEMA staff emphasized the importance of using creative, innovative and complex problem-solving strategies while tackling this gap in FEMA. 

With help and support from the FEMA staff, collaboration with stakeholders opened our minds to creating a new diagram to illustrate the complexity of an individual's layered and multi-dimensional path to equity in a disaster. Applying this model provides an opening for difficult conversations within the federal government regarding how equity is managed through multiple programs, especially in the recovery phase. 

Our team created a new model of possible equity challenges during a disaster that reflect both the context gathered from subject matter expert interviews and the theoretical literature within Emergency Management.  While these findings and models provided only a starting point in addressing the problems of inequity in rural areas within Region 8, I am thankful to be a part of the new wave of emergency management professionals committed to confronting and addressing rural vulnerability, inequities, and helping to build widespread resilience. 

The experience of this course provided a chance to navigate and explore solutions to our government's strongest challenges. It has given me new perspectives on the true complexity of the federal government’s different programs as well as the barriers that exist in allowing emergency managers to accomplish the mission of protecting lives, livelihoods and quality of life. Not only that, but through the discussions and research, I feel more prepared to fulfill the expectations and quality of work expected, not only at a federal level, but to the entire region to build resilience and help communities better respond to disasters. Having the opportunity to contribute to the literature of emergency management has been a wonderful experience and will continue to motivate me while transitioning to an emergency management career. 

You can also read about the experiences of one of FEMA staff that mentored the students this semester:   Helping the Emergency Managers of Tomorrow Address the Challenges of Today | FEMA.gov . All of the student reports are available at  Innovative Problem Solving for FEMA | Emergency Management and Disaster Science | NDSU .