In my former role as a loan servicing manager, creating a task assignment calendar for the upcoming month was a pain point. Why? It required manual entry in either an Outlook calendar or Excel spreadsheet. And, I had to perform a manual counting of the tasks to ensure fair distribution across my team.

As time-consuming as it was, it had to be done. Fair distribution was critical since each individual was responsible for reaching a minimum production percentage every month. The production percentage was calculated using this formula: number of repetitions of unique tasks X average time to complete the task.

Solving pain points in your personal workflow is one of the benefits of AI.

I asked Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT PLUS to assume the role of a Team Lead and solve for assigning tasks fairly, providing transparency on task assignment, and creating documentary evidence of task completion. The prompt I uploaded was identical for both and is stated below.

As you’ll see in the side-by-side comparison of the Gemini and ChatGPT PLUS responses, ChatGPT PLUS produced the superior result. It went beyond text description to providing visual samples. It even offered to produce a task assignment spreadsheet template. Scroll past the prompt to view the side-by-side responses.

Enjoy today’s read!

THE PROMPT - provided to both AI tools

You are one of four people on a loan servicing team. Each member of the team is responsible for achieving a minimum production percentage every month. Nearly every task the team members perform are associated with an average time-to-complete. Production percentages are determined by multiplying repetitions of a task by its average time-to-complete. Example: it takes 15 minutes to board a retail loan. (50 retail loans x 15 minutes)/60 minutes = 12.5 hours of retail boarding.

As the Team Lead, you are responsible for assigning the servicing tasks from the task list below to all team members on a rotational basis every month to ensure all members of the team have an equal opportunity to achieve monthly minimum production percentages.

You’ve used a calendar to document the task assignments. The calendar has two purposes:

Set task expectations - team members appreciate knowing what to expect during the month
Provide documentary evidence of tasks - used when compiling and calculating monthly production totals for each team member

Task List

Managing the servicing queue - one team member assigned to manage the servicing queue - an Outlook email box. - the primary way in which servicing requests come into the team. (Secondary ways are chat and phone calls.) - Managing the servicing queue includes these subtasks:
a.applying loan payments
b.reversing loan payments
c. making draws on revolving loans
d. updating loan information
e. researching and solving loan problems
f. assigning to other team members commercial and retail loans to board
g. assigning to other team members lease servicing activities
h. assigning to other team members payoff request letters to process
Boarding loans - three team members (not managing ‘the queue’) board commercial and consumer loans, process leases, and create and send payoff request letters
Morning reports - one team member assigned to work 3-4 reports every morning before noon
Mail-in payment processing - one team member assigned to process the payments received via US Mail
Process mailroom mail - one team member assigned to process UPS/FedEx packets for the department
Every team member logged into the phone system to answer calls

As Team Lead, how would you solve for assigning tasks fairly, providing transparency on task assignment, and creating documentary evidence of task completion? Assumptions are:

Assumptions

All 4 team members are proficient in every task
Tasks can be assigned so that all 4 team members have nearly equal opportunities to perform the tasks
If a team member is absent unexpectedly, the task assignments must be changed
PTO must be factored into the planning

RESPONSES - GEMINI (LEFT) AND CHATGPT PLUS (RIGHT)