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Customer Service in UK call centres:
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 9 (2002) 309–316
Customer Service in UK call centres: organisational perspectives and employee perceptions Gavin Brown, Gillian Maxwell* Division of Human Resource Management and Development, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Raod, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK
Abstract The 1990s have witnessed a dramatic rise in consumer demand for, and hence provision of, call centres in the UK. Central to the success of call centres is customer service. Although there exists an ever-expanding tranche of literature on call centres and customer service, it primarily focuses on aspects of their functionality. In contrast, this article encompasses analysis of organisational perspectives and employee perceptions in its review of the contemporary nature of customer service in UK call centres. Drawing from recent, exploratory research, the article asserts that, in general, there is significant potential for improving customer service and satisfaction through the medium of more sophisticated employee management practices. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: UK call centres; Customer service; HRM
1. The rise of call centres Call centres were developed in the USA in the 1980s and were adopted in Australia and the UK a few years later (Incomes Data Services, 1997; Arkin, 1997; Datamonitor, 1996). As Harrison and Smith (1996) attest, there has since been a rapid growth in the variety call centre industries and services. The diverse functions of call centres may be categorised into four broad types, as noted below. (I) Customer service/sales. (II) Single/bi-directional calls. (III) Industry of operation (e.g. consumer products, financial services, tourism/ transport, remote shopping, telecoms, entertainment). (VI) Service provided (e.g., using the Henley Centre’s (1997) classification, advertising response, telephone banking, catalogue purchasing, production information and service, insurance cover and claims, complaints, accounts and billing, purchase orders, after sales support in repairs and servicing).
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +44(0)-141-337-4363; fax: +44(0)141-337-4141. E-mail address: [email protected] (G. Maxwell).
Call centre employment typically conjures up images of office workers using the implements of telephones and computers. However, the Income Data Service (1997) report points out that ‘not every office worker who has a telephone and computer screen can be regarded as a call centre operator’. The Merchants’ Group (1998) is helpfully specific in its definition of a call centre employee: ‘a physical or virtual operation within an organisation in which a managed group of people spend most of their time doing business with customers by telephone, usually working in a computer automated environment’. The emphasis on automation, particularly the technology of automatic call distribution (ACD) systems, is crucial to both defining and understanding of the call centre industry (Bain and Taylor, 1998). ACD systems queue incoming calls and automatically distribute them to the next available agent. The agent can be selected by specialist handling area, the amount of time since their last call or any other management-determined criteria. Not only does this increase the operating efficiency but it also allows a large degree of management control over employees’ work, working practices which both have explicit Tayloristic overtones. Call centres are now an established feature of the developed, post-modern world, a means of distribution for a vast array of products and services (Arkin, 1997).
0969-6989/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 6 9 - 6 9 8 9 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 4 0 - 6
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Moreover, their range continues to expand, particularly but not exclusively in financial services (Cross, 1999) and retailing (Reynolds, 1999). For example UK public services, notably the National Health Service, are to use call centres to provide some of their services via telephone. Datamonitor (1996) predict that consumers’ increasing sophistication will continue to fuel the growth of call centre business. Furthermore, as consumers become more familiar with, and confident about, passing credit card details over new media, call centres will be used more for placing orders (Lawford, 1998). Curtis (1999) goes as far as asserting that: ‘the telephone has transformed the way companies communicate and trade, and radically altered the way people work. In the future, when people examine important social and business trends at the turn of the millennium, it’s quite likely that the explosion of teleculture will be on the list.’ It seems that even the potential of the internet will not challenge the teleculture significantly (Booth, 1999), despite call centres being less than proactive so far in dealing with the impact of the internet (Farrow, 1999). The continued growth of call centres is also important in the UK in relation to the job market, especially in less affluent areas of the UK which have traditionally relied on heavy industry such as coal mining or ship-building, for example in northeast England and central Scotland. Following the decline of the heavy industries and concomitant increase in longterm unemployment, call centres have provided something of a lifeline to economically depressed areas. In the case of central Scotland in particular, more than 160 call centres provide employment for nearly 21 000 people, albeit in fairly low skilled jobs, with this number projected to top 37 000 in the new millennium (MacDonnell, 1999). In the UK as a whole there are close to 5000 call centres, employing up to 243 000 staff (Curtis, 1999). Beyond economic impacts, the importance of call centres can also be gauged in social terms. Most significantly, the increasing reliance on ‘remote’ means of conducting business, such as the communication medium of the telephone, has become a common means of conducting business. From an organisational perspective, telephone based business is a seductive proposition because: ‘effective use of the telephone for modern business purposes means reaching more people more often, in more places for more hours per day, all at a lower cost base and with a higher and faster return per head employed’ (Reed, 1997). Globalisation, shorter product life cycles and intensification of competition (Gronroos, 1997) have also supported the emergence of call centres. Coupled with technological advances in telecommunications, a busi-
ness trend away from mass marketing to more targeted approaches, the high level of success enjoyed by telephone direct sales in banking and insurance and, above all, the deregulation of the telecommunications market in the UK, the operating conditions for call centres are fertile. The power of the market is equally, important in understanding the emergence of call centres. Prabhaker et al. (1997), for example, identify the need for companies to offer a superior service in order to ensure business survival in a service sector economy. Call centres afford companies the potential to manage customer relations more effectively, thus providing some competitive advantage while saving costs (Connon, 1996). Indeed, the quality of the customer service itself may become a point of competitive distinction and positional advantage (Rapert & Wren, 1998).
2. The primary of customer service and satisfaction Customers’ perceptions of the service they receive is, arguably, the basis of success for call centre. According to the Parasuraman and Berry (1991), customers assess service quality by comparing what they want or expect with the service they perceive to have received. Consequently, for call centres to earn a reputation for service quality, employee must consistently perform at levels which customers perceive as meeting or surpassing their expectations (McColl-Kennedy and White, 1997). Customer service which effects customer satisfaction is an emotional attitude towards a service, resulting from the comparison of the pre-purchase expectations and perceived performance (Gronroos, 1991). As call centres are a recent phenomenon, it is important to ascertain the expectations customers have of call centre service. The general, and mainly intangible, parameters of customers’’ perceptions of ‘good’ quality service such as employees’ responsiveness and empathy establish the importance of employees in customer satisfaction. However, there is evidence that the expectations of call centre customers extend beyond these general satisfiers. Haymarket (1998), for example, levels that there are three features of call centre operations that customers feel are crucial to quality service, namely convenience in fast call handling, cordiality of the agent, and consistency in agents providing a reliable and accurate service. Customer satisfaction may in addition be based on another three dimensions: access, including the agent’s communication skills; timeliness, including agents’ resolution of queries; and quality, which includes the accuracy, consistency and comprehensiveness of the agents’ advice, in addition to the knowledge and politeness of the agents. Thus the role of the front-line employees, the call centre agents or operators, assumes a heightened importance in customer satisfaction. The
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agent-customer relationship is not only critical, it is sensitive too; for instance there is evidence to suggest that positive employee attitudes appear to be linked to increased customer satisfaction (Schmitt & Allscheid, 1995) and, conversely, the service gap between what employees believe a customer wants and what a customer actually expects can lead to a reduction in service quality (Coulter et al., 1989). That call centres recognise the significance of customer service and satisfaction is reflected in their evaluation of their customer service. Indeed, another of the distinct characteristics of call centres is the high level of agent surveillance (Bain and Taylor, 1998). For the very technology that allows the provision of call centre business, also facilitates its ready electronic evaluation. Computer and telephone based technology provides management with constant data on agents’ productivity and performance. ‘Hard’ data like the number of calls taken and amount of errors, and ‘soft’ data, like the sales techniques and tone of voice used, can then become the basis of service evaluation. The form of electronic evaluation most commonly used in call centres is a computer telephony integration (CTI) system (Harrison & Smith, 1996). This management information system is typically used to evaluate the following: * * * * *
length of time spent of each call; types of calls being dealt with; agent productivity; agent sales; and number of agent errors (Datamonitor, 1996).
Telephone monitoring, whereby supervisors can systematically and secretly listen-in to agents’ calls, is also used to monitor and evaluation customer service. Ironically though, these evaluation systems may be more of an obstruction to, rather than a tool for, effective customer service and satisfaction. For the technology has encouraged working practices that are defined by division of labour, output targets, repetition and standardisation, and strict quality adherence (Arkin, 1997) and surveillance. Indeed, the working practices adopted by call centres are increasingly described in negative terms. They have been, for example, compared to those in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth’ (Bain and Taylor, 1998), as ‘vocal sweatshops’ (West, 1997) and ‘white collar factories’ (Haymarket, 1998). The effect of such working conditions are clearly far removed from the current ideals of human resource management and quality of working life, yet the links between unsatisfying employment experiences and customer offerings, is, apparently, largely neglected by call centres. As a result of this separation of customer service and human resource management, conditions which actively militate against the very customer service and satisfaction call centres endeavour to provide can all too readily become manifest. For example, agents’ motivation can be low
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and their stress levels high, contributing to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover (Health and Safety Executive, 1999; Management Today, 1999; Whitehead, 1999). This constitutes, at best, a service anomaly and, at worst, a signal failure in call centres’ service provision. Either way, the apparent incongruity between organisational perspectives of service provision and the (dis)inclination of call centre agents to deliver that service merits further scrutiny. The empirical work undertaken expressly to further insights on call centre employees’ perceptions of customer service is described in the next section of this article. The purpose of this research is to explore the nature of the disparity between organisational perspectives of customer service and employee perceptions of customer service.
3. Empirical methods The research engines used to drive achievement of this aim stem from a phenomenological methodology which recognises that meaning is open to social constructs and interpretations (Gummesson, 1991). Four qualitative primary research methods were used in three case study, insurance call centres in order to ensure sufficiency and triangulation of data: telephone interviews with call centre customers, most importantly because they are the ultimate judges of the service (Parasuraman et al., 1991); focus group sessions with agents and observation of agents at work, as they are the customer/call centre interface and employee preceptions of service may reflect that of the customers (Schnieder and Bowen, 1995; Schmitt & Allscheid, 1995); and, lastly, semistructured interviews with senior managers as representatives of each of the call centre strategies on customer service. The views of customers and senior managers may be described as constituting organisational perspectives of the case call centres and the agents’ opinions obviously comprise the employee perceptions. The empirical work was conducted during the period December 1998 to April 1999, thus it recency adds value to its earlier established validity. The three case study organisations conform to the definition of call centres given earlier. Due to the commercial sensitivity of the research topic, the case call centres are each given appellations to disguise them, namely: *
*
*
Alpha Insurance Services: One of the largest and most innovative insurance companies in the UK. Bravo Insurance Services: New entrants to the insurance intermediary market with a reputation from other business interests. Charlie Insurance Services: A long established financial services company which has only recently started its call centre operation.
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Initially, pilot focus groups were conducted over a two day period in each organisation to outline employees’ views (Jankowicz, 1995) on their motivation and perceptions of customer service. Thereafter, in each case company, a face-to-face semi-structured interview was conducted with an area manager or director, a staff focus group was conducted, and 12 customer telephone interviews were held. Employees and customers were surveyed on a self-selection basis once company access had been secured. All questions were open-ended in order to support the generative, inductive nature of the research. The data yielded was transcribed verbatim to facilitate a content analysis. Thus due consideration was given to familiarisation of the transcripts, reflection of the relevant literature discussed above, conceptualisation of emergent and consistent themes, recoding/ refinement of the contents, linking the empirical evidence to the secondary sources and, finally, re-evaluation of the data to identify further areas of investigation (Easterby-Smith et al., 1991). Each of these stages are manifest in the remainder of this article. Whilst it is readily acknowledged that each of the research methods, and indeed the underpinning research methodology, are not without inherent l imitations, every reasonable attempt was made to ensure the integrity of the research. For example the research questions were piloted and the research participants were selected at random to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, non-bias and assured of the anonymity of individual responses. The scale of the research is appropriately and deliberately modest in its support the research aim of informing insights into organisational perspectives and employee perceptions of F the critically important F customer service in call centres.
chain when the telephone is the communication channel. This point is illustrated in the remarks of one of the customers interviewed:
4. Empirical findings
Highly developed listening skills may, at first consideration, seem axiomatic for successful operators. However, the observation of agents highlighted that two factors typically make active listening difficult. Firstly, the sheer constancy and repetitiveness of the agents’ work can lead to them to only passively listening to individual customer needs and, instead, defaulting to the standardised procedures. The following interaction, observed during the research, provides a powerful example of this.
4.1. Customer perspectives Two dimensions of customer service were consistently raised as contributors to a high quality of service: first, agent friendliness and efficiency, and second, product cost and call centre convenience, both of which are explained in turn below. Due to the absence of any tangible or visual representation of the call centre company, the surveyed customers tended to base their opinion of the company soley on their transactions with the agents. Therefore the voice, tone and general friendliness of the agent becomes a direct extension of the call centre brand, a personification of the company. The ‘soft’ aspects of customer service such as responsiveness, assurance and empathy assume heightened importance in the quality
‘‘I find the attitude of the person on the other end of the telephone very important. If they are professional and friendly, I am more likely to buy their product. I have telephoned three other insurance companies today and I have insured myself with Alpha Insurance Services even though they are marginally more expensive than other quotes I have had. That’s because the people [agents] are helpful and friendly and they have a deservedly good reputation for customer service’’. To develop the point of the centrality of agent friendliness further, the all-important customer interface skills may be described as a composition and result of effective training in product knowledge and company procedures, and, above all, high level communication skills. Observation of agents at work indicated that those who consistently managed positive customer relations and achieved sales displayed communication skills which are characterised by adaptation to the customer cues and effective listening skills. The successful agents did not standardise their communication, rather they adapted it in tone, length and even language in what represents a subtle Mandarin demotic shift in response to the signals they received from each individual caller. This is exemplified in the comments of one successful agent: ‘‘When someone calls, if they sound happy and bright you must be like them. They will not be happy if you seem depressed and unenthusiastic. The other side of the coin is someone who is really dry and curt. They don’t want to speak about the weather, they want to do the business and get off the phone.’’
Customer (irately)F’’I have called five times now and I want to speak to a supervisor. You cannot help me. I have been asked for my policy number every time and every time I have had to explain my situation again. I’m sick to death of this I want to speak to a supervisor.’’ AgentF‘‘Certainly. Can I have your policy number please?’’
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The second factor which detracts from agents’ active listening is concentration distractions. The majority of call centres are open plan. This acts to allow for social exchanges between agents developing, even while simultaneously dealing with customer calls. Frequently, interaction between agent team members was observed with the customer dialogues assuming secondary attention, achieved by the agents turning down the headset microphone. Agent efficiency in call management is clearly related to agents’ communication skills, hence it is not surprising that customers should highlight efficiency as central to quality service. From the feedback yielded in the telephone interviews with the case study call centres, efficiency may be defined as the customer input on his/ her particular data or query being appropriately andFideallyFsensitively and individually managed by the agent, resulting in the desired customer output of a quotation or sale, for example. In general there appears to be an association between shorter calls and customer satisfaction, mirroring the work of Arkin (1997) and Bain and Taylor (1998). However, agents must balance efficiency with courtesy in order to avoid the callers feeling harried to get off the phone. 4.2. Product cost and call centre convenience In the caller evaluations of customer service, product cost was rated as critical. Typically, customers formed judgements on the call centres by taking into account the costs of their calls and the cost of the products, usually in comparison to other call centres. The majority of the customers highlighted that they expect competitive product prices. Further, most of the interviewed customers indicated negative impressions of the company if they were not able to use a free phone or low call rate. However, it was also found that customers who called at premium rates but were satisfied with the overall experience still had a positive view of the company’s customer service, in line with the findings of Bain and Taylor (1998) and Arkin (1997). Thus it appears that it is not the absolute cost that matters to call centre customers, but the cost relative to perceptions of value for money. Finally, the call centre customers emphasised convenience as important differentiating elements of call centre offerings. Convenience to customers comprises business hours for customer access, efficiency in call handling (as described above) and time-saving. One quote epitomises the significance of convenience and price sensitivity too: ‘‘The time saved [by using call centres] on walking to and from shops is great. I can get four or five quotes in half an hour, which helps save money as well.’’
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It emerged that convenience aspects are important due to changing work and social patterns. For example, many callers work flexible and varying hours, admitted to finding their lifestyles more stressful and many were working females who have less time for domestic tasks including administration. These patterns may be seen to reflect life in post-modern times where there are expectations of instant gratification, asynchronicity and ready consumption (Harvey, 1995). With regard to the customers’ views on the service standard they received in each of the three case study call centres, Alpha Insurance Services was consistently rated well. One customer, for example, opined that: ‘‘Compared to some of the others [call centres], the service levels were excellent. The operator was friendly but efficient and professional as well. That is the reason I bought the policy. And it was a little cheaper. ‘‘(laughs) This statement also encapsulates the quality service dimensions already discussed. Views on the customer service experienced at Bravo Insurance Services was mixed while most of the Charlie Insurance Services customers reported that they were dissatisfied with the service experienced, viz: ‘‘The person at the other end of the telephone was really impolite. Because I had an unusual question she was annoyed and I could tell that from the tone of her voice’’; ‘‘The service from the operators is appalling. They only care about the wages they pick up. She [the operator] was lazy and abrupt. I won’t be calling back!’’ (slams down the phone) It is evident, therefore, that the performance of the front line operators is crucial to the call centre company’s image and performance. Consequently it is imperative that they are able and inclined to offer quality service. But is this the case?
5. Employee perceptions A constant refrain from all of the staff who participated in the focus group sessions is the tedium and pressure in their job. The following quotes, derived across all three case organisations, are illustrative of this finding. Job pressure and also antipathy towards management is apparent in one respondent’s comments: ‘‘There are very high stress levels and quite frankly there is management incompetence at all levels of the company. ‘‘Management antipathy is echoed by other interviewees, for example: ‘‘Management are always looking at you, waiting for you to do something wrong’’ and ‘‘Management can get very suspicious. We are constantly monitored and it just leads to more stress. ‘‘Job tedium is expressed thus by two representative
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staff: ‘‘[The job] is mundane. It can get like a production line. You can take twelve minutes to do a quote and say that person’s name over 10 times, put them on hold and then forget their name!’’ and ‘‘I feel like I am trapped here sometimes.’’ The signals from the staff on the standard of customer performance they consider their company to offer were more mixed. Overall, the views on this from Alpha Insurance Services were the most positive. This positive opinion is, however, tempered by the impact of pressure of achieving targets. The two quotes below bear witness to the target pressure. ‘‘SometimesFand I think I speak for everyone hereFif your statistics are down and someone calls and is obviously a time waster, I speed through the quote. I deal with them in half the time I would with a serious customer.’’ ‘‘Yes and if your statistics are down I pressure people more and sell things to them that they may not require just to improve my stats.’’ Again, the reliance on employee performance can be seen as critical to the company image and performance. Effective performance is clearly beneficial to the company, but, conversely, the effect of poor customer service may well extend beyond the experience of callers in building up a negative image which may deter potential callers. Employees from Bravo Insurance Services are unanimously highly critical of the standard of the customer service provided by their company, and, implicitly, themselves. Customer service is described simply by one respondent as being ‘‘terrible’’. In an almost Fawlty Towers-esque way the customer service section is seen as ineffective: ‘‘We have a separate customer service department and you can never get through there.’’ For one employee at least, the root cause of the poor customer service is management neglect of customer service in pursuit of sales, viz: ‘‘The management put too much emphasis on sales as opposed to making sure the customer comes first. As a result there are so many complaints.’’ Customer service standards offered by Charlie Insurance Services are, according to the focus group participants, more satisfactory although the employees appear to have little interest in them. In general it seems evident that there is potential for employees to offer better standards of service and hence increase customer satisfaction; certainly there is significant potential for the employees to feel they are offering a better service. Boredom borne of the repetitive nature of agents’ jobs, monitoring of performance and pressure of sales targets, each of which may result in employee disaffection with work and high labour turnover as identified earlier, are particular sources of employees’ dislikes. As far as the employees themselves are concerned, their employment
experiences would be enhanced significantly by greater job diversification, restructured remuneration which places less emphasis on bonus payments for achieving targets and rewards standards of customer service, opportunities for training and development and greater employee involvement.
6. Senior manager perspectives All three interviewees include customer service in their statements on their company’s competitive advantage. Customer service, cost-saving and product price, convenience and access, technology and marketing are all cited as means of achieving competitive advantage. Only in one company though, Alpha Insurance Services, is the primacy of employee performance in securing company success explicitly stated in its market positioning and reflected in employment practices, most notably product knowledge and customer care training and appraisals. Here, staff are considered ‘‘very significant’’ in customer service, particularly given the very nature of call centre business as highlighted earlier. The Area Manager of Alpha Insurance Services expresses this significance thus: ‘‘They [staff] are the people who have contact with the customer so it is vital that they are properly trained and have the right personality to do the job. This is even more important in call centres where you do not have the benefit of shop fittings etc. to deliver a service package.’’ It must be said that both Bravo Insurance Services and Charlie Insurance Services acknowledge the role of their staff, with prompting describing them respectively as ‘‘the most important asset with have’’ and ‘‘the lifeblood of the organisationy. the only point of sale our customers have’’. However, this recognition does appear rather limited in both declarations of competitive advantage and explanations of measures adopted to ensure and improve employee performance. Conspicuously, none of the three case companies raised the issue of employee views on their employment experiences or levels of customer service, strongly suggesting that they are not considered relevant. All three managers in unison consider that, while they do not achieve customer satisfaction without exception, the customer service provided is high in general. For Alpha Insurance Services this assertion is in line with the views of the customer and staff research participants. For Bravo Insurance Services and Charlie Insurance Services, this view is evidently in contrast to the opinions of their customers and staff, yet the senior managers seem oblivious to this. It may also be telling that in the former company staff turnover is higher than the industry average and customer retention lower; in the
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latter company there is a rigid hierarchical organisation structure which draws a dividing line between management and front line staff, a long established organisation culture, relatively less investment in technology and some tension between agents recruited to telesales and agents moved here from other areas of the organisation which they preferred. It is singularly Alpha Insurance Services that has the smallest service gap for it emerges as providing the highest standard of customer service and satisfaction, the most positive employee perceptions, and an organisational perspective expressed by a senior manger which explicitly recognised the centrality of staff to its business.
7. Conclusions Call centres are a relatively recent phenomenon in a market led culture of consumerism and consumption. They purport to offer instantly available and gratifying products and services and, as such, can themselves be viewed as a post-modern motif in the nature of their offering. In an ever-expanding and increasingly competitive operating environment, customer service is a critical success factor for UK call centres. Because of the unique medium of service exchange in call centres, callers’ impressions of the company are based largelyFif not soleyFon the nature of their service encounters in the first instance. Thus the performance of the front line staff, the agents, is of heightened importance. In addition to product cost, which is often compared to those of other call centres, it is evident that customers’ main demands are for value for money and call centre convenience in access. Beyond these characteristics, it appears customers’ wants include the features of agent friendliness and efficiency in a service exchange that at least seems to be non-standard and to involve the agent’s active listening. Should call centres consistently include these characteristics in their service offering, not only will their reputation for service quality spread, but they will evidently enjoy something of a service differentiation. For within the context of the empirical work, some service gaps are stark. Only in one case organisation, Alpha Insurance Services, is there overall congruence between the organisational perspectives of the service offered, as indicated by the customer and senior managers’ views, and employees’ perceptions of the levels of customer service they give. Indeed, even in this organisation both the senior manager and employees participating in the research admitted that their service standards are not always consistent. Compared to the inclinations of staff to provide quality service and customer experiences of that service in the other two case organisations, especially in Bravo Insurance Services, however, the standard of customer service in Alpha Insurance
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Services is conspicuously high. Neither of the senior managers interviewed in Bravo Insurance Services and Charlie Insurance Services seemed aware of either their employees’ or customers’ dissatisfaction with the customer service, despite the close monitoring of agents. These mangers, in contrast, believe that, with some exceptions, their companies achieve high levels of customer satisfaction. That these service gaps exist in the call centres studied, strongly suggests that there is an opportunity for competitive advantage for their competitors if they can achieve higher levels of awareness and success in customer service. Moreover, if the organisations studied are representative of call centres is general, it may well be the case that there is significant potential for improving customer service and satisfaction across the call centre industry. Consistently achieving customer satisfaction when relying on employees who are typically bored by and stressed in their jobs is challenging. However, there is little evidence to suggest that senior managers in call centres are adopting a strategic stance on this important employment practices in the call centre industry run counter to the general development and direction of human resource management principles and practices. Embracing more contemporary human resource management strategies and practices in, most notably, job design and employee development, may, ironically, be the route by which call centres can achieve customer satisfaction. Despite the growth of the call centre industry in the UK and the need for ‘urgent attention [to be paid to] the running, staffing and management of call centre operations’ (Bailey, 1998), the research attention devoted to human resource management in call centres is insufficient, just as it has been the USA (Frenkel et al., 1998). Research work has recently started on developing human resource practices that support customer service in call centres, most notably on recruitment (Dale, 1999; Whitehead, 1999) and training (Brown, 1998; Bailley 1998; Davis, 1999). However, further investigating human resource management approaches and policies in UK call centres still constitutes one conspicuously viable direction of further research (Brown, 1999) which should be of interest and value to call centres. Another more abstract, but nevertheless worthwhile, new direction of research would be an examination of the significance of call centres in the context of postmodernism. Research in both directions has the potential to ensure greater congruence between organisational perspectives and employee perceptions of the customer service imperative.
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Haymarket Business Publications, 1998. The telebusiness reportFthe definitive report on telebusiness in the UK to the year 2005. Marketing Direct Magazine, April, pp. 5–17. Harrison, P., Smith, C., 1996. Management directions: communication technologies. The Institute of Management Foundation, London. Harvey, D., 1995. The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell, Oxford. Health and Safety Executive, 1999. Working conditions in the UK’s call centres. Marketing December 2, p. 5. Henley Centre, 1997. www. cca. org. uk. Incomes Data Services, 1997. Pay and Conditions in Call Centres. London. Jankowicz, A.D., 1995. Business Research Projects. Chapman & Hall, London. Lawford, J., 1998. Press one for customer service. Call Centre Focus, Vol. 4 (6), pp. 42–46. The Merchants’ Group, 1998. www. merchants. co. uk. Management Today, 1999. Call centres under pressure to change sweatshop image. February, p. 9. McColl-Kennedy, J.R., White, T., 1997. Service provider training programms at odds with the customer requirements in five star hotels. The Journal of Services Marketing 11 (4), 249–264. MacDonell, H., 1999. 3000 jobs for 2000. Daily Mail, 11 August, p. 12. Parasuraman, A., Zeitmal, V.A., Berry, L.L., 1991. Refinement and reassessment of servqual scales. Journal of Retailing 67 (4), 41–50. Prabhaker, R.P., Sheehan, J.M., Coppett, J.I., 1997. The power of technology in business selling: call centres. Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing 12 (3/4), 220–232. Rapert, M.I., Wren, B.M., 1998. Service quality as a competitive opportunity. The Journal of Services Marketing 12 (3), 223–233. Reed, D., 1997. In the line of fire. Marketing Week, November 13, pp. 55–59. Reynolds, J., 1999. Retailing on the net. International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management 27 (4–5), 174–175. Schmitt, M.J., Allscheid, S.P., 1995. Employee attitudes and customer satisfaction: making theoretical and empirical connections. Personnel Psychology 48 (3), 521–536. Schneider, B., Bowen, D.E., 1995. Winning the service game. Book Review in PC Week 12 (26), 8. West, R., 1997. The call guys. Marketing Week, November 13, pp. 61–64. Whitehead, M., 1999. Churning questions. People Management 5 (19), 46–49.
Customer Service in UK call centres: organisational perspectives and employee perceptions Gavin Brown, Gillian Maxwell* Division of Human Resource Management and Development, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Raod, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK
Abstract The 1990s have witnessed a dramatic rise in consumer demand for, and hence provision of, call centres in the UK. Central to the success of call centres is customer service. Although there exists an ever-expanding tranche of literature on call centres and customer service, it primarily focuses on aspects of their functionality. In contrast, this article encompasses analysis of organisational perspectives and employee perceptions in its review of the contemporary nature of customer service in UK call centres. Drawing from recent, exploratory research, the article asserts that, in general, there is significant potential for improving customer service and satisfaction through the medium of more sophisticated employee management practices. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: UK call centres; Customer service; HRM
1. The rise of call centres Call centres were developed in the USA in the 1980s and were adopted in Australia and the UK a few years later (Incomes Data Services, 1997; Arkin, 1997; Datamonitor, 1996). As Harrison and Smith (1996) attest, there has since been a rapid growth in the variety call centre industries and services. The diverse functions of call centres may be categorised into four broad types, as noted below. (I) Customer service/sales. (II) Single/bi-directional calls. (III) Industry of operation (e.g. consumer products, financial services, tourism/ transport, remote shopping, telecoms, entertainment). (VI) Service provided (e.g., using the Henley Centre’s (1997) classification, advertising response, telephone banking, catalogue purchasing, production information and service, insurance cover and claims, complaints, accounts and billing, purchase orders, after sales support in repairs and servicing).
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +44(0)-141-337-4363; fax: +44(0)141-337-4141. E-mail address: [email protected] (G. Maxwell).
Call centre employment typically conjures up images of office workers using the implements of telephones and computers. However, the Income Data Service (1997) report points out that ‘not every office worker who has a telephone and computer screen can be regarded as a call centre operator’. The Merchants’ Group (1998) is helpfully specific in its definition of a call centre employee: ‘a physical or virtual operation within an organisation in which a managed group of people spend most of their time doing business with customers by telephone, usually working in a computer automated environment’. The emphasis on automation, particularly the technology of automatic call distribution (ACD) systems, is crucial to both defining and understanding of the call centre industry (Bain and Taylor, 1998). ACD systems queue incoming calls and automatically distribute them to the next available agent. The agent can be selected by specialist handling area, the amount of time since their last call or any other management-determined criteria. Not only does this increase the operating efficiency but it also allows a large degree of management control over employees’ work, working practices which both have explicit Tayloristic overtones. Call centres are now an established feature of the developed, post-modern world, a means of distribution for a vast array of products and services (Arkin, 1997).
0969-6989/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 9 6 9 - 6 9 8 9 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 4 0 - 6
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Moreover, their range continues to expand, particularly but not exclusively in financial services (Cross, 1999) and retailing (Reynolds, 1999). For example UK public services, notably the National Health Service, are to use call centres to provide some of their services via telephone. Datamonitor (1996) predict that consumers’ increasing sophistication will continue to fuel the growth of call centre business. Furthermore, as consumers become more familiar with, and confident about, passing credit card details over new media, call centres will be used more for placing orders (Lawford, 1998). Curtis (1999) goes as far as asserting that: ‘the telephone has transformed the way companies communicate and trade, and radically altered the way people work. In the future, when people examine important social and business trends at the turn of the millennium, it’s quite likely that the explosion of teleculture will be on the list.’ It seems that even the potential of the internet will not challenge the teleculture significantly (Booth, 1999), despite call centres being less than proactive so far in dealing with the impact of the internet (Farrow, 1999). The continued growth of call centres is also important in the UK in relation to the job market, especially in less affluent areas of the UK which have traditionally relied on heavy industry such as coal mining or ship-building, for example in northeast England and central Scotland. Following the decline of the heavy industries and concomitant increase in longterm unemployment, call centres have provided something of a lifeline to economically depressed areas. In the case of central Scotland in particular, more than 160 call centres provide employment for nearly 21 000 people, albeit in fairly low skilled jobs, with this number projected to top 37 000 in the new millennium (MacDonnell, 1999). In the UK as a whole there are close to 5000 call centres, employing up to 243 000 staff (Curtis, 1999). Beyond economic impacts, the importance of call centres can also be gauged in social terms. Most significantly, the increasing reliance on ‘remote’ means of conducting business, such as the communication medium of the telephone, has become a common means of conducting business. From an organisational perspective, telephone based business is a seductive proposition because: ‘effective use of the telephone for modern business purposes means reaching more people more often, in more places for more hours per day, all at a lower cost base and with a higher and faster return per head employed’ (Reed, 1997). Globalisation, shorter product life cycles and intensification of competition (Gronroos, 1997) have also supported the emergence of call centres. Coupled with technological advances in telecommunications, a busi-
ness trend away from mass marketing to more targeted approaches, the high level of success enjoyed by telephone direct sales in banking and insurance and, above all, the deregulation of the telecommunications market in the UK, the operating conditions for call centres are fertile. The power of the market is equally, important in understanding the emergence of call centres. Prabhaker et al. (1997), for example, identify the need for companies to offer a superior service in order to ensure business survival in a service sector economy. Call centres afford companies the potential to manage customer relations more effectively, thus providing some competitive advantage while saving costs (Connon, 1996). Indeed, the quality of the customer service itself may become a point of competitive distinction and positional advantage (Rapert & Wren, 1998).
2. The primary of customer service and satisfaction Customers’ perceptions of the service they receive is, arguably, the basis of success for call centre. According to the Parasuraman and Berry (1991), customers assess service quality by comparing what they want or expect with the service they perceive to have received. Consequently, for call centres to earn a reputation for service quality, employee must consistently perform at levels which customers perceive as meeting or surpassing their expectations (McColl-Kennedy and White, 1997). Customer service which effects customer satisfaction is an emotional attitude towards a service, resulting from the comparison of the pre-purchase expectations and perceived performance (Gronroos, 1991). As call centres are a recent phenomenon, it is important to ascertain the expectations customers have of call centre service. The general, and mainly intangible, parameters of customers’’ perceptions of ‘good’ quality service such as employees’ responsiveness and empathy establish the importance of employees in customer satisfaction. However, there is evidence that the expectations of call centre customers extend beyond these general satisfiers. Haymarket (1998), for example, levels that there are three features of call centre operations that customers feel are crucial to quality service, namely convenience in fast call handling, cordiality of the agent, and consistency in agents providing a reliable and accurate service. Customer satisfaction may in addition be based on another three dimensions: access, including the agent’s communication skills; timeliness, including agents’ resolution of queries; and quality, which includes the accuracy, consistency and comprehensiveness of the agents’ advice, in addition to the knowledge and politeness of the agents. Thus the role of the front-line employees, the call centre agents or operators, assumes a heightened importance in customer satisfaction. The
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agent-customer relationship is not only critical, it is sensitive too; for instance there is evidence to suggest that positive employee attitudes appear to be linked to increased customer satisfaction (Schmitt & Allscheid, 1995) and, conversely, the service gap between what employees believe a customer wants and what a customer actually expects can lead to a reduction in service quality (Coulter et al., 1989). That call centres recognise the significance of customer service and satisfaction is reflected in their evaluation of their customer service. Indeed, another of the distinct characteristics of call centres is the high level of agent surveillance (Bain and Taylor, 1998). For the very technology that allows the provision of call centre business, also facilitates its ready electronic evaluation. Computer and telephone based technology provides management with constant data on agents’ productivity and performance. ‘Hard’ data like the number of calls taken and amount of errors, and ‘soft’ data, like the sales techniques and tone of voice used, can then become the basis of service evaluation. The form of electronic evaluation most commonly used in call centres is a computer telephony integration (CTI) system (Harrison & Smith, 1996). This management information system is typically used to evaluate the following: * * * * *
length of time spent of each call; types of calls being dealt with; agent productivity; agent sales; and number of agent errors (Datamonitor, 1996).
Telephone monitoring, whereby supervisors can systematically and secretly listen-in to agents’ calls, is also used to monitor and evaluation customer service. Ironically though, these evaluation systems may be more of an obstruction to, rather than a tool for, effective customer service and satisfaction. For the technology has encouraged working practices that are defined by division of labour, output targets, repetition and standardisation, and strict quality adherence (Arkin, 1997) and surveillance. Indeed, the working practices adopted by call centres are increasingly described in negative terms. They have been, for example, compared to those in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth’ (Bain and Taylor, 1998), as ‘vocal sweatshops’ (West, 1997) and ‘white collar factories’ (Haymarket, 1998). The effect of such working conditions are clearly far removed from the current ideals of human resource management and quality of working life, yet the links between unsatisfying employment experiences and customer offerings, is, apparently, largely neglected by call centres. As a result of this separation of customer service and human resource management, conditions which actively militate against the very customer service and satisfaction call centres endeavour to provide can all too readily become manifest. For example, agents’ motivation can be low
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and their stress levels high, contributing to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover (Health and Safety Executive, 1999; Management Today, 1999; Whitehead, 1999). This constitutes, at best, a service anomaly and, at worst, a signal failure in call centres’ service provision. Either way, the apparent incongruity between organisational perspectives of service provision and the (dis)inclination of call centre agents to deliver that service merits further scrutiny. The empirical work undertaken expressly to further insights on call centre employees’ perceptions of customer service is described in the next section of this article. The purpose of this research is to explore the nature of the disparity between organisational perspectives of customer service and employee perceptions of customer service.
3. Empirical methods The research engines used to drive achievement of this aim stem from a phenomenological methodology which recognises that meaning is open to social constructs and interpretations (Gummesson, 1991). Four qualitative primary research methods were used in three case study, insurance call centres in order to ensure sufficiency and triangulation of data: telephone interviews with call centre customers, most importantly because they are the ultimate judges of the service (Parasuraman et al., 1991); focus group sessions with agents and observation of agents at work, as they are the customer/call centre interface and employee preceptions of service may reflect that of the customers (Schnieder and Bowen, 1995; Schmitt & Allscheid, 1995); and, lastly, semistructured interviews with senior managers as representatives of each of the call centre strategies on customer service. The views of customers and senior managers may be described as constituting organisational perspectives of the case call centres and the agents’ opinions obviously comprise the employee perceptions. The empirical work was conducted during the period December 1998 to April 1999, thus it recency adds value to its earlier established validity. The three case study organisations conform to the definition of call centres given earlier. Due to the commercial sensitivity of the research topic, the case call centres are each given appellations to disguise them, namely: *
*
*
Alpha Insurance Services: One of the largest and most innovative insurance companies in the UK. Bravo Insurance Services: New entrants to the insurance intermediary market with a reputation from other business interests. Charlie Insurance Services: A long established financial services company which has only recently started its call centre operation.
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Initially, pilot focus groups were conducted over a two day period in each organisation to outline employees’ views (Jankowicz, 1995) on their motivation and perceptions of customer service. Thereafter, in each case company, a face-to-face semi-structured interview was conducted with an area manager or director, a staff focus group was conducted, and 12 customer telephone interviews were held. Employees and customers were surveyed on a self-selection basis once company access had been secured. All questions were open-ended in order to support the generative, inductive nature of the research. The data yielded was transcribed verbatim to facilitate a content analysis. Thus due consideration was given to familiarisation of the transcripts, reflection of the relevant literature discussed above, conceptualisation of emergent and consistent themes, recoding/ refinement of the contents, linking the empirical evidence to the secondary sources and, finally, re-evaluation of the data to identify further areas of investigation (Easterby-Smith et al., 1991). Each of these stages are manifest in the remainder of this article. Whilst it is readily acknowledged that each of the research methods, and indeed the underpinning research methodology, are not without inherent l imitations, every reasonable attempt was made to ensure the integrity of the research. For example the research questions were piloted and the research participants were selected at random to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, non-bias and assured of the anonymity of individual responses. The scale of the research is appropriately and deliberately modest in its support the research aim of informing insights into organisational perspectives and employee perceptions of F the critically important F customer service in call centres.
chain when the telephone is the communication channel. This point is illustrated in the remarks of one of the customers interviewed:
4. Empirical findings
Highly developed listening skills may, at first consideration, seem axiomatic for successful operators. However, the observation of agents highlighted that two factors typically make active listening difficult. Firstly, the sheer constancy and repetitiveness of the agents’ work can lead to them to only passively listening to individual customer needs and, instead, defaulting to the standardised procedures. The following interaction, observed during the research, provides a powerful example of this.
4.1. Customer perspectives Two dimensions of customer service were consistently raised as contributors to a high quality of service: first, agent friendliness and efficiency, and second, product cost and call centre convenience, both of which are explained in turn below. Due to the absence of any tangible or visual representation of the call centre company, the surveyed customers tended to base their opinion of the company soley on their transactions with the agents. Therefore the voice, tone and general friendliness of the agent becomes a direct extension of the call centre brand, a personification of the company. The ‘soft’ aspects of customer service such as responsiveness, assurance and empathy assume heightened importance in the quality
‘‘I find the attitude of the person on the other end of the telephone very important. If they are professional and friendly, I am more likely to buy their product. I have telephoned three other insurance companies today and I have insured myself with Alpha Insurance Services even though they are marginally more expensive than other quotes I have had. That’s because the people [agents] are helpful and friendly and they have a deservedly good reputation for customer service’’. To develop the point of the centrality of agent friendliness further, the all-important customer interface skills may be described as a composition and result of effective training in product knowledge and company procedures, and, above all, high level communication skills. Observation of agents at work indicated that those who consistently managed positive customer relations and achieved sales displayed communication skills which are characterised by adaptation to the customer cues and effective listening skills. The successful agents did not standardise their communication, rather they adapted it in tone, length and even language in what represents a subtle Mandarin demotic shift in response to the signals they received from each individual caller. This is exemplified in the comments of one successful agent: ‘‘When someone calls, if they sound happy and bright you must be like them. They will not be happy if you seem depressed and unenthusiastic. The other side of the coin is someone who is really dry and curt. They don’t want to speak about the weather, they want to do the business and get off the phone.’’
Customer (irately)F’’I have called five times now and I want to speak to a supervisor. You cannot help me. I have been asked for my policy number every time and every time I have had to explain my situation again. I’m sick to death of this I want to speak to a supervisor.’’ AgentF‘‘Certainly. Can I have your policy number please?’’
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The second factor which detracts from agents’ active listening is concentration distractions. The majority of call centres are open plan. This acts to allow for social exchanges between agents developing, even while simultaneously dealing with customer calls. Frequently, interaction between agent team members was observed with the customer dialogues assuming secondary attention, achieved by the agents turning down the headset microphone. Agent efficiency in call management is clearly related to agents’ communication skills, hence it is not surprising that customers should highlight efficiency as central to quality service. From the feedback yielded in the telephone interviews with the case study call centres, efficiency may be defined as the customer input on his/ her particular data or query being appropriately andFideallyFsensitively and individually managed by the agent, resulting in the desired customer output of a quotation or sale, for example. In general there appears to be an association between shorter calls and customer satisfaction, mirroring the work of Arkin (1997) and Bain and Taylor (1998). However, agents must balance efficiency with courtesy in order to avoid the callers feeling harried to get off the phone. 4.2. Product cost and call centre convenience In the caller evaluations of customer service, product cost was rated as critical. Typically, customers formed judgements on the call centres by taking into account the costs of their calls and the cost of the products, usually in comparison to other call centres. The majority of the customers highlighted that they expect competitive product prices. Further, most of the interviewed customers indicated negative impressions of the company if they were not able to use a free phone or low call rate. However, it was also found that customers who called at premium rates but were satisfied with the overall experience still had a positive view of the company’s customer service, in line with the findings of Bain and Taylor (1998) and Arkin (1997). Thus it appears that it is not the absolute cost that matters to call centre customers, but the cost relative to perceptions of value for money. Finally, the call centre customers emphasised convenience as important differentiating elements of call centre offerings. Convenience to customers comprises business hours for customer access, efficiency in call handling (as described above) and time-saving. One quote epitomises the significance of convenience and price sensitivity too: ‘‘The time saved [by using call centres] on walking to and from shops is great. I can get four or five quotes in half an hour, which helps save money as well.’’
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It emerged that convenience aspects are important due to changing work and social patterns. For example, many callers work flexible and varying hours, admitted to finding their lifestyles more stressful and many were working females who have less time for domestic tasks including administration. These patterns may be seen to reflect life in post-modern times where there are expectations of instant gratification, asynchronicity and ready consumption (Harvey, 1995). With regard to the customers’ views on the service standard they received in each of the three case study call centres, Alpha Insurance Services was consistently rated well. One customer, for example, opined that: ‘‘Compared to some of the others [call centres], the service levels were excellent. The operator was friendly but efficient and professional as well. That is the reason I bought the policy. And it was a little cheaper. ‘‘(laughs) This statement also encapsulates the quality service dimensions already discussed. Views on the customer service experienced at Bravo Insurance Services was mixed while most of the Charlie Insurance Services customers reported that they were dissatisfied with the service experienced, viz: ‘‘The person at the other end of the telephone was really impolite. Because I had an unusual question she was annoyed and I could tell that from the tone of her voice’’; ‘‘The service from the operators is appalling. They only care about the wages they pick up. She [the operator] was lazy and abrupt. I won’t be calling back!’’ (slams down the phone) It is evident, therefore, that the performance of the front line operators is crucial to the call centre company’s image and performance. Consequently it is imperative that they are able and inclined to offer quality service. But is this the case?
5. Employee perceptions A constant refrain from all of the staff who participated in the focus group sessions is the tedium and pressure in their job. The following quotes, derived across all three case organisations, are illustrative of this finding. Job pressure and also antipathy towards management is apparent in one respondent’s comments: ‘‘There are very high stress levels and quite frankly there is management incompetence at all levels of the company. ‘‘Management antipathy is echoed by other interviewees, for example: ‘‘Management are always looking at you, waiting for you to do something wrong’’ and ‘‘Management can get very suspicious. We are constantly monitored and it just leads to more stress. ‘‘Job tedium is expressed thus by two representative
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staff: ‘‘[The job] is mundane. It can get like a production line. You can take twelve minutes to do a quote and say that person’s name over 10 times, put them on hold and then forget their name!’’ and ‘‘I feel like I am trapped here sometimes.’’ The signals from the staff on the standard of customer performance they consider their company to offer were more mixed. Overall, the views on this from Alpha Insurance Services were the most positive. This positive opinion is, however, tempered by the impact of pressure of achieving targets. The two quotes below bear witness to the target pressure. ‘‘SometimesFand I think I speak for everyone hereFif your statistics are down and someone calls and is obviously a time waster, I speed through the quote. I deal with them in half the time I would with a serious customer.’’ ‘‘Yes and if your statistics are down I pressure people more and sell things to them that they may not require just to improve my stats.’’ Again, the reliance on employee performance can be seen as critical to the company image and performance. Effective performance is clearly beneficial to the company, but, conversely, the effect of poor customer service may well extend beyond the experience of callers in building up a negative image which may deter potential callers. Employees from Bravo Insurance Services are unanimously highly critical of the standard of the customer service provided by their company, and, implicitly, themselves. Customer service is described simply by one respondent as being ‘‘terrible’’. In an almost Fawlty Towers-esque way the customer service section is seen as ineffective: ‘‘We have a separate customer service department and you can never get through there.’’ For one employee at least, the root cause of the poor customer service is management neglect of customer service in pursuit of sales, viz: ‘‘The management put too much emphasis on sales as opposed to making sure the customer comes first. As a result there are so many complaints.’’ Customer service standards offered by Charlie Insurance Services are, according to the focus group participants, more satisfactory although the employees appear to have little interest in them. In general it seems evident that there is potential for employees to offer better standards of service and hence increase customer satisfaction; certainly there is significant potential for the employees to feel they are offering a better service. Boredom borne of the repetitive nature of agents’ jobs, monitoring of performance and pressure of sales targets, each of which may result in employee disaffection with work and high labour turnover as identified earlier, are particular sources of employees’ dislikes. As far as the employees themselves are concerned, their employment
experiences would be enhanced significantly by greater job diversification, restructured remuneration which places less emphasis on bonus payments for achieving targets and rewards standards of customer service, opportunities for training and development and greater employee involvement.
6. Senior manager perspectives All three interviewees include customer service in their statements on their company’s competitive advantage. Customer service, cost-saving and product price, convenience and access, technology and marketing are all cited as means of achieving competitive advantage. Only in one company though, Alpha Insurance Services, is the primacy of employee performance in securing company success explicitly stated in its market positioning and reflected in employment practices, most notably product knowledge and customer care training and appraisals. Here, staff are considered ‘‘very significant’’ in customer service, particularly given the very nature of call centre business as highlighted earlier. The Area Manager of Alpha Insurance Services expresses this significance thus: ‘‘They [staff] are the people who have contact with the customer so it is vital that they are properly trained and have the right personality to do the job. This is even more important in call centres where you do not have the benefit of shop fittings etc. to deliver a service package.’’ It must be said that both Bravo Insurance Services and Charlie Insurance Services acknowledge the role of their staff, with prompting describing them respectively as ‘‘the most important asset with have’’ and ‘‘the lifeblood of the organisationy. the only point of sale our customers have’’. However, this recognition does appear rather limited in both declarations of competitive advantage and explanations of measures adopted to ensure and improve employee performance. Conspicuously, none of the three case companies raised the issue of employee views on their employment experiences or levels of customer service, strongly suggesting that they are not considered relevant. All three managers in unison consider that, while they do not achieve customer satisfaction without exception, the customer service provided is high in general. For Alpha Insurance Services this assertion is in line with the views of the customer and staff research participants. For Bravo Insurance Services and Charlie Insurance Services, this view is evidently in contrast to the opinions of their customers and staff, yet the senior managers seem oblivious to this. It may also be telling that in the former company staff turnover is higher than the industry average and customer retention lower; in the
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latter company there is a rigid hierarchical organisation structure which draws a dividing line between management and front line staff, a long established organisation culture, relatively less investment in technology and some tension between agents recruited to telesales and agents moved here from other areas of the organisation which they preferred. It is singularly Alpha Insurance Services that has the smallest service gap for it emerges as providing the highest standard of customer service and satisfaction, the most positive employee perceptions, and an organisational perspective expressed by a senior manger which explicitly recognised the centrality of staff to its business.
7. Conclusions Call centres are a relatively recent phenomenon in a market led culture of consumerism and consumption. They purport to offer instantly available and gratifying products and services and, as such, can themselves be viewed as a post-modern motif in the nature of their offering. In an ever-expanding and increasingly competitive operating environment, customer service is a critical success factor for UK call centres. Because of the unique medium of service exchange in call centres, callers’ impressions of the company are based largelyFif not soleyFon the nature of their service encounters in the first instance. Thus the performance of the front line staff, the agents, is of heightened importance. In addition to product cost, which is often compared to those of other call centres, it is evident that customers’ main demands are for value for money and call centre convenience in access. Beyond these characteristics, it appears customers’ wants include the features of agent friendliness and efficiency in a service exchange that at least seems to be non-standard and to involve the agent’s active listening. Should call centres consistently include these characteristics in their service offering, not only will their reputation for service quality spread, but they will evidently enjoy something of a service differentiation. For within the context of the empirical work, some service gaps are stark. Only in one case organisation, Alpha Insurance Services, is there overall congruence between the organisational perspectives of the service offered, as indicated by the customer and senior managers’ views, and employees’ perceptions of the levels of customer service they give. Indeed, even in this organisation both the senior manager and employees participating in the research admitted that their service standards are not always consistent. Compared to the inclinations of staff to provide quality service and customer experiences of that service in the other two case organisations, especially in Bravo Insurance Services, however, the standard of customer service in Alpha Insurance
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Services is conspicuously high. Neither of the senior managers interviewed in Bravo Insurance Services and Charlie Insurance Services seemed aware of either their employees’ or customers’ dissatisfaction with the customer service, despite the close monitoring of agents. These mangers, in contrast, believe that, with some exceptions, their companies achieve high levels of customer satisfaction. That these service gaps exist in the call centres studied, strongly suggests that there is an opportunity for competitive advantage for their competitors if they can achieve higher levels of awareness and success in customer service. Moreover, if the organisations studied are representative of call centres is general, it may well be the case that there is significant potential for improving customer service and satisfaction across the call centre industry. Consistently achieving customer satisfaction when relying on employees who are typically bored by and stressed in their jobs is challenging. However, there is little evidence to suggest that senior managers in call centres are adopting a strategic stance on this important employment practices in the call centre industry run counter to the general development and direction of human resource management principles and practices. Embracing more contemporary human resource management strategies and practices in, most notably, job design and employee development, may, ironically, be the route by which call centres can achieve customer satisfaction. Despite the growth of the call centre industry in the UK and the need for ‘urgent attention [to be paid to] the running, staffing and management of call centre operations’ (Bailey, 1998), the research attention devoted to human resource management in call centres is insufficient, just as it has been the USA (Frenkel et al., 1998). Research work has recently started on developing human resource practices that support customer service in call centres, most notably on recruitment (Dale, 1999; Whitehead, 1999) and training (Brown, 1998; Bailley 1998; Davis, 1999). However, further investigating human resource management approaches and policies in UK call centres still constitutes one conspicuously viable direction of further research (Brown, 1999) which should be of interest and value to call centres. Another more abstract, but nevertheless worthwhile, new direction of research would be an examination of the significance of call centres in the context of postmodernism. Research in both directions has the potential to ensure greater congruence between organisational perspectives and employee perceptions of the customer service imperative.
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