Customer Satisfaction and Emotion in the Call Centre Context

Abstract

Call centres defined here as “a physical or virtual operation within an organization in which a managed group of people spend most of their time doing business by telephone, usually working with a computer-automated environment’ (Marr and Parry 2004, p.55) have seen rapid growth in recent years. A number of factors may explain this. The falling costs of telecommunications have opened new low cost possibilities for many service based companies to deal with their customers through the medium of the telephone, rather than face to face. The sector has taken on board many of the principles of industrialisation to reduce costs of servicing customers in a manner which allows less discretion to be taken by employees, whose actions are guided by automated systems. Many would argue that call centres can provide numerous benefits to customers compared with face to face contact, including longer hours during which service is available, and often the provision of specialized services which would not be available on a local face to face basis. Nevertheless, although call centres can potentially offer customers many benefits, criticism often focuses on lengthy times taken to answer a call; a lack of joined up information systems and when customers finally get through; an inflexible attitude by call centre staff who operate in an industrialized context, and are frequently seen as lacking the common sense to solve a customer’s simple problem.