Call Center Operators Research Articles

Design vs practice

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customer involvement in call routing affects the internal operations of the call centre service system by examining customer usability problems with the interactive voice response (IVR) system and the practices of agents used to redirect incorrectly routed calls.Design/methodology/approach– A qualitative case study combined direct observation of live calls through sit-bys with agents and semi-structured interviews conducted with coaches and managers within 13 separate teams across all four functional areas of a call centre operation.Findings– Customer use of the IVR system involved effort, capability, and arrival forms of customer-induced variability, which produced incorrect call inputs into the call centre. Shared norms and attitudes concerning knowledge, IT use, and responsibility for different call types within teams were associated with redirecting practices which lead to the problematic rerouting of calls. Problems with call routing and rerouting negatively affected operational efficiency and undermined customer satisfaction.Research limitations/implications– The paper is based upon a single case study so further research is required to examine how problems identified are manifest in call centre operations of different size and complexity. The qualitative approach develops rich insights but these findings would benefit from a quantitative focus in the future.Practical implications– The customer experience of IVR systems should be continually monitored to identify usability problems and ensure effective design, while call centre management should attempt to increase teams’ awareness of and ability to successfully redirect incorrectly routed calls.Originality/value– The paper conceptualises the mutual influence of macro-level service system design and the micro-level behaviour of customers and agents upon each other. In practice, formal design decisions such as input uncertainty, decoupling, and interdependence patterns are continually reproduced or modified. Shared attitudes and norms of teams and their behavioural influence upon agents’ call handling practices are identified as a cause of coordination problems in call centres service systems. Internal rerouting by agents is also identified as a crucial operational process and important area for future research.

Prevalence and Impact of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders on Job Performance of Call Center Operators in Nigeria.

Background:Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) have been documented among various occupational groups in Nigeria. However, there is limited data on the prevalence of WMSDs among call center operators (CCOs).Objective:To determine the prevalence of WMSDs among CCOs in Nigeria and to explore the extent to which these discomforts impact the daily work activities of the respondents.Methods:374 respondents who were randomly selected from 4 telecommunication companies in Lagos State, Nigeria, participated in this study. They were asked to complete a pretested questionnaire designed to capture the prevalence, impact and associated risk factors of WMSDs among CCOs.Results:42% and 65.2% of respondents experienced at least one WMSDs in the past 7 days, and 12 months, respectively. Women and CCOs who received calls with hand-held phones rather than headsets reported more discomforts during both 7 days and 12 months periods. Neck, shoulder, upper back, and lower back were the most affected areas during past 7 days and 12 months. Discomforts in the neck, low back, and knees prevented most of the respondents from performing their daily work.Conclusion:WMSDs have a serious impact on the daily job activities of the CCOs in Nigeria.

Dynamic Scheduling in a Many-Server, Multiclass System: The Role of Customer Impatience in Large Systems

Problem definition: We study optimal scheduling of customers in service systems, such as call centers. In such systems, customers typically hang up and abandon the system if their wait for service is too long. Such abandonments are detrimental for the system, and so managers typically use scheduling as a tool to mitigate it. In this paper, we study the interplay between customer impatience and scheduling decisions when managing heterogeneous customer classes. Academic/practical relevance: Call centers constitute a large industry that has a global spending of around $300 billion and employs more than 15 million people worldwide. Our work focuses on improving call center operations, which can reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction. Mathematically, customer patience is typically modeled as exponentially distributed for tractability. Our work makes inroads into relaxing this restrictive assumption to allow modeling more realistic call center situations. Methodology: We use heavy traffic–motivated asymptotic queueing machinery that provides us the traction to successfully capture and incorporate the customer impatience distribution into the scheduling problem. In our approach, the scheduling problem reduces to a diffusion control problem, which we solve to propose near-optimal scheduling policies. Results: We propose near-optimal scheduling policies that can be implemented by call centers to improve their quality-of-service metrics. One of our main results is that, for a class of parameters, we establish sufficient conditions for both the optimality and nonoptimality of threshold policies. Managerial implications: Threshold policies are widely used for scheduling. Our work provides additional insight into whether these may be suboptimal. Our work provides an easy-to-implement alternative that can reduce customer abandonments considerably; for instance, our numerical results indicate that for a system with two customer types, the abandonment rate of one class can be lowered by 30% by using our policy relative to the best threshold policy. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2017.0642 .

Physical activity levels and prevalence of low back pain in Thai call-center operators

Background:Call-center operators are exposed to working conditions that indicate an increased risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders. Nevertheless, there are few studies regarding health and working condition in call-center operators. Thus, this study was designed to investigate the physical activity levels and prevalence of low back pain (LBP) in Thai call-center operators.Materials and Methods:A self-reported questionnaire was distributed to 150 operators at a call center to identify the physical activity levels, prevalence of LBP, personal characteristics, and associated work factors.Results:The questionnaire response rate was 70% (n = 105). The participants' age was 27.8 ± 3.1 years, height was 159.97 ± 6.26 cm, weight was 52.89 ± 12.89 kg, and females 86.7% (n = 91), and males 13.3% (n = 14). Participants worked at least 6 days every week, with an average of 8 hours each day. Sixty-one percent of them worked over time with an average 2 h/day. Forty percent of the participants had no exercise; 34.3% exercised 1–2 times/week. Those who did physical exercise spent less than 30 min/time. The overall self-reported prevalence of LBP was 65.7%, and they reported high severity of LBP for 42.9%. All participants reported that their LBP as recurring, and 62.9% reported that LBP was aggravating by sitting during working hours.Conclusion:The call-center operators had a sedentary work style. The majority of operators in this study had low level of physical activity and suffered from low back pain. The prevalence of low back pain was associated to their level of physical activity and work factors.

Call centers and noise-induced hearing loss

Noise is defined as unwelcome sound. It has been estimated that 16% of adult hearing loss in the world is due to noise exposure at the workplace. This report offers a case that diagnosed with hearing loss of whom working as a call center operator at home. Home agent operators should be explored.

Chinese Consumers’ Perceptions of Medical Emergency Identification Systems

The paper explored Chinese consumers’ behavior with specific focus on categories of “mass consumers” and “new mainstream consumers” who together constitute the vast majority of consumers, using an online questionnaire hosted on a Chinese survey website called So jump was used. Through email and social networking, personal requests were sent to known associates across the six strata of the Chinese populations to complete the online questionnaire as well as forward it to their extended networks. It became evident that the consumers have extremely low levels of knowledge about MEISs; they ranked the best method of storing MEIS data as “database storage” such as a cloud service that was managed by an emergency Call Centre operation, followed by “personal portable electronic storage”, and then “printed format.” An overwhelming majority of the respondents believed that a MEIS would offer considerable benefit to their families in an emergency.

정보시스템 품질이 감정노동 성과에 미치는 영향: 항공사 콜센터를 중심으로

Abstract When the crucial role of the agent in communicating with the customer is acknowledged well enough torelieve the agent’s stress, it will lead to the decrease of the agent’s emotional labor and the improvement of the business organization’s performance simultaneously. However, the research on the relationship between information system and the emotional labor has been scarcely conducted even though the importance of the emotional labor isactively researched and discussed these days. Therefore, much effort has been put in this study to fine out how thequality of airline call center information system affects expectations-conformation and how expectations-conformationand self-efficacy affect performance of Emotional Labors. Analysis of the results to target a call center agent 436people, When you provide them with quality information systems, it increased satisfaction and pride in their job. Thismechanisms subsequently reduces the strength of the emotion labor, which ultimately improves the service performance. The implications of this study can be summarized as following: First, this research presented practical guidelines to the organization's decision-makers related to the airline call center operations in order to introduce and expand successful call center information system. Second, this research suggested the possible method to inspect and diagnose the system by way of applying the measurement model mentioned in this research into the airline information system and analyzing it. Third, the performance-measuring model developed in order to measure the performance of the airline call center information system can also be used when we carry out the performance-measuring task in the similar information system as the basis of diagnosing the situation and presentingthe driving directions.

Inter-dependent, heterogeneous, and time-varying service-time distributions in call centers

Traditionally, both researchers and practitioners rely on standard Erlang queueing models to analyze call center operations. Going beyond such simple models has strong implications, as is evidenced by theoretical advances in the recent literature. However, there is very little empirical research to support that body of theoretical work. In this paper, we carry out a large-scale data-based investigation of service times in a call center with many heterogeneous agents and multiple call types. We observe that, for a given call type: (a) the service-time distribution depends strongly on the individual agent, (b) that it changes with time, and (c) that average service times are correlated across successive days or weeks. We develop stochastic models that account for these facts. We compare our models to simpler ones, commonly used in practice, and find that our proposed models have a better goodness-of-fit, both in-sample and out-of-sample. We also perform simulation experiments to show that the choice of model can have a significant impact on the estimates of common measures of quality of service in the call center.

P034. Technostress and primary headache: psychosocial risk

Work and the working environment could have a decisive role in the development of symptoms which, in turn, may determine the onset of some forms of headache, as well as increase the frequency and/or intensity of pre-existing forms. Technostress is one of the new occupational diseases under the ruling of Judge Guariniello (2007) and has been included in the obligations of risk assessment in accordance with T.U. 81/2008 and Legislative Decree 106/2009. Under this term various addictions are covered: video addiction, internet addiction disorder, social network craze, information overload, multitasking, cybersex addiction, and email addiction. The psychologist Craig Brod was the first to coin this term, which can manifest itself with many symptoms: headache, hypertension, anxiety, panic attacks, loss of concentration, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular disorders, depression, loss of libido and even behavioral changes and relational isolation. In the past, this condition mostly affected the manager, it is now widespread among workers of other at-risk groups, such as, call center operators, accountants, networkers, journalists, advertisers and financial analysts. Training for stress prevention (art. 37, TU 81/208) and the evaluation of work-related stress are legal requirements for Italian companies, which would otherwise incur in breach of paragraph 1, article 29 of Law no. 81/2008. Nomophobia is the uncontrolled fear of remaining disconnected from the mobile phone network. The symptoms range from simple anxiety (e.g., low battery or credit, lack of coverage, mobile forgotten) to panic attacks: shortness of breath, dizziness, tremors, sweating, fast heartbeat, chest pain and nausea.

Erratum to: Spending more time with the customer: service providers’ behavioral discretion and call-center operations

The purpose of the present study was to examine service providers’ behavioral discretion regarding length of service time, and the variables that affect their discretion. Our sample consisted of 225 call center employees. They responded to questionnaires concerning burnout, leader–member exchange (LMX), and perceived service climate. Operational data regarding employees’ average call duration in the subsequent 3 months served as proxy of their behavioral discretion. We found that higher service climate and LMX predicted longer call duration, while higher levels of burnout were associated with shorter call duration. Service climate mediated the relationship of LMX with call duration.

Voice Changes in Real Speaking Situations During a Day, With and Without Vocal Loading: Assessing Call Center Operators

Occupational-related vocal load is an increasing global problem with adverse personal and economic implications. We examined voice changes in real speaking situations during a single day, with and without vocal loading, aiming to identify an objective acoustic index for vocal load over a day. Call center operators (CCOs, n=27) and age- and gender-matched students (n=25) were recorded at the beginning and at the end of a day, with (CCOs) and without (students) vocal load. Speaking and reading voice samples were analyzed for fundamental frequency (F0), sound pressure level (SPL), and their variance (F0 coefficient of variation [F0 CV], SPL CV). The impact of lifestyle habits on voice changes was also estimated. The main findings revealed an interaction, with F0 rise at the end of the day for the students but not for the CCOs. We suggest that F0 rise is a typical phenomenon of a day of normal vocal use, whereas vocal loading interferes with this mechanism. In addition, different lifestyle profiles of CCOs and controls were observed, as the CCOs reported higher incidence of dehydrating behaviors (eg, smoking, caffeine). Yet, this profile was not linked with voice changes. In sum, we suggest that F0 rise over a day can potentially serve as an index for typical voice use. Its lack thereof can hint on consequent voice symptoms and complaints.

Staffing Call Centers with Uncertain Arrival Rates and Co‐sourcing

In a call center, staffing decisions must be made before the call arrival rate is known with certainty. Once the arrival rate becomes known, the call center may be over‐staffed, in which case staff are being paid to be idle, or under‐staffed, in which case many callers hang‐up in the face of long wait times. Firms that have chosen to keep their call center operations in‐house can mitigate this problem by co‐sourcing; that is, by sometimes outsourcing calls. Then, the required staffing N depends on how the firm chooses which calls to outsource in real time, after the arrival rate realizes and the call center operates as a M/ M/ N + M queue with an outsourcing option. Our objective is to find a joint policy for staffing and call outsourcing that minimizes the long‐run average cost of this two‐stage stochastic program when there is a linear staffing cost per unit time and linear costs associated with abandonments and outsourcing. We propose a policy that uses a square‐root safety staffing rule, and outsources calls in accordance with a threshold rule that characterizes when the system is “too crowded.” Analytically, we establish that our proposed policy is asymptotically optimal, as the mean arrival rate becomes large, when the level of uncertainty in the arrival rate is of the same order as the inherent system fluctuations in the number of waiting customers for a known arrival rate. Through an extensive numerical study, we establish that our policy is extremely robust. In particular, our policy performs remarkably well over a wide range of parameters, and far beyond where it is proved to be asymptotically optimal.

System, society and dominance effects in the adoption of tele-health: A tri-country comparison

Although there have been many studies of low skilled call centre operators, research on professional workers in call centres is less common and cross-national research on such operations even rarer. This article compares the labour process experiences of tele-nurses – registered nurses in call centre settings – across three countries: the UK, Australia and Sweden. Using cross-national, comparative ethnographies, through a system, society and dominance (SSD) approach, the article explores the common problems tele-nurses face as well as distinctive societal differences in the ways in which this branch of e-health care is being established. The outcomes reveal both societal diversity and mounting pressures towards a globalizing conformity between the three countries with regard to the working practices of tele-nursing. The findings have important implications for whether or not a professional project can be developed around tele-health care.

VoIP Based Tele-medicine Call Center–Issues, Challenges and Proposed Solution

In recent years, medical call centers have started using IP telephony services to minimize the overhead telecom expenses. However, the advent of Voice-Over-IP (VoIP) technology has also created a major discontinuity in telecommunication sector due to illegal VoIP or gray calls, causing a great impact on the voice market. This brought few challenges to the countries’ regulatory bodies. In this paper, we spell out one of the key challenges: in order to mitigate illegal VoIP calls, whether the regulatory body should allow IP telephony to be practiced for both domestic and international voice driven tele-medical consultation center operation combined or separately. We propose architecture and schemes for a medical call center. We also propose some guidelines and/or policies for both call center operator and the telecom regulatory authority. The proposed architecture and schemes are implemented in a pilot project basis in two phases and the test bed result is presented in this article.

The role of general and specific stressors in the health and well-being of call centre operators

The call centre industry has developed a reputation for generating a highly stressful work environment with high absenteeism and turnover rates. Research has identified role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload, and work-family conflict as common stressors in other settings. Call centre research has additionally identified performance monitoring, job design and job opportunities as call centre specific stressors. This study investigated the impact of the identified stressors on burnout, somatic symptomology, and turnover intent among 126 call centre representatives (CCRs) from 11 call centres in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that the common organizational stressors significantly explained between 10% and 53% of the variance in somatic symptomology, burnout (all 3 dimensions) and turnover intent. An additional amount of variance, between 6% and 22% in each of these dependent measures was significantly accounted for by the grouped call centre specific stressors. Overall, common organizational stressors and call centre specific stressors both significantly and independently contributed to burnout, somatic symptomology and turnover intent. These findings are discussed in relation to previous research, and suggestions for improved practice within call centres to safeguard the well-being of workers and for future research are provided.

Fluid approximation analysis of a call center model with time-varying arrivals and after-call work

Important features to be included in queueing-theoretic models of the call center operation are multiple servers, impatient customers, time-varying arrival process, and operator’s after-call work (ACW). We propose a fluid approximation technique for the queueing model with these features by extending the analysis of a similar model without ACW recently developed by Liu and Whitt (2012). Our model assumes that the service for each quantum of fluid consists of a sequence of two stages, the first stage for the conversation with a customer and the second stage for the ACW. When the duration of each stage has exponential, hyperexponential or hypo-exponential distribution, we derive the time-dependent behavior of the content of fluid in each stage of service as well as that in the waiting room. Numerical examples are shown to illustrate the system performance for the cases in which the input rate and/or the number of servers vary in sinusoidal fashion as well as in adaptive ways and in stationary cases.

Postural and Perception Variations When Using Manually Adjustable and Programmable Sit–Stand Workstations in an Emergency Call Center

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONSTwo styles of sit–stand workstations were tested in an emergency (911) call center to quantify postural stress and perception variations. The usual manually adjusted electrically controlled sit–stand workstation was compared with a programmable workstation that automatically changed between seated and standing heights, made forward–backward adjustments, and rotated around the user regularly during a 20-minute cycle. Over 2 working days, neck and seated trunk postures improved with the programmable workstation. Manually controlled sit–stand workstations were not adjusted with the regularity recommended to minimize musculoskeletal discomfort. While seven perceptual measures did not significantly vary between workstations, two others worsened with the programmable workstation: general discomfort and back pain. Participant comments suggested opportunities for design refinements. User training was not included here but would normally further improve results. The programmable workstation improved posture over the manually adjusted workstation, although design refinements and user training in office ergonomics are recommended to maximize benefits.TECHNICAL ABSTRACT Background: Call center workers have high musculoskeletal discomfort, and emergency (911) center workers are among the most affected. Despite many centers including manually controlled sit–stand workstations that facilitate postural changes, these are not typically adjusted with the regularity recommended to minimize musculoskeletal discomfort. Thus, underuse or improper use may be barriers to preventing musculoskeletal disorders and discomfort. Purpose: This study investigates posture and perception of physical factors when using a powered dual-surface manually adjustable workstation and a powered programmable adjustable workstation. Methods: Twelve 911 call-center operators participated. For each workstation, postures were recorded using video cameras over a working day. Nine perception factors were captured at the end of each day using a visual analog scale. Results: Programmable workstation use resulted in significantly lower incidence of at-risk postures in the neck and back and more frequent standing. Perception did not vary significantly between workstations except for an increase in back pain and general discomfort with the programmable workstation. Conclusions: This limited sample exposure to a programmable moving workstation concept should be pursued, though with refinements in larger populations to improve musculoskeletal health of workers in high-stress sedentary environments and should be combined with training. Current observations may be applied to improve programmable workstation aspects that are contributing to perceived discomforts.

Portugues

Even more companies adopt the services of call centers due the facility and operability of these professionals. This way, this article has as main objective to evaluate the satisfaction rate of the Call Center operators of a cement industry. For this evaluation, it was applied a questionnaire based in the eight pillars of Walton to 50 workers. The results showed that, despite the exhaustive workday, the collaborators consider the time interval enough to perform their activities and are proud to work in the organization. However, in the aspect “salary” most of the employees are dissatisfied, and this should be a matter that the company has to be attentive to avoid demotivation of the employees. This way, is conclusive that hardly is possible to obtain 100% of the employees satisfied, nevertheless, the organization should always attack their weakness, and create ways to humanize more the rank of staff, for example, giving recovery pauses and activities as labor gymnastics for the workers during their workday.

Queuing Time Decision Model with the Consideration on Call Center Customer Abandonment Behavior

To improve customer satisfaction through prompting waiting time is a key way for a call center. The practice shows that the length of prompted waiting time has an important effect on customer satisfaction and the utility of the call center. Based on queuing theory we develop a maximum system utility optimization model with consideration of customer psychology behavior. First, we study the impact of the rule of prompting queuing time on customer patient and abandonment behavior. Second, we use a probability function to describe the change of customer psychology and abandonment behavior, and derive the optimal system utility of calculation formula under steady state of queuing systems. Numerical experiments illustrate that the optimal prompted strategy of different patient groups of customers under various call center operation modes as practice guidelines.

Organisational and individual strengths use as predictors of engagement and productivity

This study sought to determine whether Perceived Organisational Support for Strengths Use (POSSU) and Proactive Behaviour towards Strengths Use (PBSU) predict engagement and productivity in a sample of South African call centre operators. Participants were 218 call centre operators within the financial services sector (females=51%, males = 49%), representative of the South African population, and predominantly holding secondary educational qualifications. Information was gathered through a cross-sectional quantitative research design comprising self-report measures. The measures were administered on site within a call centre of one of the country's largest financial service providers. Structural equation modelling methods were implemented to establish the model fit of the constructs in the study and to explain structural paths between the variables. Findings showed that POSSU and PBSU are significant predictors of work engagement. PBSU predicted productivity. In addition, engagement mediated the relationship between POSSU/PBSU and productivity. This supports the theoretical context of the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and provides grounds for further exploration of the strengths-based approach (on both organisational and individual levels) as a developmental approach to utilise within organisations to enhance engagement and productivity.