Customer satisfaction with call centre care: an explanatory empirical study of service encounters in Germany Online publication date: Sat, 23-Aug-2014
by Torsten J. Gerpott
International Journal of Services and Operations Management (IJSOM), Vol. 13, No. 4, 2012
Abstract: In many business sectors interactions between existing customers and companies are mainly handled via call centres (CC). The present paper develops hypotheses on direct and indirect associations between eight features of customer interactions with CC response systems and agents on the one hand and care satisfaction of calling customers on the other. The hypotheses are tested in a sample of 108 customers of mobile communication network operators in Germany. The participants contacted their supplier's CC for advice purposes and filled in a questionnaire immediately after the encounter. PLS analysis of the survey data suggests that care satisfaction of calling customers is most closely related to the quality of the service process prior to the dialogue with a CC agent and to the request-specific expertise of the agent as perceived by the caller. In contrast, the social communication skills attributed to the agent by the customer as well as the objective duration of talk and waiting periods contributed much less toward explaining care satisfaction of CC users.
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Services and Operations Management (IJSOM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:
Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.
If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com