Examining the Future of the Call Center Industry in Employment: Comparing the Nature of Work between Inbound and Outbound Call Center through Employee Perception
The contact center industry, or simply known as the ‘call center industry’ is one of the many new sectors that have flourished greatly in this age of information technology. The growth of this industry is evident. For instance, the advertisements of job openings in the newspaper and internet job markets often show available positions in the call center industry. Available jobs are often call center agents, managers, or team leaders – all for both inbound and outbound work. This evident fact that call center companies are always in need of additional muscle in their operations show that their industry is growing in a considerable pace. However, it is also possible that this can also mean the exact opposite. The exact opposite is that perhaps there is a high turnover rate in call center companies – which is the main reason why they are always on the lookout for fresh applicants. Call center work is notoriously known as being stressful and demanding. Basically, those two factors can be enough reason on the claim of high turnover rate in call center companies. Furthermore, the stressful work and high turnover rates are supported in many studies. However, what is still unexplored or perhaps not further explored, is the difference of work nature between outbound and inbound call centers. The researcher feels that this can be best elaborated by call center employees in both inbound and outbound operations. Examining the concerns of call center workforce and their differences in experience can provide a peek on the future of the call center industry in employment. Obviously, the aim of this study is to provide a descriptive research regarding the perception of call center employees about the nature of work in outbound and inbound operations.
Aims and Objectives
The aim of the study is to investigate the nature of work in inbound and outbound operations in call centre companies by exploring employee perceptions regarding the matter. By nature of work, it means it will involve investigation of work concerns of employees such as satisfaction, stress and motivation. To know this, employees will be asked regarding different tasks in their job and how they relate with them or perceive them. Nature and work in inbound and outbound operations will be compared and will be analyzed to determine the future of the call centre industry in human resources.
The objective of the study is to survey call center employees, asking them about different trends in their work, as well as a description of their daily tasks. Basically, this is to provide statistical evidences about the future of the call center industry in terms of workforce and to be able to analyze the situation to understand the possible cause of phenomenon and to be able to provide recommendations regarding the issue. Simply, the objective of the study is to know more about the call center industry by gaining insights from employees. This may also involve interview on human resource managers to confirm the perceptions of the employees that will be surveyed. Through these objectives and aims, it is hoped that the nature of work in inbound and outbound operations of call centers will be compared.
Significance of the Study
This study may be useful in gaining insights on the future of the call center industry. The term ‘future’ is very general and many factors should be involved to determine the general future of the sector. However, focusing on human resources is one step ahead of determining its future – because employees play an important role in the operations of inbound and outbound call centers. Without employees, call centers will be nothing. Limited number of employees means that companies can only accommodate limited number of customers. Low satisfaction and high stress can also affect performance of employees, which is highly linked with the progress of the company. In other words, employees – particularly call center agents – play an important role in the future of call centers because they are the majority who operates the operations of the company. Thus, gaining their opinion can lead to the discovery of concerns in call center management, specifically factors that should be resolved, improved or reviewed.
Exploring the views of call center agents can help increase knowledge on call center operations, particularly common tasks and experiences of employees within inbound and outbound operations. Access to this information can increase the improvement and development of the nature of work in call center because this can pinpoint new and emerging issues regarding employee concerns – such as stress, satisfaction, difficulty of tasks, etc. Basically, it can be helpful in structuring a career development in call center companies. This specific approach can also be the start of investigating other concerns within the industry to gain insights on its future.
Statement of the Problem
There are many issues that involve employee perception in call center’s nature of work. One issue is career development. Career development in call centers is difficult to achieve due to the fact that they have high-pressure work environments. Themes such as such as stress, disengagement, resistance, emotional labor and reduced space for “escape” are present or commonly experienced by call centre agents ( 1998; , 1998). Thus, it can be said that such negative conditions can inhibit call centre agents’ possibility for improvement. A crucial factor in the career development of call centre agents is the development of their mental and emotional health. Skills enhancement may be the key to operations improvement, but as mentioned, it could produce staff-turnovers and low ROI. (2003) concluded that the work of call centre agents is more stressful, less satisfying and less psychological and physiological healthy occupation than other works performed by the general population. (2003) suggested that the careers of call centre agents would be shaped by providing decision-making autonomy to assist self-determination, offering training and development to boost feelings of competence and creating a supportive organizational culture and climate. However, performing such tasks on the agents should first consider many factors e.g. the perception of the employees on the nature of their work. Furthermore, inbound and outbound work has different operations and perhaps has different effects on employee perception and performance because of their difference in purpose. Inbound operations handle customer complaints and inquiry, while outbound operations handle marketing. Knowing the nature of work of the two operations based on employee perception can be useful in acknowledging their differences and helpful in developing effective career development programs. The findings will provide insights on the future of call center in terms of labor forces and employee satisfaction. The problem, however, is that employees have diverse perceptions regarding the nature of their work. That is why this study aims to gather, analyze and categorize them, and then later to use them as evidences to predict a portion of the call center industry’s future – its future on employment.
To address the problem of the study, the following general research questions will be explored:
1. What is the perception of outbound call center agents regarding the nature of their work?
2. What is the perception of inbound call center agents regarding the nature of their work?
3. What is the difference between the nature of work in outbound call center operations and the nature of work in inbound call center operations?
4. What is the future of call center employment based on the perception of inbound and outbound call center agents?
On the other hand, the specific questions that will be explored in the study are:
1. What are the factors that make inbound and outbound employees satisfied in their work?
2. What are the factors that make inbound and outbound employees unsatisfied in their work?
3. Are inbound employees more satisfied than inbound employees, or vive-versa?
4. Are inbound employees more stressed than outbound employees, or vice-versa?
5. Do inbound call centers have more employee turnover possibilities than outbound call centers, or vice-versa?
Background/Literature Review
A call centre uses telephone and computer technology to deliver services to customers that perform inbound and outbound services. In other words, it is a collection of resources providing an interface between the service provider and its remote customers ( 2002). A person who works for a call center company is known as a call center agent or a customer service representative. In a call center, agents are supported by quite elaborate information-and-communication-technology (ICT) equipment, such as a private branch exchange (PBX), an automatic call distributor (ACD), a personal computer (PC) and assorted databases (2002).
The two types of call center are inbound and outbound call centers. Inbound traffic call centers acquire customer generated calls, while outbound traffic call centers produce representative generated calls such as telemarketing (, 2002). Inbound and outbound call center agents experience work differently, particularly the nature of their work. (2002) explained that inbound call centers are usually supported by interactive voice response (IVR) units, which serve as elaborate answering machines. Through a selection of menus, IVR’s attempt to respond to the customer’s needs and, if necessary, help route the call to an appropriate call center agent ( 2002). On the other hand, (2002) stated: “Outbound call centers may have predictive dialers, which dial before a rep is available, attempting to anticipate when one will be available, thus reducing rep idle time, but unfortunately leading to some calls without a calling party, thus annoying the called parties” (p.2).
Companies acquire call centers for a variety of benefits, namely: twenty-four hour, everyday access and interaction with its customers anywhere in the world; minimizing the time spent on activities that have to get done but have little to do with the principal line of business; and enhancing productivity by help in growing revenue faster than expenditures by reducing resources and time devoted to back office processes ( 2001).
Literatures show that human capital is one of the main problems of call centers. (2003) conducted explored the relationship between stress, satisfaction and the four dimensions of psychological empowerment (meaning, impact, self-determination and competence) within a call centre and found that call center agents were “more stressed, less satisfied and reported poorer mental and physical health than the general working population” (p.139). Furthermore, agents also perceived themselves less empowered than other workers in an office environment. (2003) subtly suggested that the reason for those results is that employee empowerment in call centers is overtly general and lacks specific focus.
Slightly similar, (2002) explored team working in a call centre and how this is shaped for the employees by an increase in technical control, the dynamics of emotional labor and gender politics. Based on case studies and drawing on its theoretical insights, the study found that teamworking results in a fundamental contradiction involving a “soft’’ discourse versus a regime of increasing managerial control (, 2002). Furthermore the results also showed that employees have little discretion over the way work is organized (, 2002).
(2002) investigated the role that human capital plays in explaining the job satisfaction and performance of contingent and regular customer service representative. Their findings show that contingent agents had less human capital but higher job satisfaction than regular workers. In addition, they also found that human capital mediated the relationship between work status and job satisfaction, but no performance differences were found between contingent and regular call center agents.
Methodology
The research design that will be used in the study is descriptive research. Descriptive research intends to present facts concerning the nature and status of a situation, as it exists at the time of the study ( 1994). It is also concerned with relationships and practices that exist, beliefs and processes that are ongoing, effects that are being felt, or trends that are developing. ( 1970) In addition, such approach tries to describe present conditions, events or systems based on the impressions or reactions of the respondents of the research ( 1994).
Respondents in the study will be call center agents who will be chosen randomly from different inbound and outbound call center service companies across the country. They will be chosen through stratified random sampling and will be surveyed with a self-report survey instrument. A five-point Likert Scale will be used to measure the level of satisfaction of the employees on each statement in the questionnaire. The occupational stress indicator (OSI) ( 2003) will also be used as an additional questionnaire to determine stress level of the respondents. The OSI will also utilize a 5-point Likert Scale. In the Likert technique, the degree of agreement or disagreement) is given a numerical value ranging from one to five, thus a total numerical value can be calculated from all the responses (, 2004). The equivalent weights for the answers will be:
Range Interpretation
4.50 – 5.00 Strongly Agree
3.50 – 4.00 Agree
2.50 – 3.49 Uncertain
1.50 – 2.49 Disagree
0.00 – 1.49 Strongly Disagree
Finally, personal interviews will be conducted on both employees and supervisors to determine the technical nature of work of inbound and outbound call center agents. This will be done with a guide of an open interview questionnaire regarding the matter. Data will be analyzed with the use of the latest SPSS software and will be compared with the use of chi-square.
Conclusion
The study will investigate the difference of between nature of work of inbound and outbound call centers through the perception of call center agents. This will be limitedly done through statistical research using survey questionnaires. However, secondary interviews could be useful as support data. It is hoped that this study will be able to find significant differences between the perception of inbound and outbound agents regarding work.
References:
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