Call Centers: The New Assembly Line

The advent of the Internet, along with other technology advances, has caused dramatic changes to the way buying and selling is done. Technology has impacted how companies do business, including changing distribution methods and customer service systems. Inbound call centers used for customer service have become increasingly popular as a way of trying to reduce cost and increase efficiency. By centralizing customer service staff into large facilities, companies can help reduce the overhead costs associated with many smaller offices in different locations. Call centers also provide advantages in staffing for call volume, different time zones and business hours, and companies can take advantage of the cheaper local labor rates from different parts of the world. However, due to factors like high staff turnover rate and customer dissatisfaction, the savings from using call centers may not be as big as hoped.

Management Tools

In call centers, management staff can supervise a large number of employees. One reason for this is that the technology provides them with tools for monitoring their workers. For example, a manager can know exactly when their employees started and ended their workday based on when they swiped their ID badge. Managers and employees also have metrics available to them for everything from the number of calls and emails the employee answered to the length of time that it took them (Ball & Margulis, 2011). This means that an employee can get instant feedback on their productivity without ever speaking with management. The technology also makes it easier to anticipate heavier call volume times and adjust staffing accordingly. The technology can essentially do the work of analyzing heavy workload times and scheduling staff accordingly.

Current Management Challenges for Call Centers

According to Childs and Donovan (2012), among the biggest problems that call centers face are high attrition rates. These attrition rates come at a big cost to the company financially; Childs and Donovan (2012) estimate that it costs the company $4,000 for each employee that needs to be replaced. Frequent turnover also hurts the customer service experience that the company is providing (DeNucci, 2011).

Job stress and job dissatisfaction are often cited as being among the primary causes for this high attrition rate (Kjellberg et al., 2010). Many studies have been done in many different locations on the factors contributing to this job stress and dissatisfaction. One theory, proposed by Ball and Margulis (2011), is that the constant monitoring provided to management by the technology contributes to job stress and dissatisfaction.