Volume 17, Number 2 Article by Abhoy K Ojha and Anand Kasturi June, 2005
'Successful' Call Centre Employees: Understanding Employee Attributes and Performance Evaluation Processes :
In the last few years, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have had a significant impact on the way in which work, particularly nonmanufacturing or support activity in organisations, is organised. ICT based call centres constitute a large proportion of the re-organised work. Given its peoplecentric nature, hiring, training and retaining a workforce that is skilled and professional is key to the success of call centres, and the industry needs to understand the attributes that make for a successful call centre employee. Abhoy K Ojha and Anand Kasturi tested certain hypotheses based on the existing literature. Data collected from one call centre in the UK and another in India was used to identify eight personal attributes that have an impact on call centre agent performance. It emerged that successful agents were motivated intrinsically and extrinsically, were confident of their knowledge, had a desire to learn, were empathetic and performed well in a team, while at the same time they could cope with stress and the 'bad' customer.
However, only two hypotheses were supported by the study. Agents who experience high intrinsic motivation in their work and those who are team players apparently achieve high levels of performance. Surprisingly, extrinsic motivation, an ability to empathise with the customer, and an inability to control stress seemed to have no impact on performance. Further, the study yielded counter intuitive indications that those who are confident of their knowledge and have a desire to learn are poor performers, while those who avoid bad customers are high performers. Such results may signal shortcomings in evaluator behaviour and the performance evaluation process. Induction and training programmes may need closer scrutiny.
Reprint No 05205b
