Call Center Performance

The Call Center Forum for several years has been the focal point for the FIC's ongoing research into strengthening call center management and performance

In the early stages of their development, call centers were employed predominantly as a low-cost channel to perform routine customer transactions and resolve customer problems. As such, they were viewed as cost centers, around which emerged important challenges concerning information technology investment and human resource expense and management.

More recently, call centers have become important sales and service channels for financial services companies. To an increasing extent, call centers are viewed as profit centers and one among an array of sales and service delivery channels. The call center as a key contact point for customers, and an important source of revenue, raises new challenges for call center management and performance.

The research agenda of the Call Center Forum has reflected this evolution in the role of the call center in the retail strategy of financial services companies. The earliest efforts focused on the effective use of information technology to provide cost-effective customer service; optimal staffing regimes to control expense, and other human resource management issues. With the evolution to a more sales-oriented environment, the research agenda has involved statistical analysis of customer behavior data to infer the technological and human resource components of delivering excellent customer service.

In addition, human resource issues such as employee job satisfaction and the implications for retention, turnover and absenteeism are part of a larger study, "The Future of Work", which is funded by the Russell Sage and Rockefeller Foundations. This larger study involves an examination of call center performance in the telecommunications and airline industries, as well as financial services, and so it provides a cross-industry view of the human resource management challenges in large call centers.

Wharton faculty members participating in this research agenda include Larry Brown, Noah Gans, Chip Hunter, and Steffanie Wilk, in addition to researchers from other academic institutions. Corporate forum members include banks, mutual fund companies, and insurance companies. The research is, by design, field-based and therefore often directly involves the call center sites of forum members.

The research agenda of the Call Center Forum has addressed the interrelationships of technology, process design, and human resource management and their impact on both the efficiency of the center and the customer experience. This has included the following topics:

  • How information technology investment relates to call center performance.
  • Determining how call center management can provide cost-effective service, while maintaining a skilled and motivated work force.
  • Using mathematical service models to characterize the tradeoffs between investment in service quality and customer retention.
  • Using modeling and scheduling software to determine optimal staffing plans that minimize cost.
  • Determining optimal information search strategies for customer service representatives and appropriate management practices to support effective customer service.
  • Understanding the human resource management practices that can minimize absenteeism and turnover and enhance employee satisfaction.
  • Using queuing theory and other statistical techniques to analyze customer behaviors for inferences about customer expectations and the customer service process.