Study’s Objectives
The study analyzes how managers in contact centers ensure that customer service representatives have all the skills and knowledge necessary to provide high quality customer service. We believe this to be a particular challenge in the contact center industry because the information that customer service representatives must use is often complex and rapidly changing. Further, the use of part-time and temporary workers, as well as high rates of absenteeism and turnover, create additional challenges around knowledge management. We hope to identify best practices regarding how to manage knowledge in this environment. Specific firm practices and outcomes that we will examine include HR practices, knowledge management practices, absenteeism, turnover and service quality.
Benefits for Participants
Participants will receive a copy of the results of our study as soon as they are available. Additionally, they will be given a copy of the Canada Call Centre Industry Benchmarking Report and the Global Call Centre summary report.
In this study we examine such questions as:
- What are the challenges associated with managing knowledge in call centres?
- What management practices enhance knowledge acquisition, use, and transfer?
- How is knowledge management made more difficult by the need to also address cost and flexibility pressures?
- How have firms adapted their work arrangements in response to the pressure to manage knowledge, and to also be flexible and reduce cost?
- How do knowledge management and related HR practices impact worker performance and stress and key firm outcomes including absenteeism, turnover and service quality?
Confidentiality:
The information you provide will be treated as strictly confidential. We guarantee that no one outside of our research team will ever have access to your responses. We will analyse the findings in a way that no one individual or organisation may be identified.
Contact:
If you have any questions about this project or wish to participate please contact Brenda A. Lautsch by email or by phone at 778.782.3733.
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Interview with Ann C. Frost
