Role of Internal Marketing Practices in the Service Recovery Performance of Call Center Employees

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the internal marketing philosophy is applicable to call centers operating in Pakistan. This study attempted to investigate the role of internal marketing practices assess through internal communication (Huang & Rundle-Thiele, 2014), employee rewards (Boshoff & Allen, 2000), employee training (Boshoff & Allen, 2000), and employee empowerment (Yavas, Karatepe, Avci, & Tekinkus, 2003) on the service recovery performance (Boshoff & Allen, 2000) of call center employees working in inbound telecom call centers. Primary data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire from 15 telecom call centers located in three major cities namely Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. A simple random sampling technique was implemented to collect data from 318 male and female respondents. Results showed that internal communication, employee rewards and employee training were positively linked with service recovery performance, while a nonsignificant relationship was found between employee empowerment and service recovery performance. Results revealed that internal marketing practices influence toward frontline employee’s service recovery performance. Findings suggested that the call centers operating in the Asian region, especially, in Pakistan, should focus on internal marketing practices to enhance the service recovery performance of the frontline employees.

Nightly Rhythms of Global Work

This essay explores the burdens of nightwork through the eyes of call center employees in India. India’s call centers are revealing of the ways in which work lives are reorganized to fit global processes. When the nights of agents are hitched directly to the days of other places, we witness not only a triumph of the global economy; we also notice certain dysfunctions of a functionally integrated world.

EXPERIENCE OF USE OF LANDING PAGES AT THE UNIVERSITY

Принятая в нашей стране стратегия национального технологического развития (СНТР) оказала влияние на все ступени образования. Ориентация на подготовку кадров для цифровой экономики привела к открытию новых специальностей в университетах, что сказалось на работе ключевых структурных подразделений этих организаций. Изменилась организация учебного процесса, были запущены проекты «цифровая образовательная среда», «цифровой университет». Такие изменения оказали влияние на определяющую структуру любого университета – работу приемной комиссии. Большинство университетов наравне с традиционными способами активно используют альтернативные методы, среди которых особое внимание уделяется сети Интернет. Социальные сети, форумы, контекстная реклама, рассылка по электронной почте и другие средства коммуникации применяются для создания потока посетителей на сайты образовательных организаций. Растущая с каждым годом конкуренция влияет на внешний вид и форму точки входа потенциального слушателя или абитуриента, если раньше пользователи попадали на раздел основного сайта организации, то сегодня это специальные посадочные страницы, созданные по всем правилам дизайна и маркетинга. Отдельную роль в организации набора слушателей через Интернет играет «система управления взаимоотношениями» – база заявок и возможность отслеживать статус их обработки сотрудниками кол-центра. Представлен опыт томских вузов по автоматизации работы приемной комиссии, показан результат использования посадочных страниц для набора студентов на образовательные программы, а также слушателей на программы дополнительного образования. The national technological development strategy adopted in our country has influenced all levels of education [1]. The focus on training personnel for the digital economy has led to the opening of new specialties in universities, which has affected the work of key structural divisions of these organizations. The organization of the educational process has changed, and the projects «digital educational environment» and «digital university» have been launched. Such changes have had an impact on the defining structure of any university - the work of the enrollment board. Most universities on a par with traditional methods actively use alternative methods, among which special attention is paid to the Internet. Social networks, forums, contextual advertising, email newsletters, and other means of communication are used to create a flow of visitors to educational organizations’ websites. Growing competition every year affects the appearance and shape of the entry point of a potential listener or entrant if earlier users got to the main section of the organization’s website, today they are special landing pages created according to all the rules of design and marketing. A separate role in organizing the recruitment of listeners via the Internet is played by the «relationship management system» – a database of applications and the ability to track the status of their processing by call center employees. This paper presents the experience of Tomsk universities in automating the work of the admissions Committee, shows the result of using landing pages for recruiting students for educational programs, as well as students for additional education programs.

Effects of window proximity on perceptions of employees in the call center offices

Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of window proximity on perceptions of employees in the call center offices. Design/methodology/approach A semantic differential scale composed of nine bipolar adjectives, four of which dealt with “planning,” three of “privacy,” while the rest measured “lighting” was applied for evaluation. In total, 92 employees at the TEPE Call Center in the Bilkent District, Ankara, Turkey participated in the research. Findings The results showed that window proximity directly affected the call center employees’ perceptions. In addition, a positive approach was even less affected when the location of the workstation was more at the inner part of the workspace. On the contrary, workstations in front of the window were evaluated more positively, presumably because the employees were happy at feeling roomy and by giving them a higher level of privacy, while also minimizing distractions and interruptions. It was also found that call center employees with secondary education responded more positively than higher educated employees. Research limitations/implications This study was limited to examining the effects of window proximity in a call center on employees’ perceptions of an open-plan office. The study supports the results of planning, privacy and lighting, as well as the study on physical environmental factors, such as design, ambient and social, which are thought to be realized in the future. Originality/value This study presents suggestions that would be useful for increasing the working and solution-focused perceptual performance values in call center environments from the new generation of work areas. They should be appropriate for the psychological and physical needs of employees in twenty-first-century communication environments, especially in spatial environments and for the suitability of the technological equipment used.

The effects of supervisor support and self-efficacy on call center employees’ work engagement and quitting intentions

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate work engagement as a mediator of the impacts of supervisor support and self-efficacy on quitting intentions, and examine self-efficacy as a mediator between supervisor support and work engagement. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 177 call center employees in Malaysia. The aforesaid linkages were tested through structural equation modeling. Findings As hypothesized, self-efficacy mediates the relationship between supervisor support and work engagement, while work engagement mediates the impacts of supervisor support and self-efficacy on quitting intentions. Originality/value Though work engagement is on the decline and employee turnover is on the rise, no attention has been given to investigating the impacts of supervisor support and self-efficacy simultaneously on call center employees’ work engagement and quitting intentions so far. Therefore, the study aims to fill in this void.

The Role of Occupational Stress in the Association between Emotional Labor and Mental Health: A Moderated Mediation Model

This study investigated whether occupational stress factors moderate the effect of emotional labor on psychological distress in call center employees. A cross-sectional and descriptive study using anonymous paper-based survey methods was conducted in a sample of 283 call center employees in South Korea. Participants completed the Emotional Labor Scale, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, and the Korean Occupational Stress Scale. Moderated mediation analyses were conducted using the PROCESS macro in order to investigate the relationship among variables. The results showed that the association between surface acting while having emotional labor and psychological distress was mediated by emotional dissonance. The mediated effect of emotional dissonance was moderated by discomfort in occupational climate, suggesting that improving the occupational environment can lessen the level of psychological distress among emotional workers, and that more attention should be devoted to the development of an intervention at the organizational level in order to prevent mental health problems in this population.

Deductive Approach to Content Analysis

This chapter initially introduces content analysis and elicits different approaches to content analysis. These include the distinctions based on qualitative and quantitative content analysis. It clarifies the differences between inductive and deductive content analysis. It then moves on to deductive content analysis. Through an example, this chapter explains how deductive content analysis is used to elicit different factors that affect job performance of call center workers. The steps of coding, grouping, abstraction, and model development are explained with excerpts from two interview transcripts. The interview transcripts that deal with developing a model for the factors that affect job performance of call center employees in India.