Forum for Science, Industry and Business

How to make customers happy

Are you having trouble with the dishwasher? Or with a computer, that doesn’t work as it should do? Or with an incomprehensible instruction manual for the new book shelf? No problem – there is a service hotline for cases like these after all.

But if you call them, in most cases you won’t be able to talk to someone close by, but you will be transferred to a call center abroad instead. To cut costs many companies have not only moved their production units, but also their customer services departments to cheaper offshore locations.

The researchers interviewed more than 800 customers of German speaking call centers with locations in Germany, Poland and Turkey for their study. They examined how the location of the call center, the perceived accent of the call center agents and their customer orientation were reflected in the customers’ assessment of the call center’s performance. Assessment criteria were, amongst others, the customer satisfaction relating to the agent’s service, the trust put into them and if the customers were at the end willing to recommend the service hotline in question. While customers clearly perceived the different accent in the case of foreign call centers, this was scarcely of any importance to them in the evaluation of the service provided by the agents. Knowledge of the location – in the home country or abroad – was no reason to complain about the consulting service for most customers. The results of the new study show that the only decisive criterion for a positive evaluation was the customer orientation of the call center agents. Therefore, the economists recommend companies to put a stronger focus on this aspect when they are recruiting call center staff – no matter if in Germany or abroad.

Dr. Ute Schönfelder | idw
Further information:
http://www.uni-jena.de/

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