Job Task Analysis, Term Paper Example

An entry level job in a customer service call center

Introduction

This paper examines the job / task descriptions for an entry level position within a customer services call center; this from the lens of a management perspective.

Job Task Analysis Worksheet

Organizations Benefitting From Customer Service Call Centers

Any firm that is selling products or services and has a high degree of customer interaction will benefit from a customer service call center. This particularly applies to those large online retail stores and those selling insurance products or other financial services products.  Computer firms like DELL also enable orders to be placed in order to custom build computer services products. Firms that will benefit from this form of job / task analysis are those that use the facility of outsourcing call centers to overseas locations that use foreign workers.  A good example being that of India that provides call center services to the UK and other European locations. (Bolton, S.  2005)

Call Centers provide a service by the receiving and transmitting of information by multiple requests received by the telephone. The advancement and sophistication of telecommunications enabled businesses to provide more extensive services with customer support needs.  This has not been without some degree of controversy.  A number of firms have used the opportunity for job reduction and placement of the call centers in distant foreign locations like India.  This being to run the centers on inexpensive local labor costs. Some feel that Companies have in a sense alienated themselves from the customer base and do not like talking to someone in a distant land about service requests or complaints. ( Callaghan, G.  2002)

Some firms have also introduced front-end navigation systems that filter calls and direct you to a specific operator. This may involve several selections before you get to speak to an operator, thereby adding to your frustration and experience as a customer.  This has created the need for those operating call centers to re-examine their quality control and performance management measures and make appropriate refinements where deemed appropriate.

There are essentially two main types of calls “inbound” and “outbound”. The inbound calls normally for service requests or complaint handling where outbound is the provision of the information service and the intention to market or promote the service called ‘telemarketing’.  The problem seems most acute in the area of handling customer complaints because of lack of requisite technical skills by the operator, poor level of training in handling the mood of the customer and the inability to process the customer complaint in a reasonable and expedient manner. (Wright, G. 2005)

Training Requirements

Call Centers are becoming much more culturally aware of customer service requirements and this has been particularly notices in Call Centers in India that are servicing UK countries. The staff are being provided with English Lessons and giving them local dialects e.g. Yorkshire or Birmingham accents.  Staffs are being trained in England in order to obtain first-hand knowledge of the local environments and mannerisms of the customers. Staff are also gaining improved training levels in the applied use of empathy and handling customer requests in shorter process times. (Zapfa, D.  2003)

Much of the call center concept is more readily taken up by younger people that seem happy with this type of interface and use of technology. There still remains a strong cadre of people however that prefer direct contact and this particularly when dealing with the more sensitive aspects of banking or personal finance e.g. I wish to speak with my local branch bank manager not some guy three thousand miles away who does not care about my personal circumstances.  This equally impacts small business owners who demand personalized local customer service.

References

Bolton, S. C. (2005). The (mis)representation of customer service. Work Employment & Society Vol 10(4), 685-703.

Dieter Zapfa, A. I. (2003). What is typical for call centre jobs? Job characteristics, and service interactions in different call centres. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology Vol 12 (4), 311-340.

George Callaghan, P. T. (2002). We Recruit Attitude’: The Selection and Shaping of Routine Call Centre Labour. Journal of Management Studies Vol 39(2), 233-254.

Wright, E. R. (2005). Satisfaction and dimensions of control among call centre customer service representatives. The International Journal of Human Resource Management Vol 16!1), 136-160.