CALL CENTERS (CENTRES) - Faculty of Industrial Engineering and ...

80. Gwinner, Kevin P., Mary Jo Bitner, Stephen W. Brown and Ajith Kumar. Service customization
through employee adaptiveness, Journal of Service Research (JSR), 8 (2), 2005, 131–148.
Abstract. Customization strategies aimed at providing customers with individually-tailored
products and services are growing in popularity. In a service context, the responsibility for
customization frequently falls on the shoulders of frontline customer contact employees. Few
marketing scholars, however, have considered what it means to be adaptive in these roles and
how customization behaviors can be encouraged. Drawing on marketing, organizational behavior,
and psychology literatures, the authors define and empirically test antecedents of two
distinct dimensions of employee adaptive behavior: interpersonal adaptive behavior and serviceoffering
adaptive behavior. Results indicate that an employee’s level of customer knowledge,
certain personality predispositions, and intrinsic motivation positively influence the propensity
to adapt both their interpersonal style and the actual service offering. Implications for market
segmentation, employee selection, training, and motivation are offered.
Keywords: Customization, Organizational behavior, Employee attitude, Adaptability, Customer
services, Call centers, Motivation, Studies
(Appears also in Section V.)
81. Hyman, Jeff, Dora Scholarios and Chris Baldry. Getting on or getting by?: Employee flexibility
and coping strategies for home and work, Work, Employment & Society, 19 (4), 2005, 705–725.
Abstract. Recent speculation about the impact on family life of contemporary patterns of work
has prompted considerable and concerted social research activity in which the workplace and
household have figured prominently. This article extends these studies to examine employment
in prototypical new sectors of the economy, namely call centres and software, which at the time
of the study were enjoying spectacular growth. Employees in both sectors reported spillover from
work to home, though the extent, nature and intensity of spillover varied significantly between
the sectors. The study identified the different and hitherto unexplored ways in which employees
in these different sectors attempt to cope with complex articulations between home and work,
and the varying resources which they bring to bear in doing so. Contemporary work settings
indicate little change from more established sectors in that gender, status and labour market
strength are important factors in offering work boundary discretion.
Keywords: Call centers, Software industry, Families & family life, Social research, Studies, Work
life balance, Work environment
82. Kantsperger, Roland and Werner H. Kunz. Managing overall service quality in customer care
centers: Empirical findings of a multi-perspective approach, International Journal of Service
Industry Management, 16 (2), 2005, 135–151.
Abstract. This paper aims to clarify the interdependencies among three main stakeholder
groups and to show how to manage overall service quality in customer care centers. A framework
of the relations among the target groups of a customer care center was developed. A
survey methodology with a 360 degree approach that encompasses top management, employees
and final customers as three main target groups was conducted. The sample incorporates 58
customer care centers and seven industries in Germany and Austria. Besides the management
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