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

(Appears also in Section II.)
36. Bong, Ki Moon, Kyu Lee Jae and Jun Lee Kyoung. A next generation multimedia call center
for Internet commerce: IMC, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce,
10 (4), 2000, 227–240.
Abstract. Human assistance, as well as automated service, is necessary for providing more convenient
services to customers in Internet-based commerce systems. Call centers have typically
been human-based service systems. However, the services of existing public switched telephone
network-based call centers are not enough to meet the needs of customers on the Internet. Most
of them have been designed without considering the interactions involved in shopping on the
Internet. In our research, we designed a call center named IMC (Internet-based Multimedia Callcenter)
that can be integrated with an Internet shopping mall. It contains two parts: an Internet
multimedia dialogue system and a human-agent assisting system. The dialogue system is an Internet
and multimedia version of the interactive voice response service of computer-telephony
integration-based call centers, because it provides access to multimedia Web pages along with a
recorded voice explanation via the Internet. The human-agent assisting system aims to select the
most appropriate human agents in the call center and to support them in providing high-quality
individualized information for each customer. IMC is a real-time, human-embedded system that
can provide high-quality services cost-effectively for Internet commerce.
Keywords: Internet commerce, IMC, Human assistance, Automated service, Online shopping interactions,
Internet-based Multimedia Call-center, Internet shopping mall, Internet multimedia
dialogue system, Human-agent assisting system, Interactive voice response service, Computertelephony
integration, Multimedia Web pages, Recorded voice explanation, Human-agent selection,
High-quality individualized customer information, Real-time human-embedded system,
High-quality services, Cost-effectiveness, Electronic commerce
(Appears also in Section VI.)
37. Bristow, G., M. Munday and P. Gripaios. Call centre growth and location: corporate strategy
and the spatial division of labour, Environment and Planning A, 32 (3), 2000, 519–538.
Abstract. The authors contribute to the developing literature on call centres by providing
detailed empirical evidence on the spatial unevenness in the distribution of call centre activity.
They argue that the driving forces of call centre growth, whether as the rationalisation of
back-office functions or as entirely new entities, have been corporate strategy and the pursuit of
low-cost competitive advantage. Thus, although technological developments at the heart of call
centre operations render them relatively ‘footloose’ in locational terms, the search for specific
characteristics makes certain regions (and parts of regions) more attractive than others. By
using a sample database of call centres, the authors describe the characteristics of call centres
in the United Kingdom in terms of size, sector, and spatial distribution. They then attempt
to explain the determinants of call centre location at the county level through a multiple regression
analysis. The results indicate that there is a propensity to site call centres close to
existing concentrations of allied activity, with preferences for densely populated areas mediated
by needs to maintain employee access and avoid staff turnover problems. This has important
implications for the spatial division of labour, with call centre growth likely to reinforce existing
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