Pedro Lucas de Resende Melo, Felipe Mendes Boriniy Moacir de Miranda Oliveira Jr.
The segments of market attended by call centers vary according to the complexity of the demands of the consumers. In this way, the degree of interaction between the operator of the call center and the consumers depends on the nature of the targeted market segment. In the case of a personalized attendance, the development of a reliable relationship will be more intense. On the contrary, when the priority is the mass market the use of the technology is more emphatic, since there is not an expectation to build lasting relationships (Batt, 2000).
The central reason for reject segmentation is that the market possesses homogeneous characteristics; substantial factors that ask for modifications in the structure of the business have not been found. On the other hand, when consumers present extra needs, there is a requirement for the adoption of personalization (Broekhuizen and Alsem, 2002). So, the strategy of relationship marketing can not be effective when treated to the mass market segments, with great contingent of consumers, this tool will have effectiveness in its penetration in the search of market niches (Shani, David, Chalasani and Sujana, 1992). Before adopting a strategy of mass segmentation, it is important to observe some organizational requirements: (i) the perspective of business growth; (ii) the technological process required for this and (iii) the aptitude of the organization for this transformation. The adoption of the segmentation will be worthwhile when: (i) the technology is adjusted for this implementation; (ii) the consumers are sensible to the personalization of services and (iii) there is a great potential for business development (Hart, 1996).
In turn, if the choice of the attended segment praises the strategic decision of the company, besides keeping its operational excellence, it focuses in the development of the product/service or the relationship with its customers. This implies that in the first option the organization gives priority to new products or new uses for old products, placing the motivations of the customers in something that is still unknown in the market or that can generate uses that provide a better performance of the offered product (Treacy and Wieserma, 1995). In the second option all the attentions are directed toward the relationship with the customers, the actions in the products and services have as base the demands presented for the customers, aiming at a total solution and not the selling of a product and service in isolated form.
The recognition of the need in using products and rendering of services is taken as a law inside of the organization, in order to attend customers in the best possible way, providing all answers they may have, or in the same way, when using the goods offered by the company (Treacy and Wieserma, 1995).
The expectation is to strengthen the links with this public, that means, to build a relationship that can generate continuous benefits, and that the company in question gets the customer’s loyalty, thus becoming a reference for itself. When fidelity is intended, the common feeling of abandonment that the customer who has a problem with sales department face by not obtaining the solution due the internal processes, starts to change; the orientation that exists internally is that everybody in the organization must work in order to find the best solutions for the customers. On the other hand, will the final customer value an improvement of the technology used in the call center?
The answer is positive if this technology allows him to have a quicker attendance and a solution for his problem without failure in the information. It is common that the customer spends hours or days trying a solution and always when he tries to decide his problem, he finishes having to repeat all steps previously informed. A technology as an adjusted electronic CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) could solve this problem.
However in this second choice, focused in the product or service, the main customer is not the final consumer, differently from the first one. By not adopting an orientation for the market the company is much more worried with the product than with the final consumer, so the product is more important than the customer (Day, 1994).
This product is more important than the customer in the following aspect: the company searches for a product that enables the attendance of a great number of users, reducing its main factor of costs, “the human resources”, without providing troubles to the customers and management staff. Considering that, in this case, the management familiarity with the technology can provide overlaps to the benefits that could be expanded to the customer. The company needs a control tool and coordination of the calls capable to attend the customers in an ordinary form, but on the other hand, the company expected that technology allows higher power management of its activities.
In this case it is evident that if the company counts on subcontracted service that provides this technology in satisfactory way, its objectives are better reached than if the own company develops the technology of the information for the attendance, once its business focus doesn’t match with the development of these strategic resources. On the other hand, the company who focuses in the final customer therefore gives a service for a specific segment that provides higher margins; this would not need the technology as strategic resource for its activity of attendance. On the contrary, the focus of this company is in the establishment of relationships with the customers and its loyalty. In this case, the essential strategic resource is the front office, as its human resources must promote a personalized service for each customer.
Therefore we can conclude that:
H1a: Outsourced call centers services are guided for the attendance of a mass segment.
H1b: Outsourced call centers services are guided for a focused strategy in the product/service.
As stated in the hypothesis above, in outsourced call centers services the objective is the attendance to the public in general and the intensive use of technology. In this way, we can make a parallel to the Taylorist industrial production, where it has an intense use of technology, a production in wide scale, not having the treatment of the particular ones presented. With the use of the technology, it is possible to attend a great volume of calls, with no intention to build relationships with this specific public (Batt and Moynihan, 2002; Peters and Saidin, 2000).
For the attendance to the public in general, the needs of this market segment are less complex in comparison to the specific segments. The treatment to the segment of mass marketing is to prioritize the reduction of costs and to the development of the apparatus to the given service, due to price sensitivity that a consumer has. With this, the labor force is replaced for auto-services and technology (Boxall, 2003).
In order to make possible the adopted structure of attendance to the public in general, the supplied training to the operators of call centers concentrates in a rigid division of tasks, with limited time of execution and a restricted personal interaction with the consumers (users). It is made with the use of scripts (semi-ready and unified answers), thus preventing the long call attendance, obtaining a high individual performance, making possible an attendance to a bigger number of calls with the help of the technological apparatus (Wood, 2006).
Despite all this, in the attendance that involves low degree of relationship between the call center operator and the user of the service there is a high-level of calls monitoring. This is possible with the help of top technologies (Batt, 2000). The technology becomes a bridge for the accomplishment of the strategy pledged by the company, with: (i) the reduction of costs, (ii) the improvement of the products and services, (iii) the improvement of the coordination and control of attendance and (iv)the building of a database about the customers and suppliers, making possible the creation of competitive advantages (O'Brien, 2002).
However, the focus of business and one of the strategic resources of the organization has to be technology. Without this focus is unbalanced: (i) capacity of faster answers to the changes of the environment; (ii) bigger easiness in identifying technologies more adjusted to the business, focusing the use of the technology and with this, increase the production, the product quality and shortening the launching stated period; (iii) bigger preparation for eventual technological changes, for the fact of having a continuous planning and (iv) the reduction of the errors (Dussauge, Hart, Ramananysoa, 1992; Luftman, Lewis, Oldach, 1993). So this obligation for the development of the resource of the information technology imposes that the call center companies dealing with mass segments make use of the outsource servicing in its activities, once in outsourced call center services the focus of the business overlays the development of the strategic resource of the information technology.
The area of technology in an organization can be managed in several ways: (i) by a company that uses the outsourced service in all IT (information technology) services; (ii) by having a management mix, of outsourced service and a proper one; (iii) by the establishment of a strategic joint-venture and (iv) managed by the own organization (Currie, 2000). The practical of using an outsourced service in the IT area involves all the applied functions for the technological resource of an organization.
The decision of using an outsourced service, totally or partially, or even of keeping the IT in-house, must consider if this function is a fundamental part of the business or not. As a component of the strategy, literature guides in direction of the use of their internal functions. In case that it is not one of the vital functions of the organization, the outsourcing of services walks in a more optimistic direction, since the doors of its processes to another organization will open, having fewer involved risks in this situation for not displaying the strategic plan of the organization and not having its competitive advantages displayed in a risky way (Fink and Shoeib, 2003; Piachaud, 2005).
When the focus is mass production, it takes the outsource company of that determined service to a competitive advantage, being able to place a bigger structure, when possessing one better technology that is capable to automatize the processes (Lever, 1997). When an outsourced service is installed in the area of IT, a more updated work method is implemented and capable to improve the efficiency of the operations, increasing the productivity, the product quality and their services, developing an adjusted architecture of IT to the organization (Fink and Shoeib, 2003).
In such way that the organization leverages conditions of innovation through the access to companies specialized in that task, due to the fact that its main business is the treatment of that specific task, being in bigger contact with new technologies and learning due to its specialty (Farncombe and Waller, 2005; Shastri, 2004). So, we understand that:
H2: In outsourced services call centers where the strategy is focusing in the product/service, the main strategic resource is the information technology.
Call centers that serve consumers with more complex needs (high aggregated value products) have to build more intense relationships with its consumers in order to provide a customized service (Batt, 2000). Luxury products demand a differentiated treatment, the business involves bigger unitary values and these consumers demand a treatment of its needs in a distinguished way. This public requires more personalization of solutions than the solutions provided for commodities (Pine, 1993).
Zuboff (1994) examines the role of information technology in the reorganization of the workstation. The author highlights that the use of information technology for the administrators has three specific objectives: to increase the continuity, to keep the control and understanding. It is necessary to understand the maintenance of the functional integration, intensification of the automation and speed of the answers; the control of the capacity to carry on previsions with refined precision, consistency and certainty; and the understanding of the capacity of visibility, analysis and synthesis of the productive functions.
This implies that, by its proper nature, the information technology is characterized by a basic crucial duality. The technology can be used to automatize operations, which objective is to substitute the effort and the qualification of the human being, thus reducing cost and extending the control and the continuity. At same time, the technology has the computerizing function, or as the proper author appraises, the technology serves to computerize by generating information that is behind and through which an organization carries on its work (Zuboff, 1994).
This dualism raises the following strategic question for the controllers of the company: "We go all to work for an intelligent machine... or go to have intelligent people around a machine" (Zuboff, 1994: 86).
While the first function is related to the industrial model, computerizing is tied to the informational model. In this case, the attendant who works in the interface with the machine can increase the knowledge on the nature of own work, questioning its methods and reconfiguring them if necessary. In the first case the strategic resource is the technology, according to "the people who surround the machine" (Zuboff, 1994). In the first, the authority will tend to become more centralized, since the administrators fix objectives for the machine and the labor force becomes an accessory to the system, with little or no critical understanding of its functioning, in such way that an extremely rigid control is mandatory, since the trustworthiness problems become critics due to the lack of the operator’s capacity to interfere in the system (Zuboff, 1994).
This perspective hinders the exploration of computerizing; therefore the available human resources do not have autonomy and ability for such practice. In the organization where the objective of the technology is to computerize, the situation is the opposite: those that are closer to the excellent information must have authority to answer and so the development of the intellectual qualifications in the interface of the information is necessary.
This approach in the people and not in the technology is aligned with the strategy of call center focused in the customer. It is not about an exclusive focus in the technology, but a mix of this resource with the human resources. This is why in the management of long-range relationship with its consumers, the development of abilities in attending the customer and autonomy for its decisions in front office becomes necessary (Barker, 2002; Homburg et al, 2000).
For such a way the organizations with this strategy, in special the call center, need structural changes giving bigger decision power to the attendants and a bigger approach in a training program.
In these organizations with strategy focused in the customer, the human resources that make the interface with the customer are as broker to intermediate the requirements of the organization and the customer (Barker, 2002; Troyer, Mueller, Osinsky, 2000). These workers, or operators in the case of call centers, at the same time where they need to follow the lines of direction of the organization, they are responsible for getting the legitimacy of the organization before its customers, as well as forming the institutional image in the mind of the customers (Troyer, Mueller, Osinsky, 2000). This is very common to observe when the customer decides to solve a problem with the operator and this one exactly understanding the situation of the customer but cannot do anything, as the guidelines of direction and the operational system of the organization do not contemplate that solution. In an organization focused in the customer such situation creates a conflict between consumer, operator and organization (Heiss, 1990; Merton, 1968).
Such conflict can only be solved if the operator has the autonomy to decide such problem, overcoming the direction that the organization had still not previewed (Heiss, 1990). So, the same operator needs a formal and more intensive program of training for the development of individual abilities that can better attend the customer and not be a hostage of the conflicts proceeding from his position in the organizational structure. This means that call centers with strategy focused in the customer should not be an outsourced service. The operator who can solve the problems of the customer and represent the company in adequate manner cannot be an external representative who does not have the autonomy and knowledge of the organization’s strategic and operational guidelines.
In the same way, in order to have autonomy to take care of to the customers, this operator needs a more intense program of training for the development of his capacities and performance of his abilities to attend the specific customer.
An outsourced call center where the attendants operate in function of the machine and each time for different final and organizational customers makes impracticable the development of the individual abilities of the operator and his autonomy for taking decision. So, we understand that:
H3: In in-house call centers where the strategy is focused in the customer, the main strategic resource is the human resource.
This research is about a survey lead in Brazilian call centers and is part of an international study, the Global Call Center Industry Project, involving about 20 countries and their universities. Later, the responsible group for research application in Brazil looked for adjusting it to the national language and peculiarities of call centers, as well as extending to the economic, social and institutional Brazilian reality.
The universe of the searched companies includes the 200 companies listed for the ABT From these companies 103 had answered the questionnaires, or, 51% of the sample, a very satisfactory result when compared with the international research in the scope of the studies with private organizations.
About the choice of companies that would participate in the research, it was established that any company that possessed some central office of attendance would be qualified to participate. Through one mailing of the companies associated to the ABT, a contact was carried out with the companies. In order to make the application of the questionnaire possible, it was made daily pre-tests, actually in a previously marked schedule with the responsible from the call center organization and one from the involved researchers, responsible for that determined questionnaire. The application of the questionnaire was carried in call centers that were willing to participate of the research. Each interview lasted an average of fifty or sixty minutes.
About the respondent, it was focused the attentions to the responsible for call center, generally a Manager of Operations, Manager of HR, having variations of denominations in the positions and even of the respondents according to the existing hierarchy in the organization. However, it was explained that it was a professional who had direct responsibility for the call center operations.
The chosen technique comes from the fact that the dependent variable was a binary variable hindering the application of the multiple linear regressions. It was opted to the logistic regression which has the same power to explain by means of the independent variable one the composition of the dependent variable one.
In the related one in case that the method of analysis of the regression was the forward stepwise where the variable ones are selected in each step, according to the statistics of the scores, based on some criteria: bigger reduction in the value of -2LL, greater coefficient of Wald, greater conditional probability of maximum similarity.
All regression needs the building of a model to guide the entrance of the independent variable and to result in the value of Z. This model serves of standard for the comparison of the value of the logarithm probability, in such way that, the evaluation of the general adjustment of the model is made by the evaluation of the logistic relation between each independent and dependent variable.
The considered model hypothesis according to raised assumes that the outsource servicing (dependent variable) depends on the strategy adopted for the company, on the segment of customers attended by the company and on the composition of the strategic resources of the information technology and human resources of the organization (independent variable). Outsourced service = strategy + attended segment + resources of IT + human resources + coefficient beta of variation.
The dependent variable outsource servicing of the applied model is a dichotomist variable where it answers was the outsourced service call center or not.
About the strategy of the company each company designated which strategy it would follow within a possibility of four choices divided in two groups: group one it is the strategies of focus in the product/service for the companies that aim (a) to offer a differentiated product/service and (b) to search the identification of the brand of the company, group two, it is the strategies of focus in the customer for the companies that aim in their strategies the (c) fidelity of the customer and (d) the offers of multiple services. The segments were also about binary variable ones where the company pointed if the focus of the market strategy was the attendance of a mass segment or a specific segment made up of customers of high aggregate value products.
About the resource technologies, the company should point which technologies was used in their services of tele-attendance: email; fax; some medias (mix of diverse related instruments); voice recognition; management of the work flow; CRM; Voice on IP; Interaction by InterNet. Referring to the strategic resources related to the people two sets of variable training and autonomy had been worked on. About what refers to the autonomy, the company presented the degree of freedom, in a five point scale which was conferred for the attendants in the execution of: a) the daily tasks; b) in the used methods and procedures; c) in the control of the time; d) in what it is said to the customer; e) in the design and use of a new technology; f) in the agenda of the schedules of lunch and stops; g) revision of work methods; h) to deal with extra order and unexpected problems; i) to deal with claims of customers without appealing to a superior.
These variable ones altogether had composed the autonomy index Another variable one correspondent to the importance given by the company for the development of the people in the organization was referred to the training given to the employees. A variable one sent to the number of days of training that the employee is submitted (a) in the beginning of his activities; (b) throughout one year.
[anterior] [inicio] [siguiente]