CALL CENTER OPERATIONAL INDICATORS AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: AN EXPLANATORY AND EXPLORATORY INVESTIGATION

Abstract

Year after year, the call center industry is growing very fast, both in Brazil and worldwide, employing a large amount of people and receiving huge investments. In order to support this industry, there is a theoretical framework that aims to improve the operational indicators of this realm. This article purports to investigate, in an empirical way, the relationship between the several operational indicators currently used for the management of call centers in Brazil and customer satisfaction. As such, a set of call centers assisting a telecommunication company will be analyzed as to verify which one of their indicators are actually and positively associated with customer satisfaction. A methodological approach based on surveys as well as stepwise multiple linear regressions are developed and applied in order to have the objective of this paper accomplished. It is concluded that just the indicators Solution Rate in the First Call and Average Working Time after the Call present a statistically significant relationship with customer satisfaction. Lastly, some alternative call center operational indicators are proposed, in an exploratory way, for the management of call centers in order to yield a better relationship between their indicators and customer satisfaction.