Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

No description available.

Thesis (MA (Industrial Psychology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Overview of previous work: Previous research on call centres has identified the inherent stressful nature of the call centre agent job. In fact researchers have gone so far as to name call centres ‘sweatshops of the new millennium’, (Crome, 1998; Fernie, 1998). Comparative studies between human service work and burnout have often featured in current literature as have studies concerning the correlations between call centre work and job satisfaction, the effects of shift work, and stress in the call centre environment. Purpose: However, the purpose of this study, avoiding a comparative approach, is to focus on one organisation in particular, in order to assess the varied work dysfunctions present in its call centre. The study is particularly important in the light of the proposed development of the call centre industry in South Africa at this time. A more comprehensive understanding therefore, of the pitfalls of call centre work, would be beneficial to those currently running call centres as well as those planning their implementation. At the outset, stress was considered a pivotal dysfunction within the call centre, from which other maladies often ensued such as substance abuse, depression and eating pattern disruptions. Work challenges too, manifest in the field data, namely insufficient training and managerial / system problems. The research therefore includes the exploration of these factors serving to highlight both the more socio-cultural and emotional issues, as well as on-the-job grievances encountered by call centre agents. Design / methodology / approach: Owing to the exploratory nature of the study, a focus group methodology was used, allowing for in-depth qualitative research which catered for a far reaching and comprehensive understanding of current work issues. As the study concerns only call centre agents, the roles of supervisors and managers were not included. The sample comprised four different groups, of randomly selected call centre agents, with a total of 27 participants. Demographics revealed male and female participants of differing marital status, educational qualifications, but with tenure at a call centre between 2 and 6 years, and aged between 20 and 40 years. Findings: Support was found for the following dysfunctions in the process, with stress as primary harbinger of other dysfunctions, many exacerbated by the stressful nature of shift work, and the resultant work-life imbalance. Stresses encountered due to ineffective systems, training processes, and call centre management were also significant. On a positive note, of interest was the unanimous agreement that within this particular field study, workspace ergonomic considerations were thought not to add to call centre dysfunction. Research limitations / implications: Even though four groups from two different call centres were observed, they were part of the same organisation, in Cape Town in the Western Cape. In this way commonalities in terms of reactions to systems, policies etc were thought likely to be similar, however owing to the shift work nature of call centres through out South Africa, it is believed that significant correlations could be determined, in any organisation. A comparative study across various differing organisations and locations therefore could be investigated. Originality / value: Owing to the very stressful nature of call centre work, the focus groups revealed themselves to be cathartic in nature as participants thoroughly embraced the process, and personal experiences were often disclosed by participants which facilitated realistic discussions. In this way, meaningful qualitative data was collected, and can be used to ameliorate current call centre conditions, and to allow better planning for future implementation. Furthermore, the research has exposed a number of further study options, as e.g. owing to their significance, each dysfunction could be investigated further and covered individually in separate research papers, as could the role in management, and training within the call centre milieu.

M.Comm. (Business Management) / The statement at the core of the thesis is that the success of the call centre depends on a strategic benefits model. The search for the proof will be conducted within the systems theory framework. The call centre is depicted as a micro system of the bigger organisation. This micro system is influenced by external factors. Factors that are external to the organisation and factors that are external to the call centre but forms part of the rest of the organisation. Systems have internal processes that deliver specific outputs, therefore the saying that the system is perfectly engineered for the results it achieves. The call centre has internal processes to deliver certain outputs. This study tries to identify what internal processes will have an impact on a strategic benefits model for the success of the call centre. 3 Systems theory is known to have feedback loops. The call centre operation should have similar feedback loops. Call centre feedback is received from three different perspectives, that of the customer, the employees and management. The study concludes by indicating how the benefits model ensures the success of the call centre. The primary objective of the study is to determine if the success of the call centre depends on a strategic benefits model. The secondary objectives of the study are to: • Develop a model that can be used for the design, assessment and running of the call centre, • Determine which factors influence the functioning of a call centre operation, • Determine the impact of the call centre on meeting customer expectations, • Develop a measure for call centre benefits. The elements of such a strategic benefits model had to be described for the analysis.

The simplest and most widely used queueing model in call centres is the M/M/k system, sometimes referred to as Erlang-C. For many applications the model is an over-simplification. Erlang-C model ignores among other things busy signals, customer impatience and services that span multiple visits. Although the Erlang-C formula is easily implemented, it is not easy to obtain insight from its answers (for example, to find an approximate answer to questions such as "how many additional agents do I need if the arrival rate doubles?"). An approximation of the Erlang-C formula that gives structural insight into this type of question would be of use to better understand economies of scale in call centre operations. Erlang-C based predictions can also turn out highly inaccurate because of violations of underlying assumptions and these violations are not straightforward to model. For example, non-exponential service times lead one to the M/G/k queue which, in stark contrast to the M/M/k system, is difficult to analyse. This thesis deals mainly with the general M/GI/k model with abandonment. The arrival process conforms to a Poisson process, service durations are independent and identically distributed with a general distribution, there are k servers, and independent and identically distributed customer abandoning times with a general distribution. This thesis will endeavour to analyse call centres using M/GI/k model with abandonment and the data to be used will be simulated using EZSIM-software. The paper by Brown et al. [3] entitled "Statistical Analysis of a Telephone Call Centre: A Queueing-Science Perspective," will be the basis upon which this thesis is built.

Contact centres are the first point of contact between a company and a customer after the purchase of a product or service. These centres make use of contact centre agents to service customer queries. In the past contact centres hired as many agents as they could in order to service customers, which have led to an increase in personnel costs causing contact centres to become costly to run. Automation techniques were introduced to decrease personnel costs and one such technique is the Interactive Voice Response (IVR). The usability of IVR systems is, however, dismal. Customers would rather speak to a contact centre agent than navigate through the menu structure found in these systems. The menu structure has come under scrutiny because it is difficult to use and navigate, is often not aligned to caller usage patterns, and the menu options are long and vague. This research investigated whether a Natural Language Interface (NLI) could alleviate the problems inherent to IVR. NLIs, however, come with their own disadvantages of which the main ones are ambiguity and the loss of context of a conversation. Two prototypes were implemented, one of which resembled an IVR and the other an NLI (using ALICE concepts). An evaluation of two prototypes confirmed the advantages and disadvantages of these concepts in accordance to theory. A Hybrid prototype was proposed with the aid of two models. The model which proposed an NLI using a rule base was chosen for implementation. The Hybrid prototype was then evaluated against the NLI and IVR prototypes to deduce which prototype was the most effective, efficient and satisfying. The evaluation through the aid of descriptive and inferential statistics showed that the Hybrid prototype was the most usable prototype. The evaluation of the Hybrid prototype confirmed that a Hybrid approach could limit the shortcomings of IVR through the elimination of the menu structure found in these systems, thereby allowing users to state their queries in natural language. The incorporated rule base provided the Hybrid system with long term memory, eliminating one of the main disadvantages of NLIs.

This thesis was the result of a study conducted for the call-centre at the Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia (WCB). The management at WCB wanted to understand the nature and pattern of calls at their newly opened call-centre. The purpose of this was to provide an efficient customer service while streamlining the flow of calls coming to the call-centre. An extensive data collection exercise was undertaken at the call-centre and two other units of WCB with which the call-centre interacts. The data analysis revealed that a high proportion of calls were related to transfers to these departments. There were also calls related to routine inquiries on claim payment cheques and forms that could potentially be handled by a well designed IVR system. Based on this understanding the development of an effective IVR system was proposed to address the problems that were discovered through documenting the nature and pattern of calls. An extensive review of literature was undertaken to design a new system according to the standard industry guidelines suggested by the best practices and customized to WCB's business needs. Two alternate scripts were developed after analysing the source and purpose of calls to WCB. One was 'person specific' and the other was 'task specific'. The two scripts were tested on students at WCB through a computer-based IVR simulation. The results of the student survey provided evidence that introducing additional options and use of simple and clear instructions in the new scripts could potentially in fact address the problems discovered in the study and they were preferred over the existing WCB script. The IVR simulation is reconfigurable and can be used in future studies to gather further evidence in support of the results obtained in this thesis as well as refine scripts before putting them in a production mode. / Business, Sauder School of / Marketing, Division of / Graduate

Thousands of call centers operate in the United States employing millions of people. Since personnel costs represent as much as 80% of the total operating expense of these centers, it is important for call center managers to determine an appropriate staffing level required to maintain the desired operating performance. Historically, queueing models serve an important role in this regard. The one most commonly used is the Erlang-C model. The Erlang-C model has several assumptions, however, which are required for the predicted performance measures to be valid. One assumption that has received significant attention from researchers is that callers have infinite patience and will not terminate a call until the service is complete regardless of the wait time. Since this assumption is not likely to occur in reality, researchers have suggested using Erlang-A instead. Erlang-A does consider caller patience and allows for calls to be abandoned prior to receiving service. However, the use of Erlang-A still requires an assumption that is very unlikely to occur in practice - the assumption that all agents provide service at the same rate. Discrete event simulation is used to examine the effects of agent heterogeneity on the operating performance of a call center compared to the theoretical performance measures obtained from Erlang-A. Based on the simulation results, it is concluded that variability in agent service rate does not materially affect call center performance except to the extent that the variability changes the average handle time of the call center weighted by the number of calls handled and not weighted by agent. This is true regardless of call center size, the degree of agent heterogeneity, and the distribution shape of agent variability. The implication for researchers is that it is unnecessary to search for an analytic solution to relax the Erlang-A assumption that agents provide service at the same rate. Several implications for managers are discussed including the reliability of using Erlang-A to determine staffing levels, the importance of considering the service rates of the agents rather than the average handle time, and the unintended consequence of call routing schemes which route calls to faster rather than slower agents.

Historical research was conducted through literature. The report traces the evolution of technology in call centers (CCs) from their early inception to 2018. CCs are integrated into many facets of multidisciplinary areas of business, industry, and public and private institutions of higher education. Three research questions were addressed: What technologies enabled the start of CCs? How did the communications between customers and CSRs take place? What was the content of the earlier communications? How did services and communications evolve as technology matured? What are the current state-of-the-art technologies that exist in CCs? Which industries appear to have the best solutions? What are these solutions? Photograph Analysis Worksheets and Written Document Analysis Worksheets from the National Archives and Records Administration were used to analyze primary source materials. Also, used were Primary Source Analysis Tools from the Library of Congress. The final report offers a comprehensive history of the technology evolution within the industry. Included are a discussion of state-of-the-art technologies, the range of their applications and suggestions for staff training.

A research report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mathematical Statistics, School of Statistics and Actuarial Science to the Faculty of Science University of Witwatersrand, 2019 / In this work, an investigation into the problem of optimising the operations of a call center is done. The call arrival process is explored and found to be a non-homogeneous Poisson process with arrival rate that is a piece-wise constant function. The call service times are found to possibly be lognormally distributed. The use of well-known queuing models such as the Erlang A, B and C in modeling a call center’s operations with the ultimate goal of determining optimal number of agents needed to obtain an agreed upon targeted service level (SL) threshold is discussed. The target SL involves answering between 85% - 90% of all incoming calls within 15 /30 seconds as per industry norms. / TL (2020)