Abstract Role stress in the related researches on pressure is a variety which has been mentioned from work. Job satisfaction is not only a variety which usually discussed by researchers, but also an important factor for the human resource management often approached by the organization. However, many researches point out that role stress from work may reduce an employee's job satisfaction. Simultaneously, if customer service representatives (CSR) have role stress and reduce their job satisfaction, such a situation may influence the service quality and reputation of the enterprise. Recently, in order to enhance the service quality and customer satisfaction, many call centers in the telecommunication and financial enterprises are using computer and telephony integration system (CTI). Therefore, the thesis would like to research the influence of CSR role stress and job satisfaction with using CTI to analyze and discuss the case of TransAsia Telecommunications Inc.,. The thesis mainly uses the structural questionnaires to understand how CSR in TransAsia call center use CTI and think about role stress and job satisfaction. But the thesis speculates all the CSR, including the new members who work in TransAsia after using CTI, may have worked with CTI. Because the new members can't compare the present situation with the past for using CTI, the thesis decides to divide all the CSR into two groups---one is "Seniors", the other is "Juniors". The conclusions are as followed: (1)The more useful and easier CTI is used, the less role conflict and ambiguity Seniors have, and the greater internal and external satisfaction Seniors get. (2)The more useful CTI is, the less role conflict Juniors have, and the greater internal satisfaction Juniors get. Moreover, the less role conflict and ambiguity Juniors have, the greater internal and external satisfaction Juniors get. To sum up, the research hypotheses to Seniors are fully supported, but these to Juniors aren't fully supported. I infer the main reason why the research hypotheses to Juniors are not be fully supported is that the timing for surveying the use of CTI is too early, and Juniors who work in the call center just for one year. So they can't compare the present advantages of CTI with the past. However, there are many factors may influence an employee's job satisfaction, those are also the reasons why CTI can't completely explain job satisfaction of CSR.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology) )--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Internationally, as well as locally, the trend is for companies to use call centres as their preferred method of service delivery. The increase in the use of call centres as a service delivery mechanism thus provides many more employment opportunities. Within call centres, service is primarily delivered by frontline employees referred to as customer service representatives (CSRs). While nothing seems to stop the growth of call centres and the increase of employment opportunities within them, working in call centres is not necessarily experienced as pleasant. Working in a call centre is frequently seen as stressful and the work in such a centre can foster burnout. Burnout is considered to be a pathogenic construct. The first purpose of this study was to describe and investigate the contribution of six central characteristics (antecedents) of call centre work environments and their influence on burnout, affective commitment and turnover intentions. These characteristics were work overload; electronic performance monitoring; lack of career and promotion opportunities, lack of skill variety and emotional labour. An incidental sample of customer service representatives (N=146) was obtained from the inbound service call centre of a large financial company. AU six independent variables were found to be significantly related to the experience of burnout, affective commitment and turnover intentions. Multiple regression analysis made it possible to establish that work overload, lack of career and promotion opportunities and skill variety, and emotional labour were the most important predictors of burnout, whereas lack of career and promotion opportunities was the most significant predictors of both affective commitment and turnover intentions. Burnout had a direct effect on turnover intentions and was not mediated by affective commitment. One antecedent that is often associated with the development of burnout is daily hassles, but daily hassles as an antecedent of burnout in call centres has not been studied before. The second purpose of this study was to develop a short Call Centre Daily Hassle Diagnostic Questionnaire that could be used to identify the most common daily hassles that call centre agents experience in their working lives, both within the work environment and within their day-to-day personal lives, and to determine the relationship between it and burnout. A cross-sectional survey research design was used with an accidental sample (N=394) taken from a service and sales call centre. An exploratory factor analysis of the data resulted in a six-factor model of daily hassles within call centres that significantly predicted exhaustion. The factors were daily demands, continuous change, co-worker hassles, demotivating work environment, transportation hassles and inner concerns. In the third part of this research thesis there is a shift away from the pathogenic paradigm towards a more salutogenic/fortigenic paradigm. Very little previous research has been done on adult resilience. The purpose of the third study was to explore the concept of adult resilience and to identify and describe the protective and vulnerability factors that play a role in adult resilience. Through the use of an exploratory factor analysis, eight factors were identified that played a role in adult resilience. They were Confidence and Optimism, Positive Reinterpretation, Facing Adversity, Support, Determination, Negative Rumination, Religion and Helplessness. Based on the findings of this research, some practical recommendations were made for the management of call centres to reduce the development of burnout and turnover intentions, on how to utilise the Hassle-based Diagnostic Scale and on how to apply the Adult Resilience Indicator in the training and development of resilience. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology) )--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Internationally, as well as locally, the trend is for companies to use call centres as their preferred method of service delivery. The increase in the use of call centres as a service delivery mechanism thus provides many more employment opportunities. Within call centres, service is primarily delivered by frontline employees referred to as customer service representatives (CSRs). While nothing seems to stop the growth of call centres and the increase of employment opportunities within them, working in call centres is not necessarily experienced as pleasant. Working in a call centre is frequently seen as stressful and the work in such a centre can foster burnout. Burnout is considered to be a pathogenic construct. The first purpose of this study was to describe and investigate the contribution of six central characteristics (antecedents) of call centre work environments and their influence on burnout, affective commitment and turnover intentions. These characteristics were work overload; electronic performance monitoring; lack of career and promotion opportunities, lack of skill variety and emotional labour. An incidental sample of customer service representatives (N=146) was obtained from the inbound service call centre of a large financial company. AU six independent variables were found to be significantly related to the experience of burnout, affective commitment and turnover intentions. Multiple regression analysis made it possible to establish that work overload, lack of career and promotion opportunities and skill variety, and emotional labour were the most important predictors of burnout, whereas lack of career and promotion opportunities was the most significant predictors of both affective commitment and turnover intentions. Burnout had a direct effect on turnover intentions and was not mediated by affective commitment. One antecedent that is often associated with the development of burnout is daily hassles, but daily hassles as an antecedent of burnout in call centres has not been studied before. The second purpose of this study was to develop a short Call Centre Daily Hassle Diagnostic Questionnaire that could be used to identify the most common daily hassles that call centre agents experience in their working lives, both within the work environment and within their day-to-day personal lives, and to determine the relationship between it and burnout. A cross-sectional survey research design was used with an accidental sample (N=394) taken from a service and sales call centre. An exploratory factor analysis of the data resulted in a six-factor model of daily hassles within call centres that significantly predicted exhaustion. The factors were daily demands, continuous change, co-worker hassles, demotivating work environment, transportation hassles and inner concerns. In the third part of this research thesis there is a shift away from the pathogenic paradigm towards a more salutogenic/fortigenic paradigm. Very little previous research has been done on adult resilience. The purpose of the third study was to explore the concept of adult resilience and to identify and describe the protective and vulnerability factors that play a role in adult resilience. Through the use of an exploratory factor analysis, eight factors were identified that played a role in adult resilience. They were Confidence and Optimism, Positive Reinterpretation, Facing Adversity, Support, Determination, Negative Rumination, Religion and Helplessness. Based on the findings of this research, some practical recommendations were made for the management of call centres to reduce the development of burnout and turnover intentions, on how to utilise the Hassle-based Diagnostic Scale and on how to apply the Adult Resilience Indicator in the training and development of resilience. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology) )--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Call centers have become a preferred and prevalent means for companies to communicate with their customers. As a consequence of this, the call center industry has seen a huge growth in both volume and scope in the last couple of decades. Operations managers are challenged with the fact that personnel costs, especially staffing, account for over 65% of the cost of running the typical call center. The trade-off between service quality (marketing) and efficiency (operations), thus naturally arises, and a central goal of ours is to contribute to its understanding. We present here a server switching policy for routing of calls to Customer Service Representatives (CSR) in a multi-skilled inbound call center utilizing skill-based routing (SBR). We model the system as a queueing network and propose stochastic Petri net based models for the design and performance analysis of call centers. Our models and experimentations help in identifying practices that result in efficient usage of existing personnel in a call center. In our work, we have considered two types of scenarios in which a multi-skilled SBR call center handling inbound calls can function - (i) with specialist agents only, and (ii) with a mix of specialist and flexible agents. We have developed both these models and compared the rewards obtained from each of them. This analysis helped us answer important issues regarding the routing decision of calls to CSRs, identify the hedging point where one obtains the highest rewards and the impact of varying the strategic and tactical level decisions on the overall call center performance.