Title: Enablers of contact centre service excellence: a practitioner's perspective

Authors: Surya Dharamdass; Yudi Fernando

Addresses: Graduate School of Business, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia ' Graduate School of Business, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia

Abstract: This paper aims to focus on an under-researched aspect of the contact centre industry which is service excellence. Most contact centres put a priority on efficiency rather than effective service delivery. Delivering excellent service goes beyond satisfying a customer as it also delights the customer and increases customer loyalty which can be viewed as a key success factor for organisations. To develop the theoretical framework, content analysis of existing literature was conducted. Both the framework and the survey instrument developed were reviewed with industry experts for reliability and accuracy before broader distribution to the contact centre population of Malaysia. The theoretical framework was tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling with SmartPLS 3.0. The findings and discussions aim to provide scholars the enablers to focus for future research. For practitioners, the implication is to review existing performance measures and consider adopting the proposed enablers for service excellence to increase customer loyalty.

Keywords: call centres; service excellence; customer service agents; CSAs; average handling time; AHT; first call resolution; FCR; Malaysia; service delivery; customer loyalty; partial least squares; PLS; structural equation modelling; SEM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2017.081932

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2017 Vol.11 No.3, pp.381 - 396

Received: 15 Jun 2015
Accepted: 06 Aug 2015
Published online: 31 Jan 2017 *

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