Study: Call Center Humans

On our quest to learn more about the Human voice and the social dynamics of conversations, one natural stop is, of course, call centers. They are a rich source of conversational data and they are notoriously stressful workplaces. In this article, we'll explore the Human experience of making a living off having goal-driven conversations.

Sources :

Cornell University - GCC Project (2007)

"The Global Call Center (GCC) Project is a collaborative network of over 40 scholars from twenty countries. Each country research team has deep expertise in the call center sector and has conducted extensive field and survey research for this report."

Available here: https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/74325/GCC_Intl_Rept_US_Version.pdf

Microsoft - Global State of Customer Service (2015-2020)

"Based on a survey of more than 5,000 consumers across Brazil, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this report provides comprehensive data and analysis on customer service center performance and its impacts on brand loyalty and revenue growth."

Available here: https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-global-state-of-customer-service.html

Zippia - Call Center Statistics (2022)

"Comprehensive report on the U.S. Call Center Industry compiling data from sources like Forbes, Statistica, Ring Central, KPMG and more."

Available here: https://www.zippia.com/advice/call-center-statistics/

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Views from Within the Call Center

1. Increasing Customer Expectations Cause Stress

Performance pressure on Call Center workers originates from customer demands. Clients across the board, in all industries, have fairly high expectations of the kind of support companies should offer before and after sale. These expectations have actually been increasing over time: in 2021, 65% of customers said they had higher customer service expectations than they did only a year ago. These pressures are passed on by employers to employees and results in the vast majority (87%) of call center workers reporting high stress levels at their job.

Reasons cited for stress :

​Difficulty keeping up with call center target metrics (AHT, ACW, Conversion rates, etc.)	​29%
​​Personal and work life imbalance	​23%
Unable to generate positive customer feedback for offered support	​16%
Job role ambiguity	14%
Lack of resources	​10%
​Surplus of tasks and pressure	8%

2. Lack of Control improves Call Handling Efficiencies but

Hurts Employee Satisfaction

While on one hand, call center technologies allow for high levels of standardization and scripting of texts, on the other hand, employees frequently complain of boredom or stress from high levels of routinisation and repetition. Research on call centers, even prior to 2007, demonstrated that low job discretion and high performance monitoring is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion, and lower levels of job performance. Call center jobs in general provide relatively few opportunities for employees to exercise their independent judgment and this adversely impacts job satisfaction and increases employee turnover.

Environments with Low Employee Decision-Making Policies are Commonplace *

(*) From the GCC Project report.

3. Job Dissatisfaction is Commonplace

Call center employees across the board give similar feedback regarding their experience. Among the pain points cited above, the lack of control over call outcomes, the repetition and the constant performance monitoring are the main reasons for being dissatisfied in their workplace. In the video below, former call center employee and Canadian vlogging personality Kaylee Kapital describes her own call center experience.

The Business Perspective

No job is perfect, and despite the difficulties faced by front-line workers, customer-centric businesses really need to provide a direct line of communication-- and it better be tailored to cater to very specific customer needs.

1. Bad Customer Experiences Cost Money

Bad customer service cost U.S. businesses $75 billion in 2018, up $13 billion from 2016 (from NewVoiceMedia, a leading global provider of cloud contact center and inside sales technology). Not only does it cost quite a lot of money, the reports we found also show that in 2020, 37% of all messages to brand social-media accounts were related to customer service issues. This clearly shows that not adequately responding to a customer's request reflects poorly on businesses in very visible ways.

2. Balancing Employee and Customer Needs is Really Hard

88% of customers prefer voice calls with a live agent instead of navigating through an automated phone menu but employee job satisfaction in call centers is among the lowest in the services sector. Customer-centric businesses have the difficult task of balancing the needs of their customers and keeping their contact center staff happy. One of the main problems we've found to creating and maintaining this balance is that managing a call center requires supervisors to closely monitor how employees spend their time (how long and how frequent their bathroom breaks are, how much time they spend on calls and how long they are unavailable after the calls, etc.). This intense monitoring is the #1 reason cited for stress in call centers but there aren't many alternatives; a "good" answering rate for a call center is responding to 80% of calls in under 20 seconds.

Moving forward

Lots of companies are looking to invest in advanced analytics to provide better customer service and a 2021 study found that AI and other new technologies will handle 70% of customer interactions by 2022. Despite this push toward automation there's a strong case to be made that customer service should remain an area that extensively involves Humans, after all the foundation of business is people exchanging goods and services with other people. It appears that a hybrid approach (Humans enhanced with AI) is the best way to go.