Contact center managers who are trying to effectively manage the transition from service to sales consistently face the challenge of managing for service and managing for efficiency. While the ideal scenario would be the facilitation of these two elements working well together, the reality is that they often create conflict between one another.

 

According to research conducted by the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of NSW on the Sacrificial HR Strategy in Call Centers, transition call centers that require emotional labor have the most apparent conflict in managing for service and for efficiency.

 

Agents on the front line in a transition call center are expected to respond with promptness and efficiency, while also being empathetic, customer focused and able to quickly resolve customer problems to achieve high levels of customer service.

 

The performance of these individuals is driven and tracked by technology. Service standards are met as a result of the individual’s personal commitment as well as management’s focus and quality monitoring.

 

While conventional wisdom indicates that this conflict can be minimized by empowering managers to provide proper support to front-line employees, this research study found that certain call centers instead take an alternative approach where management will sacrifice the well-being of the staff by pushing the service/efficiency tension onto the front line.

 

This approach, referred to as the “Sacrificial HR Strategy” dictates that high levels of stress and emotional burnout of the front-line staff is willingly accepted, along with high turnover. Interestingly, this approach facilitates the achievement of excellent service and efficiency at the same time. However, such an approach can really only work when the labor pool is large and high attrition is not a major concern.

 

Findings from this study led researchers to advise that a Sacrificial HR Strategy can only be successfully implemented when the call center excels in four areas. These areas include an efficient recruitment process, these call centers must be skilled at selecting fundamentally motivated staff, tasks must be designed so that agents have a minimal need for organizational knowledge and they must be proficient at monitoring staff performance.

 

While this research raises some interesting points concerning running an efficient service organization, the recommendations for driving high stress levels to the front line seems counterproductive. Several other research studies have pointed to easing this stress and lowering attrition to help drive efficiency and higher levels of customer service.

 

It is understandable that such an approach would work in an environment where the products or services are very basic or hold little to no emotional value for the customer. However, as service levels are providing the main differentiator for organizations, it seems unlikely that the Sacrificial HR Strategy would find even moderate adoption.

 

 

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.

 

 

---

---

Subscribe FREE to all of TMC's monthly magazines. Click here now.

---