Kundenzufriedenheit mit der Betreuung durch Call Center – Eine erkl?rende empirische Studie

摘要

In many business sectors interactions between existing customers and companies are mainly handled via call centers (CC). Therefore, it is important to develop an empirically substantiated understanding of direct and indirect sources of customer satisfaction with the care experienced in CC encounters. The present paper develops hypotheses on direct and indirect associations between eight features of customer interactions with CC response systems and agents on the one hand and care satisfaction of calling customers on the other hand. The hypotheses are tested in a sample of 108 customers of mobile communication network operators in Germany. The participants contacted their supplier's CC for advice purposes and filled in a questionnaire immediately after the encounter. PLS analysis of the survey data suggests that care satisfaction of calling customers is most closely related to the quality of the service process prior to the dialogue with a CC agent and to the request-specific expertise of the agent as perceived by the caller. In contrast, the (social) interaction competence attributed to the agent by the customer as well as the objective length of talk and waiting periods contributed much less toward explaining care satisfaction of CC users. Implications of the results are discussed for the management of CC and CC satisfaction research.