Customer Service: Human Capital Management at Selected Public and Private CallCenters

摘要

Since most Americans use telephones as their principal mode of contact withgovernment agencies, call centers and the people who work in them shape perceptions about the quality of governments overall customer service. A frontline measure of how government meets the needs of its customers is how successful it is in answering its telephones and answering them promptly, accurately, and courteously. The challenge of providing quality telephone customer service is greatest for government agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which must respond to calls dealing with a variety of complex subjects. As you requested, this report discusses strategies for managing human capital that is, people in telephone customer service operations at organizations that were identified to us as having noteworthy or innovative strategies and practices, and that handle calls dealing with subjects of comparable complexity to those at IRS. Specifically, our objectives were to discuss what common approaches, if any, underlie the practices that selected public and private sector organizations used to (1) identify human capital needs as part of developing management strategies and practices to meet missions and goals; (2) implement human capital strategies and practices; and (3) evaluate human capital strategies and practices to continuously improve their operations. We also observed certain practices and strategies that were important to the organizations in all stages of human capital management.