From the early 2000’s, many Korean companies have incorporated CRM system into their organizations. As a result, the CRM-based call center has emerged especially in the financial service sector. According to the CRM specialists, call center has an important roll in supporting the whole CRM process in that it can not only interact with customers, but also gather valuable information from them.
Many studies equally suggested that the role of call center agent is very important to the overall performance of call center. However, it is hard to find analytic studies on what kinds of characteristics and qualifications call center agents should have for company to maintain good performance.
The purpose of this study is to find out what kinds of human characteristics of call center agents are critical to their job performance in the customer satisfaction perspective. Therefore, with the cooperation of the company I gathered some HRM (Human Resource Management) information and performance index such as knowledge test score and CS (Customer Satisfaction) score respectively in the in-bound call center in one of the major credit card companies in Korea.
The targets of the analysis were 272 call center agents. First of all, ANOVA test and simple regression method were used to find out which input variable among age, rank, years they worked, previous job experiences, educational background, certifications, marriage status, company position and supervisor has a significant effect on dependent variable, CS score. Then the final CS predicting model was developed by utilizing multiple regression.
Based on the statistical analysis, the key findings of this study as follows. Firstly, it was found out that call center agents’ age, educational background, certifications and marriage status have no significant effect on job performance in the CS point of view. Therefore current company policy that agents with experiences are given preferential treatment turns out to be invalid. Secondly, it is found out that the time they worked has a significant effect on job performance. Therefore, we can say that company should put more emphasis on employees’ retention. Some activities such as designing mentoring program for newcomers or making good working environment can be considered to lower turnover rate. Finally, it is found out that there are some significant differences among the outsourcing companies they belong to and direct supervisors regarding CS score. It is estimated that each outsourcing company are using its own independent HR practices from hiring/selection, job training to performance evaluation. Therefore, company should control and monitor outsourcing company’s HR policy all the time in order to maintain high quality of service in the call center.
2000년대 초반부터 국내금융기관들을 중심으로 CRM 기반의 콜센터가 구축되기 시작하였다. 콜센터는 고객과의 최접점 채널로 고객에 대한 새로운 정보를 수집하고 상품을 판매하는 등 성공적 CRM 수행의 지원부서 역할을 수행하고 있다. 콜센터의 성과요인에 대한 연구들에서 공통적으로 인적자원(콜센터 상담원)의 중요성을 언급하고 있으나 관련연구는 부족한 편이다.
본 연구에서는 콜센터를 운영하는 국내 신용카드사의 인사관리 정보와 성과지표를 활용하여 실증분석을 실시하였다. 상담원의 인적 특성이 콜센터 성과지표 중 하나인 고객만족도에 미치는 영향을 규명함으로써 이를 향후 상담원 인사관리에 활용코자 하였다. 분석결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 상담원의 나이, 학력, 과거경력, 보유자격증, 결혼여부 등은 상담원 성과에 유의한 영향을 미치지 못하는 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 근속기간과 상담원이 소속된 아웃소싱 회사, 직속관리자, 직급 등에 따라서 상담원 성과에 유의한 차이가 존재하는 것으로 나타났다. 마지막으로 업무능력평가점수는 고객만족도 관점에서 상담원 성과에 유의한 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다 또한 근속기간과 상담원 성과와의 관계에 있어서 업무지식이 매개변수의 역할을 수행하는 것으로 확인되었다. 따라서 근속기간이 늘어날수록 업무지식이 풍부해짐에 따라 업무능력평가점수가 상승하고, 이를 매개로 좀더 고객지향적인 응대가 가능해질 것이라고 예측할 수 있다.
