Service quality in call centres: implications for customer loyalty

Studies on call centres suggest that there is a focus on efficiency at the expense of effectiveness, where effectiveness is indicated by characteristics such as customer orientation, service priorities and quality. It therefore appears that customers will expect and experience low levels of service quality from call centres, with possible implications for their loyalty to the providing organisation. These issues are the focus of this study. A mail survey was conducted of recent clients of two call centres in Australia. The respondents were individual consumers in an insurance company (n = 284, 14 per cent) or business customers of a bank (n = 325, 16 per cent). Key findings are similar for the two samples. Both perceptions of quality and customer orientation of the call centre were related to loyalty to the providing organisation, and perceptions of quality partially mediated the customer orientation to loyalty relationship. The discussion includes managerial implications and potential future research.