ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Article Critique



Article Critique

Introduction

The heart and core of this article is to critically analyze the concepts discussed in the article “Customer satisfaction and service quality measurement in Indian call centres” written by Anand Kumar Jaiswal from the Indian Institute of Management Vastrapur. In order to analyze this research paper we will be focusing the paper through the following litmus paper questions:

1. What are the objectives of the research project?

2. Dose the research involves NHS patients, resources or staff?

3. Do you intend to call primary data from human subjects or data that identifiable with individuals?

4. What is the purpose of the primary data in the research project?

5. What steps are proposed to ensure that the requirements of informed consent will be met for those taking part in research?

Article Critique

This paper has adopted qualitative methodology involving in-depth interviews with call centres managers in India. The aim is to understand the current practices of measuring customer satisfaction and service quality in call centres. I found that call centres in general overly depend on metrics comprising operational measures for service performance measurement.Over-reliance on operational measures results in focusing on calls rather than call outcome as experienced by customers.

Previous studies have shown that operational measures have no or only weak effect on customer satisfaction with call centre transactions. Further, certain operational measures such as average talk time and calls per agent are indicators of efficiency which actually limit the ability of agents to satisfactorily resolve customers' problems and hence could lead to customer dissatisfaction.

The paper also shows that quite often the voice of the customer is not captured in quality evaluation. As a result, call centre managers have false assumptions of service quality. It is customers who ultimately consume the services offered by call centres, hence their perceptions count most. Ignoring voice of customers is against the basic tenants of good customer relationship management, the very reason of call centres' existence. Listening to customers can contribute immensely to making a call centre a customer-centric organization.

As part of listening to customers, call centres need to measure overall as well as attribute-level satisfaction experiences of customers. Comprehensive measurement of attribute-level or dimension-wise satisfaction should complement overall customer satisfaction measurement initiatives similar to reporting "top box" or "top two" satisfaction. Attribute-level or dimension-wise satisfaction measurement is recommended over overall satisfaction measurement for several reasons:

. There is greater possibility that customers would make post-transaction satisfaction judgments at attribute level than at product or service level.

. Attribute-level measurement allows capturing customers' mixed feelings toward a service when customers are satisfied with one attribute but dissatisfied with others. For example, customers may be satisfied with responsiveness of call centre agents but dissatisfied on empathy.

. Attribute-level measurement has greater specificity and higher diagnostic capabilities than overall satisfaction measurement.

The economic benefits of ensuring high level of customer satisfaction are immense.

Several studies have shown the positive relationship of customer satisfaction and service quality with customer loyalty. There is also empirical support for positive association between customer satisfaction and intentions to spread ...