A Qualitative Research Towards Identifying Problems of Customer Representatives Responsible for Outbound Calls
Ebru Kanyılmaz PolatAs a result of developments in information and communication technology, “call centers” have replaced instead of traditional communication in business-customer communication. Today, call centers have become an international industry. The number of employees in this sector in Turkey increased to 117 thousand in 2019. Despite this increase in the number of these employees, referred to as customer representatives, the unfavorable working conditions in the sector draw attention. In this study, the working conditions of a bank call center team performing outbound calls as an external service provider were examined by qualitative research. Interviews were conducted with 10 customer representatives, the results were analyzed by MAXQDA 2020 PRO qualitative analysis program. At the end of the research, it was determined that employees have very long working hours, short break times, they are under high target and sales pressure, they are under constant control, they are subjected to strict performance evaluation systems. Also, employees have various health problems due to talking on the phone for long hours, and they were found to be under stress due to rude customer and manager attitudes. It was observed that the employees were not unionized and did not have sufficient information about the unions. On the other hand, it has been determined that the majority of young employees see this sector as a temporary job and do not think about a future in their work.
Giden Arama Yapan Müşteri Temsilcilerinin Sorunlarının Belirlenmesine Yönelik Nitel Bir Araştırma
Ebru Kanyılmaz PolatBilişim teknolojisinde yaşanan gelişmeler sonucunda işletme- müşteri iletişiminde geleneksel iletişim yerini “çağrı merkezleri” almıştır. Günümüzde çağrı merkezleri uluslararası bir sektör haline gelmiştir. Türkiye’de 2019 yılında bu sektörde çalışanların sayısı 117 bine yükselmiştir. Müşteri temsilcisi olarak anılan bu çalışanların sayışandaki artışa rağmen sektördeki çalışma koşullarının olumsuzluğu dikkat çekmektedir. Bu araştırmada dış hizmet sağlayıcı olarak giden arama yapan bir banka çağrı merkezi ekibinin çalışma koşulları nitel bir araştırma ile incelenmiştir. 10 müşteri temsilcisi ile görüşme gerçekleştirilmiş, sonuçlar MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2020 nitel analiz programı ile analiz edilmiştir. Araştırma sonunda çalışanların uzun çalışma saati, kısa mola süreleri olduğu, yüksek hedef ve satış baskısı altında oldukları, sıkı denetim ve katı performans değerleme sistemlerine tabi tutuldukları tespit edilmiştir. Ek olarak çalışanların uzun saatler boyunca telefonla konuşmaktan dolayı çeşitli sağlık sorunları yaşadıkları, kaba müşteri ve yönetici tutumundan dolayı stres altında oldukları belirlenmiştir. Çalışanların sendikalı olmadıkları ve sendikalar hakkında yeterli bilgiye sahip olmadıkları görülmüştür. Diğer yandan çoğunluğu genç olan çalışanların bu sektörü geçici bir iş olarak gördükleri, işlerinde bir gelecek düşünmedikleri belirlenmiştir.
With the rise of information and communication technologies, call centers have emerged as a new sector instead of face-to-face communication in companies’ relations with customers. Call centers are increasing their number as a new business area that begins to grow rapidly after information society. Although call center employees are white-collar employees of the information society, they look similar to the Fordist production system in terms of working conditions and are exposed to Taylorist principles. These young people mostly graduated from higher education, well-dressed and beautifully speaking Turkish, look like a young plaza employee, are employed like industrial revolution workers in exchange for a full-time and insured job, have taken a current form. Call centers are working areas with unfavorable working conditions where routine and standard jobs are done, workloads, control, and labor turnover rates are very high. The advantages experienced by the information worker are not out of the question for call center employees, and these employees are unable to avoid exposure to bad conditions similar to the industrial revolution. As of these characteristics, some authors (Taylor and Bain, 1999; Başbug et al. 2010: 260; Özkan, 2013: 65; Doğanay, 2016: 53; Bulut ve Ataay, 2017: 4-5; YücesanÖzdemir, 2019: 199) call centers are depicted as the factories of the modern world “an assembly line in the head”.
In this research, it was tried to determine the problems of customer representatives working in call centers in their working life. There is some research on the problems of customer representatives receiving incoming searches in the literature. However, there is no research on the problems of customer representatives who makes an outbound calls. Therefore, outbound call customer representatives were selected as a working group. Phenomenology design was preferred because it was aimed to reveal the problems faced by the participants with their own experiences. In this context, answers for the following questions were sought in the research;
Research Question 1) What are the problems faced by customer relations representatives?
Research Question 2) Do the problems faced by responsible representatives for incoming calls differ from the problems of the responsible persons for outbound calls?
The bank (outbound call) team of a company providing call center services in the finance, public, energy, telecommunications, local government, and e-commerce sectors with 14 branches, more than 12,000 employees in Turkey, Bursa office was selected as a sample. “Convenience Sampling” is used in sample selection. To identify employee problems, customer representatives were included in the research, team leaders and chefs in the managing group were excluded.
Data in the research were obtained by interviewing qualitative research methods. The semi-structured interview form was used in the interview. In total, the meeting with 12 customer representatives was targeted, and the interviews were terminated at 10 upon seeing that the responses were dropped again. Data obtained from the interviews were analyzed through the MAXQDA 2020 PRO qualitative analysis program.
According to the findings, all participants began to experience complaints such as hearing loss, chronic pharyngitis, and vocal cords, headaches after starting to work in the call center.. Working hours are 45 hours a week, but “if necessary” employees are also employed at the weekend, and this work is not considered as overtime work. Employees work with minimum wage plus premium, but the conditions for receiving premium are difficult due to high goals, completing calls in a very short time, and making no mistakes. Participants stated that the fee and premium were too insufficient for their work. Along with prolonged phone calls, the unsympathetic, rude, or even abusive conversations of customers cause great stress on the employees.
Another important point that makes working conditions challenging is the daily call times received and the break times used in return. As a result of the automatic computer distributor of calls, a new call is connected to the customer representative whose phone is turned off at an interval of almost 10 seconds. This suggests that participants spend a significant time in the call, outside their break time. On the other hand, the calls made are recorded and the employees are under strict and constant supervision. Team leaders are also constantly circling and overseeing among employees. Customer representatives who do not receive calls for a few minutes are checked, ensuring that the new call is connected immediately.
Another factor that distracts call centers from being workable places is the limitation of career opportunities. Within call centers, career opportunities are limited to team leader and chief. Participants talk about merit issues in promotions and express that elevation are often provided from outside the institution. The workloads, lack of high qualifications, standardization, and the limitation of elevation opportunities lead employees to see call centers as a “temporary job”.
In addition to all these problems, the outbound customer representatives are also under sales pressure. The high goals also pose compelling pressure on employees. High targets are set to create sales pressure, and higher targets are given to those who achieve these goals by performing superior performance on the same day.
Although many problems in the sector were revealed in 2013 by a report prepared by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, no problem could be corrected till this research was conducted in 2020. It is known that the unionization rates of call center employees are very low. In this study, it was found that the participants had incomplete knowledge of trade union rights. Participants, on the other hand, have a positive attitude that their problems can be reduced by trade unions. Improving awareness of the employees’ union rights will increase unionization rates. Among the important steps to improve working conditions in this sector are trade union struggling, putting legal lower limits on break times used in exchange for talk times, health problems correspondingly include the addition of wear share to employee pension calculations.
