THE IMPACT OF CALL CENTRE STRESSORS ON INBOUND AND OUTBOUND CALL-CENTRE AGENT BURNOUT

Transcription

1 THE IMPACT OF CALL CENTRE STRESSORS ON INBOUND AND OUTBOUND CALL-CENTRE AGENT BURNOUT INTRODUCTION Many researchers have studied the antecedents of burnout and consider burnout to be predicted by high levels of job-related role stress (e.g., role overload) and a lack of job (organisational) resources (e.g., supervisory support) (Demerouti et al., 2001; Maslach & Leiter, 2008) as well as stress from perceived negative customer behaviours (Karatepe et al., 2010). The nature of the burnout process has been studied extensively and there is general agreement that emotional exhaustion leads to depersonalisation and depersonalisation leads to reduced personal accomplishment (Bakker et al., 2004; Low et al., 2001). Despite these observations however, burnout research has largely focused on occupations within individual industries (Bakker et al., 2004) but there exists a paucity of research examining the differential impact of stress on burnout between functions within the same occupation. Recognising that inbound and outbound call centre agents do perceive stress differently (Zapf et al., 2003), the objective of the current study is to examine the differential magnitude of the relationships between stress and burnout in inbound versus outbound call centre agents. THE RESEARCH MODEL AND HYPOTHESES We draw upon the conservation of resources (COR) model (Hobfoll, 1989) grounded in role stress theory (Singh et al., 1994), and the job demands-resources (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) which advocate that symptoms of burnout are a result of role stressors (e.g., role overload) causing individuals to be incapable of coping with excessive demands on their resources. Service worker assessment of stressors precipitates feelings of emotional exhaustion which then lead to them to disengage from their work and become uncaring towards customers, treating them as objects rather than as people (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). This depersonalisation then leads to feelings of reduced personal accomplishment in terms of one s feelings of competence and successful achievement (Leiter & Maslach, 1988, p. 298) (see below). Call Centre Stresssors Emotional Exhaustion Depersonalisation Reduced Personal Accomplishment In a burnout context, Lewin and Sager (2007) distinguish clear differences between helping (which we argue is the primary focus of inbound call centre agent work) and selling (which we argue is the primary focus of outbound call centre agent work). Because of the more unpredictable nature of human interactions that require continual readjustment and coordination of effort, referred to in the literature as emotional labour (Hampson et al., 2009), increased Call Centre Stressors And Call-Centre Agent Burnout Page 1

2 time pressure (Deery et al., 2010), decreased autonomy (Wegge et al., 2006) and increased performance monitoring (Deery et al., 2010; Ball and Margulis, 2011), although we expect both inbound and outbound call centre agents to experience stress leading to burnout, we expect the magnitude of these relationships to be stronger with inbound workers. We argue that both inbound and outbound call centre agents experience similar sources of stress irrespective of whether the customer interaction is initiated by the customer (inbound) or by the call centre agent (outbound), as well as stress resulting from interactions with highly demanding and/or difficult customers (van Jaarsveld et al., 2010) but that inbound and outbound call centre agents do perceive stress differently (Zapf et al., 2003). The nature of the work conducted by inbound call centre agents lends itself to extending/experiencing greater emotional labour due to there being less predictability and more readjustments and coordination required in their interactions with customers constituting what Taylor and Bain (1999) have described as assembly lines in the head. An important change in call centres is that inbound work has progressively become more computerised with inbound tasks becoming less varying and more repetitive. Inbound call centre work typically relates to more complex calls as outbound (telemarketing) calls typically have a standardised script or content, whereas incoming calls are typically more varied (Benner and Mane, 2011). In addition, it is also now possible to continuously monitor inbound agents performance (Kjellberg et al., 2010). Based on the nature of inbound (largely customer service/customer complaints) versus outbound (largely sales) work, we posit that the magnitude of the relationship between call centre stressors and emotional exhaustion, between emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation and between depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment will be different between inbound and outbound call centre agents with the former experiencing a greater lack of both timing and task/job control (Zapf et al., 2003) due the nature of their customer interactions and work, thus increasing the magnitude of the impact of call centre stressors on burnout. With an emphasis on call centre stressors, the current study is premised on the position that inbound call centre agents have more frequent and intense interactions with customers and that they are more likely to have less autonomy and to experience greater time pressures and monitoring than their outbound call centre counterparts (Batt and Moyinhan, 2002; Deery et al., 2010; Isic et al., 1999). Previous research has also shown that the lack of job discretion/autonomy and continuous performance monitoring (which both are major characteristics of inbound call centre work) have stronger relationships to call centre agent well-being and turnover (Holman et al., 2009). Our position is that the inbound call centre agent requires greater emotional labour capabilities, such as the ability to remain calm, active listening, patience and empathy (Lloyd and Payne, 2009). Importantly, inbound calls not only tend to be more unpredictable and variable than outbound calls, but they also frequently involve customers who have had some interaction elsewhere in the organisation e.g. banking customers may call to query a charge, or to transfer money and therefore inbound call centre agents are required to know how to provide quality customer service, but also to be knowledgeable about the other products and services provided by the organisation (Benner and Mane, 2011). Thus, in an inbound call centre context, because of the more unpredictable nature of human interactions requiring emotional labour (Hampson et al., 2009), increased time pressure (Deery et al., 2010), decreased autonomy (Wegge et al., 2006) and increased performance monitoring (Deery et al., 2010; Ball and Margulis, 2011), we expect the magnitude of these relationships to be stronger with inbound workers. Therefore: Call Centre Stressors And Call-Centre Agent Burnout Page 2

3 H1: There will be a direct positive relationship in the case of both inbound and outbound agents between a) stressors and emotional exhaustion, b) emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation, and c) depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment. H2: The magnitude of the direct positive relationship between a) stressors and emotional exhaustion, b) emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation and c) depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment, will be greater in the case of inbound relative to outbound agents. RESEARCH METHOD Data were collected via an electronically delivered survey questionnaire to inbound (N=117) and outbound (N=78) call centre agents of a large retail bank call centre in New Zealand. Contrary to the recent trend to operate blended modes of call centre activity where there is movement of agents from inbound to outbound roles and vice versa, this was not the case with this particular retail bank. In this retail bank, inbound call centre agents (N=117) spent their time dealing directly with customer initiated communication and responding to customer queries, problems and complaints whereas outbound call centre agents (N=78) spent their time in sales generation activities and focused on cross-selling opportunities for the bank s retail banking products (Batt et al., 2009; D Cruz and Noronha, 2007; Russell, 2008). Items to measure both types of call centre stressors were adapted from Grandey et al. (2004), Holman et al. (2002) and Mahesh & Kasturi (2006). We treat call centre stressors as a second-order construct with two first-order factors: stress from highly-demanding customers (4 items) and stress from performance monitoring (3 items). Emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation were measured using five items each from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). Personal accomplishment utilised seven items also drawn from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (see Appendix). RESULTS We utilised PLS Graph version 3.00, a component based path modelling technique (Chin, 1998) to test the hypotheses and assess differences between inbound and outbound call centre agents. Measurement model results demonstrated acceptable convergent and discriminant validity. As shown in Table 1 all direct hypothesised relationships (H1) were found to be significant thus supporting existing research on the relationships between stress and burnout (Toppinen-Tanner et al., 2002). A comparison of the inbound and outbound groups with respect to the effects of call centre stressors on emotional exhaustion shows no statistically significant difference between the groups. Hypothesis 2a must therefore be rejected. The effect of emotional exhaustion on depersonalisation is also significant for both groups. However, contrary to expectations, the impact of emotional exhaustion on depersonalisation is significantly stronger for outbound call centre agents relative to their inbound colleagues. Although Hypothesis 2b is rejected, a significant difference in the path coefficients between both groups exists. The impact of depersonalisation on reduced personal accomplishment is significantly stronger for inbound call centre agents relative to outbound call center agents. Hypothesis 2c is therefore supported. Call Centre Stressors And Call-Centre Agent Burnout Page 3

4 Call Centre Stressors On Emotional Exhaustion Emotional Exhaustion on Depersonalisation Depersonalisation on Reduced Personal Accomplishment Inbound call centre agents n=117 TABLE 1. PLS Results of the b hypotheses testing Outbound call centre agents n=78 Diff in path coeff. t-value diff Path t-value Path t-value Coeff. Coeff **** **** No Hypothesis Support *** **** No (but signif. in opposite direction) **** ** Yes Note: * p-values: **** p<.001, *** p <0.010, ** p <0.050 Discussion Contrary to our hypothesis it may be the case that outbound call centre agents cope with emotional exhaustion by depersonalising to a greater extent than their inbound counterparts because of a focus on selling rather than problem-solving/helping. They also tend to be rewards-driven and may have less control over their interaction with customers. In contrast, inbound call centre agents have greater control over their customer interactions and they are less rewards-driven given their primary motivation to help and problem solve (Lewin & Sager, 2007). So although both inbound and outbound call centre agents depersonalise as a result of emotional exhaustion, it would appear that outbound agents cope with this emotional exhaustion to a greater extent by depersonalising whereas inbound agents may be utilising different coping strategies (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The magnitude of the negative relationship between depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment is more than three times greater for inbound agents relative to outbound call centre agents. This suggests that perceived feelings of inability to do the job as a result of treating customers in an impersonal manner is more salient in an inbound call centre context. Both of these two significant differences again highlight the major contribution that this paper makes in recognising that the stress associated with call centre agent work manifests differently depending upon whether an agent is engaged in inbound versus outbound work and to the underlying nature of helping versus selling and how these differences Call Centre Stressors And Call-Centre Agent Burnout Page 4

5 in the context of inbound versus outbound call centre work influence the magnitude of the relationships between the three components of burnout. Although the study expands our knowledge of the relationships between stress and burnout in inbound and outbound call centres, it has several limitations and viable prospects for future research remain. The study makes the assumption that employee self-assessment of stressors and burnout provide reasonable proxies for actual experienced stress, burnout and turnover. Future research could entail utilising objective measures of stress and burnout as well as actual turnover. Using such multiple sources can address problems associated with common method variance. A number of other variables potentially important in understanding the burnout process in call centres also warrant investigation. For example, organisational job resources (e.g. supervisory support, training, rewards/recognition and service technology support) were not examined and are recommended as a future research agenda. Whereas recent research has looked at the impact of call centre agent personality factors in service performance (Sawyerr et al., 2009), personal resources in the form of personality factors such as the hardiness factor that is thought to reduce the risk of burnout (Turnipseed, 1999; Prosser et al., 1997) and a personal need for structure (Elovainio and Kivimaki, 2001) could also extend an understanding of burnout in an inbound and outbound call centre context. The study focused on one large retail bank with two call centre locations. Additional research is needed to assess the generalisability of the findings of this study to other call centres, other frontline service delivery/organisational contexts, and call centre settings in other countries. An additional limitation of the study is that the nature of the questions might be less appropriate for outbound agents in that rather than encountering 'pushiness' and losing patience; they might be much more likely to encounter rejection and anger and lose enthusiasm. And none of these are reflected in the scales used which, consequently, might address one agent activity better than the other. MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS The results suggest that with respect to call centre stressors, management might consider improving the work environment to bring about greater job discretion/autonomy, greater job variety and performance monitoring that is developmental rather than being intense and threatening in order to attenuate the stronger impact of these relationships in an inbound context. The exception is that with outbound agents, the impact of emotional exhaustion on depersonalisation is significantly stronger. Thus, the challenge for managers is to identify other ways in which outbound agents can better cope with emotional exhaustion rather than by disengaging with customers. Alternative coping might occur either through access to organisational resources such as greater supervisory and co-worker support, or through the personal resources of the individual such as job resourcefulness. Proactive human resource management initiatives might also include job rotation whereby inbound and outbound call centre agents can switch jobs, thereby experiencing and learning each other s roles and their differing emphases on helping/problem-solving versus selling. Call Centre Stressors And Call-Centre Agent Burnout Page 5

6 REFERENCES Bakker, A.B. & Demerouti, E. (2007). The Job Demands-Resources Model: State of the Art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E. & Verbeke, W.J. (2004). Using the Job Demands-Resources Model to Predict Burnout and Performance. Human Resources Management, 43(1) Chin, W.W. (1998). The Partial Least Squares for Structural Equation Modelling. In Marcoulides, G. (Ed.), Modern Methods for Business Research, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Nachreiner, F., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). The Job Demands-Resources Model of Burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), Grandey, A.A., Dickter, D.N. & Sin, H.P. (2004). The Customer Is Not Always Right: Customer Aggression and Emotion Regulation of Service Employees. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(3), Hobfoll, S.F. (1989). Conservation of Resources: A New Attempt at Conceptualizing Stress. The American Psychologist, 44(3), Holman, D., Chissick, C., & Totterdell, P. (2002). The Effects of Performance Monitoring on Emotional Labor and Well-Being in Call Centers. Motivation and Emotion, 26(1), Karatepe, O.M., Haktanir, M. & Yorganci, I. (2010). The Impacts of Core Self-Evaluations on Customer-Related Social Stressors and Emotional Exhaustion. The Service Industries Journal, 30(9), Lazarus, R. S. & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, And Coping, Springer, New York. Lee, R.T., & Ashforth, B.E. (1996). A Meta-Analytic Examination of the Correlates of the Three Dimensions of Job Burnout. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81(2), Leiter, M.P. & Maslach, C. (1988). The Impact of Interpersonal Environment on Burnout and Organizational Commitment. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 9(4), Lewin, J.E. & Sager, J.K. (2007). A Process Model of Burnout Among Salespeople: Some New Thoughts. Journal of Business Research, 60(12), Low, G.S., Cravens, D.W., Grant, K. & Moncrief, W.C. (2001). Antecedents and Consequences of Salesperson Burnout. European Journal of Marketing, 35(5/6), Mahesh, V.S. & Kasturi, A. (2006). Improving call centre agent performance: A UK-India study based on the agents point of view. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 17(2), Maslach, C. & Jackson, S.E. (1981). The Measurement of Experienced Burnout. Journal of Occupational Behavior, 2(2), Maslach, C. & Leiter, M.P. (2008). Early Predictors of Job Burnout and Engagement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(3), Schaufeli, W.B. & Bakker, A.B. (2004). Job Demands, Job Resources, and Their Relationship with Burnout and Engagement: A Multi-Sample Study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25(3), Singh, J., Goolsby, J.R. & Rhoads, G.K. (1994). Behavioral and Psychological Consequences of Boundary Spanning Burnout for Customer Service Representatives. Journal of Marketing Research, 31(4), Toppinen-Tanner, S., Kalimo, R. & Mutanen, P. (2002). The Process of Burnout in White-Collar and Blue-Collar Jobs: Eight-Year Prospective Study of Exhaustion. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23(5), Call Centre Stressors And Call-Centre Agent Burnout Page 6

7 van Jaarsveld, D., Walker, D. & Skarlicki, D.P. (2010). The Role of Job Demands and Emotional Exhaustion in the Relationship between Customer and Employee Incivility. Journal of Management, 36(6), Zapf, D., Isic, A., Bechtoldt, M. & Blau, P. (2003). What Is Typical for Call Centre Jobs? Job Characteristics and Service Interactions in Different Call Centres. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 12(4), Call Centre Stressors And Call-Centre Agent Burnout Page 7

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9 APPENDIX: CONSTRUCTS AND MEASUREMENT ITEMS CONSTRUCT Call Centre Stressors MEASUREMENT ITEMS Highly-demanding customer stressors: - I find it difficult delivering great customer service to pushy or demanding customers - If my first call is a bad call, then my whole day is usually bad too - I never lose my patience with customers R - I always feel like helping customers even when they are pushy and demanding R Performance monitoring stressors: - The feeling that I am constantly under observation (call monitoring, feedback, performance reports) puts pressure on me - The need to meet targets puts pressure on me - Monitoring of statistics increases the pressure I feel Emotional Exhaustion - I feel exhausted at the end of the workday - Working all day with people is hard for me - I feel emotionally drained from my work - My work requires a lot of emotionally energy # - When I get up in the morning I look forward to coming into work R Depersonalisation - I feel I have become more caring toward people since I took this job R - I never treat customers as if they are impersonal objects R - This job is hardening me emotionally # - Sometimes I feel like customers blame me for their problems # - I really care about what happens to customers R Reduced Personal Accomplishment - I feel I have a positive influence on other people through my work R - I deal very effectively with the problems of my customers R - I have accomplished many worthwhile things in this job R - I feel exhilarated after working closely with my customers - I can easily understand how my customers feel about things R # - In my work I deal with emotions very calmly R # - I can easily create a relaxed atmosphere with my customers R Notes: R = reverse scored, # items discarded due to low loadings and communalities. Call Centre Stressors And Call-Centre Agent Burnout Page 9