Enabling customer satisfaction in call center teams: the role of transformational leadership in the service-profit chain

ABSTRACT

The importance of the effect of work climate and employee attitude on customer satisfaction has attracted the attention of practitioners and researchers, and, hence, lead to the development of the service-profit chain framework. However, companies whose services involve tasks that are not intrinsically motivating and whose performance rewards are scarce face significant challenges motivating customer service teams and, thus, promoting customer satisfaction and organizational performance. We argue that, in such contexts, transformational leadership is an important factor for service management and that it is essential to foster engagement, satisfaction, and performance among service teams. To assess this proposition, we develop and statistically test a causal model with data from 224 teams (3938 employees) from a large call center company in Brazil. Employee performance and customer satisfaction were assessed with objective metrics supplied by the company. The results from structural equation analyses support all hypotheses in the study. Implications for service companies are addressed.

摘要

工作氛围和员工态度对顾客满意度影响的重要性已经引起了实践者和研究者的关注，从而促成了服务-利润链框架的发展。然而，那些服务涉及的任务并非本质上激励, 且绩效奖励稀缺的公司面临激励客户服务团队的巨大挑战，因此提升客户满意度和组织绩效比较困难。在这项研究中，我们认为，在这种情况下，变革型领导是服务管理的重要因素，并且提高服务团队的参与度，满意度和绩效至关重要。为了评估这一主张，我们利用来自巴西一家大型呼叫中心公司的224个团队（3938名员工）的数据开发和统计测试了一个因果模型。员工绩效和顾客满意度由公司提供的客观指标进行评估。结构方程分析的结果支持研究中的所有假设。针对服务公司的意义已得到解决。

KEYWORDS:

• Service-profit chain
• transformational leadership
• satisfaction at work
• customer satisfaction
• organizational performance

关键词:

• 服务-利润链
• 变革型领导
• 工作满意度
• 顾客满意度
• 组织绩效

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Flavia Cavazotte http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5450-3573

Valter Moreno http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1782-2401

Additional information

Funding

Flávia Cavazotte gratefully acknowledges the support received from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), funded by Grant 302152/2015-6 (PQ-2, Productivity in Research).