Reducing employee turnover through customer contact center job quality

Abstract

Despite the rapid growth of customer contact centers (CCCs), high-quality jobs for employees of such centers remain a challenge, as evidenced by the high employee turnover rates in this industry. This study, therefore, conceptualizes and operationalizes a CCC job quality construct to determine its impact on job satisfaction, affective commitment and employee turnover, using a sample of 577 CCC employees of B2C service industry organizations in the Netherlands. An extensive quantitative study using structural equation modeling reveals that CCC job quality has a direct, positive impact on job satisfaction and affective commitment and a strong indirect negative effect on employee turnover. Thus, job quality is crucial for reducing employee turnover rates; this study offers managers clear guidelines on how to improve that quality.

Keywords:

• affective commitment
• customer contact center job quality
• employee turnover
• job satisfaction

Notes

1. The substantial negative correlation between CCC job quality and turnover seems to suggest a direct relationship between these constructs. However, as our analysis reveals, as long as an increase in CCC job quality does not lead to an increase in job satisfaction and affective commitment, turnover will remain unaffected. Our argument is supported by the partial correlation between CCC job quality and turnover, which has a value of only − 0.028.