Factors Affecting Contact Center Employee Performance - a Case of Kenya Power Contact Center, Stima Plaza, Kenya

FACTORS AFFECTING CONTACT CENTER EMPLOYEE PERFOMANCE (A CASE OF KENYA POWER CONTACT CENTER, STIMA PLAZA, KENYA)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study.

The concept of Call centers originated in USA in 1908 after it became possible to sell advertisements in telephone books. In 1960s Ford Motors company started search for possible buyers for their cars by Making over twenty million phone calls to customers.

One of the largest telemarketing campaigns was carried out in 1978 when Swedish telephone company (now Telia) introduced the American concept of the yellow pages: these involved advertisers buying advertising pages by telephone instead of being visited by salesmen.

At the end of 1980s the number of telemarketing companies started to grow and the concept of contact center was born in 1990s.in 1994, telia company introduced another campaign for call centers and the concept was firmly established in Sweden.(Nutek R2000:10)

From then henceforth, many companies with contact center concept have emerged. Contact centers handle more than phone calls e.g. sms, email and social media.

Customer care centers constitute one of the rapidly growing businesses in the world. For example, in 1997-1999 there were 110 external contact centers with 7051 employees.(Nutek, 2000)

In 2002, about 600000 persons were reported to be working in the business at 700-800 contact center in Sweden: this is according to investment Sweden /agency (ISA) which was equivalent to approximately 1.5% of the Swedish working population.

Currently, in the USA, call center employs 5% of the workforce while in Europe, 2% of the working population.(Datamonitor.1998,1999)

Marr, 2004 sees call centers as of critical importance to the organization especially in delivering services to the customers. He further explains that call center performance should not be measured in isolation from the Performance of the whole organization(Marr,2004).He further expounds that the performance measure of all centers needs to reflect the strategic direction of the organization.

A Contact centers allows a company to build, maintain and manage customer relations by solving complaints quickly, having information, answering questions and being available 24hours a day..

Kenya Power is a limited liability company in Kenya which transmits, distributes and retails electricity to customers throughout Kenya. It is a national electric utility company, managing electric metering, licensing, billing, and emergency electricity service and customer relations. In Kenya power strategic plan 2011/2012 to 2015/2016, the first objective is improving delivery of customer service. Kenya power call center was established in 2011 to act a link between the company and its customers and it was launched as a National contact center in June, 2013.

The main objective was to solve customer complaints such as billing, power outage, new connections queries, and pre-paid services without customers visiting the offices. The second objective was to decongest banking halls and the third objective was for telemarketing. Therefore, all this can be done through phone calls, email and social media that are twitter and Facebook. The contact center is one of the Kenya power sub departments.

Several researches have been made on the contact center but concentrate on outsourced of call centers. This research will focus on the factors affecting contact centers workers performance in an in-house contact center a case of Kenya Power Company. The purpose of this research is to establish whether job training, job satisfaction, work shit and the performance of the call centre agents.

 Statement of the Problem

The following are globally documented challenges that are facing contact centers;

 Inability to improve performance levels: At some point or another, most call centers have struggled to increase their performance levels, often reaching a plateau or, worse, finding that their adherence to targets is starting to drop away. In an in-house environment, this can lead to frustration for both managers and front-line staff. And in the outsource arena, it can cause clients to question the third party’s capabilities.

Agent absenteeism: According to benchmarking firm Dimension Data, the average annual absence rate in contact centers across the globe is 11%. To the layperson, this might not seem particularly high. But the stark reality is that a 100-seat contact center with 11% absenteeism will only have an average of 89 seats occupied at any one time.  

Staff attrition: High staff turnover can, which negatively has impact on call center quality because every time a trained agent leaves, fewer are on hand to ensure an optimum level of service. In addition to this, there are heavy costs associated with recruiting, hiring, training and developing new staff – not to mention the costs associated with the dip in productivity that is inevitable as new recruits battle to get up to speed.

Agent engagement: At one extreme, call center work can be monotonous due to the highly repetitive nature of the job; at the other, it can be stressful, thanks to the seemingly impossible targets and strictures that some organizations place upon their staff. In both instances, call center’s run the risk of their agents losing enthusiasm and becoming demoralized, which in turn can lead to absenteeism and ultimately attrition.

According to our data, since the contact center was established, 14 agents have resigned, 24 agents have sought transfer to other departments and each day we record average three to four absenteeism. Secondly our customer service performance level has remained 72% as compared to that of 85% which is set by the company. Therefore, there is a need to find out factors which could be affecting the agent’s performance in the contact center and propose what can be done for effective employee performance.

Purpose of the Study.

The purpose of this study is to explore the factors influencing contact center employees’ performance in Kenya a case of Kenya Power Company.

Objectives of the Study,

This study will be guided by the following objectives:

To establish how job satisfaction influence the performance of Contact Center Agents

To f explore how training affect contact center Agents Performance

To determine how shift working Schedule affect the performance   Contact Center agents

 Research Questions:

This research will be guided by the following questions: