• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.99-120
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• 2010

Due to the wide spread of customers' frequent access of non face-to-face services, there have been many attempts to improve customer satisfaction using huge amounts of data accumulated throughnon face-to-face channels. Usually, a call center is regarded to be one of the most representative non-faced channels. Therefore, it is important that a call center has enough agents to offer high level customer satisfaction. However, managing too many agents would increase the operational costs of a call center by increasing labor costs. Therefore, predicting and calculating the appropriate size of human resources of a call center is one of the most critical success factors of call center management. For this reason, most call centers are currently establishing a department of WFM(Work Force Management) to estimate the appropriate number of agents and to direct much effort to predict the volume of inbound calls. In real world applications, inbound call prediction is usually performed based on the intuition and experience of a domain expert. In other words, a domain expert usually predicts the volume of calls by calculating the average call of some periods and adjusting the average according tohis/her subjective estimation. However, this kind of approach has radical limitations in that the result of prediction might be strongly affected by the expert's personal experience and competence. It is often the case that a domain expert may predict inbound calls quite differently from anotherif the two experts have mutually different opinions on selecting influential variables and priorities among the variables. Moreover, it is almost impossible to logically clarify the process of expert's subjective prediction. Currently, to overcome the limitations of subjective call prediction, most call centers are adopting a WFMS(Workforce Management System) package in which expert's best practices are systemized. With WFMS, a user can predict the volume of calls by calculating the average call of each day of the week, excluding some eventful days. However, WFMS costs too much capital during the early stage of system establishment. Moreover, it is hard to reflect new information ontothe system when some factors affecting the amount of calls have been changed. In this paper, we attempt to devise a new model for predicting inbound calls that is not only based on theoretical background but also easily applicable to real world applications. Our model was mainly developed by the interactive decision tree technique, one of the most popular techniques in data mining. Therefore, we expect that our model can predict inbound calls automatically based on historical data, and it can utilize expert's domain knowledge during the process of tree construction. To analyze the accuracy of our model, we performed intensive experiments on a real case of one of the largest car insurance companies in Korea. In the case study, the prediction accuracy of the devised two models and traditional WFMS are analyzed with respect to the various error rates allowable. The experiments reveal that our data mining-based two models outperform WFMS in terms of predicting the amount of accident calls and fault calls in most experimental situations examined.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.51-63
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• 2003

This study designs and implements a new approach to the classification of e-mail requests from customer based on machine learning techniques. The work on building an electronic mall classifier can be cast into the framework of text classification, since an e-mail is a viewed as a document, and judgement of interest is viewed as a class level given to the e-mail document. It is also implemented an e-mall based automated response system that integrate with Call Center in a practical use.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.520-533
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• 2007

The CRM(Customer Relationship Management) is the business strategy model for higher profits and competitive power of the enterprise in a new business environment. The large-scale customer response service technique uses internet, e-mail, SMS (Short Message Service), Telephony service, DM(Direct Mail) by customer channel point. Recently, business model diversify for new contract and retaining existing customer to the effort for a profitable model of business. This paper is based on Avaya PDS(Predictive Dialing System) model for CRM bond center. If the number of "available" agents are less than the number of inbound channels, then there may be real-time response problems in PDS system implemented. The Organization cannot afford to have many agents in available mode because of the high cost of manpower. This paper provides two contributions to the study. First, we present Call Object Management Mechanism of Customer Channel integration for reduce outbound consulting and reduce CallBack data in the PDS. Second, we design and implement the proposed system. Our simulation results show analysis of old model and proposed model. The proposed model can be efficiently used in Large-scale CRM.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.8800-8811
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• 2015

When the crucial role of the agent in communicating with the customer is acknowledged well enough to relieve the agent's stress, it will lead to the decrease of the agent's emotional labor and the improvement of the business organization's performance simultaneously. However, the research on the relationship between information system and the emotional labor has been scarcely conducted even though the importance of the emotional labor is actively researched and discussed these days. Therefore, much effort has been put in this study to fine out how the quality of airline call center information system affects expectations-conformation and how expectations-conformation and self-efficacy affect performance of Emotional Labors. Analysis of the results to target a call center agent 436 people, When you provide them with quality information systems, it increased satisfaction and pride in their job. This mechanisms subsequently reduces the strength of the emotion labor, which ultimately improves the service performance. The implications of this study can be summarized as following: First, this research presented practical guidelines to the organization's decision-makers related to the airline call center operations in order to introduce and expand successful call center information system. Second, this research suggested the possible method to inspect and diagnose the system by way of applying the measurement model mentioned in this research into the airline information system and analyzing it. Third, the performance-measuring model developed in order to measure the performance of the airline call center information system can also be used when we carry out the performance-measuring task in the similar information system as the basis of diagnosing the situation and presenting the driving directions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Computer Information Conference
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• 2013.07a
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• pp.169-172
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• 2013

본 논문에서는 서비스업 종사자들의 감정노동에 따른 언어폭력의 실례를 파악하여 보고자 한다. 폭력은 외부로 가해지는 신체적 상해로 인지하고 있으나 언어폭력에 대한 인식은 상대적으로 미약하다. 외적으로 드러나는 상해가 아니어서 언어적 폭력의 강도는 더욱 심해지고 있으며, 자신의 감정 해소를 위한 수단으로 악이용되는 사례도 다분하다. 언어폭력이 미치는 영향 및 잘못된 인식 개선과 사회적, 제도적 대응 방안 마련 등 문제 제기를 통해 앞으로 심층적 연구를 하고자 한다.

• Journal of Information Management
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.151-171
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• 2009

This study is to investigate dissatisfaction behavior of customers who purchase products on the Internet shopping mall and to find customers' dissatisfaction behavior types for effectively responding to that. Managing dissatisfaction behaviors are related to the customer satisfaction. To conduct this study, Call Center data was collected and analysed by qualitative method. The results showed that dissatisfaction of product quality and disappointment have different effects on post--purchase behaviors. Customers who feel more dissatisfaction with product quality showed the aggressive response such as exchange, refund, while customers who feel disappointment are likely to switch the shopping mall or to cancel the order. These results of customers' dissatisfaction behaviors indicate that company has to manage both product quality and the customer's experience dimension.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.78-92
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• 2006

While many services appear, it are performed in the various researches about a service. Among them, as to the basic reason for measuring the service level, in order to find out the strategy improving service quality. But the method for measuring quality of services up to date was unable to make it enough the role. This research tried to propose the approach systematically analyzing the human errors in order to improve service quality about the call center which utilizes the information technology. In fact, the human errors was found in the customer contact point in which the actual service is delivered. An interaction between the element for comprising call service was classified into 3 while defining the human error as 3 group. Moreover, the process where a service is delivered was classified according to 5 step and the generated error was measured in each step. The implication of this research looks at the service failure and dissatisfaction as the occurrence of the human errors and illustrates the service quality improvement as a correction or a reduction. This approach is used that service is materially easily understood and is formulated with the quality improvement strategy.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.466-475
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• 2020

Current performance evaluation of call center employees is dependent on the number of calls they have resolved, regardless of the individual and social characteristics of employees. However, since call center tasks are highly customer-oriented and emotional laborious, individual capability as well as social characteristics of employees is critical to performance. Therefore, this study analyzed the relationship between employees' individual/social characteristics and their performance. To extract individual characteristics, a repertory grid technique was employed, whereas social network analysis was conducted to extract the social characteristics of employees. Using individual and social characteristics as input variables, multiple regression was conducted to analyze the effect of each variable on performance. As a result, in-degree centrality of dining network, initiative characteristics, open characteristics, and enjoyment of studying were determined to be important variables for performance. This study is expected to be used in both performance management and human resource management of call center practices.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.17-35
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• 2019

Call centers do not simply play a role of responding to customers' calls, but they have developed into a core unit for maintaining competitiveness through services, marketing, or sales. Since the service quality of call centers heavily affects customer satisfaction, organizations have focused on enhancing it by reducing waiting time and increasing service level. One of the techniques, which improve the service quality of call centers, is to employ multi-skilled agents that can handle more than one type of calls. This study deals with three issues relevant to multi-skilled agents. First, we analyze how the way of allocating a specific group of agents to a set of skills affects the performance of call centers. Secondly, we investigate the relationship between the number of multi-skilled agents and the performance of call centers. Finally, we examine the impact of agent selection rules on the performance of call centers. Two selection rules are compared : the first rule is to assign a call to any available agent at random while the other rule is to assign a call preferably to single-skilled agents over multi-skilled agents when applicable. Based on simulation experiments, we suggest three implications. First, as the length of cycles in the agent-skill configuration network becomes longer, call centers achieve higher service level and shorter waiting time. Secondly, simulation results show that as the portion of multi-skilled agents increases, the performance of call centers improves. However, most of the improvement is attained when the portion of multi-skilled agents is relatively low. Finally, the agent selection rules do not significantly affect the call centers' performance, but the rule of preferring single-skilled agents tends to distribute the workload among agents more equally.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.923-933
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• 2011

In this study, we derived seven customer value factors to evaluate the levels of service in wastewater utilities required by customers. Levels of service according to the customer value were categorized into environmental amenity, accessibility of wastewater service, affordability of wastewater charge, quality of wastewater service, health and safety of wastewater service provision, reliability and responsiveness of wastewater service provision, and satisfaction of customer service. To investigate the levels of wastewater service, questionnaires were prepared according to the customer value factors, and the questionnaire survey was performed with 800 adults in all over Korea including male and female samples. The comprehensive satisfaction score for the wastewater service was 57.5 points, indicating a slightly good satisfaction level. The detailed analysis of the result showed that the satisfaction level was high in the wastewater service accessibility and call center service provision but it was relatively low in the river water quality and nasty smell of wastewater. It was concluded that the quality of wastewater service and customer service satisfaction need to be elevated primarily in order to improve levels of wastewater service required by the customers.