engleski

Personality traits and employment status as antecedents of the customer service quality, or who is to blame when clients dislike us?

The success of any organization depends on satisfied clients. When satisfied, clients are more loyal and willing to recommend products and services to others. In order to assure such outcomes, organizations provide available and accessible customer support, often using contact centres. Agents, interacting directly with clients, are the key element of a successful customer service. Thus, agent’s individual differences represent potential performance predictors in this process. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality traits and quality of customer service by taking into consideration participants’ contractual form of employment (fixed-term or indefinite). Based on the previous research, we expected the quality of customer service to relate positively with extraversion and agreeableness, and negatively with neuroticism. We were also interested to explore whether the form of employment moderates any of mentioned relations. The study has been conducted on-line among contact center agents of a communications service provider (CSP). The Mini IPIP scale was used to assess personality measures. The respondents provided their employment contract type and demographic data, while the measures of customer service quality were made available by the CSP in the form of two assessments, gathered from clients at the end of calls. The first of the assessments is an explicit measure of clients’ satisfaction with the interaction with the agent (SWA), and the second one (TNPS) targets a wider experience with the customer care department. The sample (N=87 ; Mage=31.0, SD=7.71) consists of 59 women (Mage=32.78, SD=7.96) out of which 32 with indefinite employment terms, and 38 men (Mage=27.32, SD=5.68), of which 20 hold indefinite employment contract. Results of multilevel linear regression analysis showed a positive relation of TNPS with extraversion and negative with neuroticism. Contrary to our expectations, agreeableness did not show to be a significant predictor of customer service quality. The form of employment contract moderated the relationship between extraversion and SWA. The relationship was positive for agents with indefinite term contracts, while for the agents with fixed-term contracts extraversion was a negative predictor of SWA. Expression of personality traits depends on situational factors. Based on the findings in this study, employment status represents one such situational variable.

job performance, client satisfaction, customer service, personality traits, employment contract

Hrvatski naslov: Crte ličnosti i status ugovora o radu kao antecedenti kvalitete korisničke službe, ili koga okriviti kada nas korisnici ne vole?