About the toolkit    Guide    Background    Evidence    eWork relocation    Glossary of terms

Customer services, including call centres

For customer services, like providing information, counselling and advice, often carried out in call centres, the demand side seems to most prefer being near other parts of the organisation, followed by ‘good reputation/market leaders’ and then ‘low cost or competitive tender’. On the supply side, ‘good reputation/market leaders’ was regarded as even more important, accounting for 23.1 per cent of all reasons given. This was followed by a group of responses which were coded together as ‘reliability/quality/good attitude/ creativity’, then by ‘longstanding relationship’, then ‘low cost/competitive tender’ (Huws, O’Regan, 2001).

Technical expertise appears to play a lesser role in this function than in some other forms of eWork, whilst value is placed on quality and a relationship of trust and on proximity both to customers and other parts of the organisation.

Reasons for choice of location for customer services: supply and demand side

(Source: Huws and O’Regan, 2001)

  next ...

 top of page
 

© 2002, Institute for Employment Studies