Title
Past, present and future of contact centers: a literature review.
Abstract
Purpose - Contact centers (CCs) are one of the main touch points of customers in an organization. They form one of the inputs to customer relationship management (CRM) to enable an organization to efficiently resolve customer queries. CCs have an important impact on customer satisfaction and are a strategic asset for CRM systems. The purpose of this paper is to review the current literature on CCs and identify their shortcomings to be addressed in the current digital age. Design/methodology/approach - The current literature on CCs can be classified into the analytical and the managerial aspects of CCs. In the former, data mining, text mining, and voice recognition techniques are discussed, and in the latter, staff training, CC performance, and outsourced CCs are discussed. Findings - With the growth of information and communication technologies, the information that CCs must handle both in terms of type and volume, has changed. To deal with such changes, CCs need to evolve in terms of their operation and public relations. The authors present a state-of-the-art review of the challenges in identifying the gaps in order to have the next generation of CCs. Lack of an interactive CC and lack of data integrity for CCs are highlighted as important issues that need to be dealt with properly by CCs. Originality/value - As far as the authors know, this is the first paper that reviews CCs' literature by providing the comprehensive survey, critical evaluation, and future research.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1108/BPMJ-02-2015-0018
BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
Keywords
Field
DocType
Decision making,Customer service,Customer service management,Customer information,Database management
Customer relationship management,Customer satisfaction,Customer service,Computer science,Customer information,Knowledge management,Originality,Data integrity,Staff training,Information and Communications Technology,Management science
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
23.0
SP3.0
1463-7154
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
4
0.40
41
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Morteza Saberi120728.66
Omar Khadeer Hussain240656.97
Elizabeth Chang310214.51