With changes in external environment, such as rapid development of information technology and the need to establish various marketing strategies, companies are being faced with numerous challenges; accordingly, they are competitively constructing a cu...
With changes in external environment, such as rapid development of information technology and the need to establish various marketing strategies, companies are being faced with numerous challenges; accordingly, they are competitively constructing a customer relationship management (CRM) system based on information technology to implement rapid and accurate communication with customers and collect and use very reliable information as a coping strategy, and there are call centers at the center of such CRM.
It can be said that success of call centers at the forefront of customer-contact depends greatly on employment of well-trained, good telemarketers. For this reason, systematic education and training for telemarketers are most of all important, and online education and training, such as e-Learning, may be much more efficient for them than off-line education considering economic aspects of cost-benefit effectiveness and their job characteristic.
This study aims to identify antecedents affecting learning performance of call center members participating in e-Learning education and training programs for call centers to empirically test the effects of these factors on learning performance and of e-Learning performance on consequences such as job satisfaction and service orientation among call center members. Specifically, this study, first, sets content property and system property of e-Learning program, learning motive, and job burnout as antecedents of e-Learning performance for call centers to empirically examine the effects of these factors on e-Learning performance on the basis of literature about education and training and e-Learning for companies. Second, the effects of e-Learning participants' learning performance on consequences of e-Learning performance, such as job satisfaction or service orientation, are empirically examined in call centers. Third, analysis is carried out to see if learner-oriented organizational atmosphere serve as moderating factors in terms of the effects of antecedents of e-Learning performance on learning performance in call centers. In addition, the explorative study is conducted to see what call center members perceive as problems with e-Learning programs and as critical points for improvement. Also this empirical research aims to make an empirical analysis to see if e-Learning performance contributes to organizational performance, such as job satisfaction or service orientation among call center members in order to share understanding the significance of e-Learning and contribute to establishment of policies necessary to improve e-Learning performance in call centers.
To carry out the empirical analysis, statistical analysis was conducted with a sample of 293 participants with education and training based on e-Learning in 6 call center businesses providing education and training based on e-Learning for call centers. As a procedure of the empirical analysis, I designed a research model, set hypotheses, test reliability and validity of measurement, and those hypotheses. As for statistical techniques, descriptive analysis, confirmatory factor analysis to validate measurment, and reliability tests were carried out, along with Cronbach's alpha test, correlation analysis to see correlation between variables, and structural equation to test those hypotheses.
The main results of this study can be summarized as follows:
First, among many antecedents of e-Learning performance in call centers, system property, excepting content property, and learning motive exerted positive effects on e-Learning performance, while job burnout had negative effects on e-Learning performance.
Second, e-Learning participants' learning performance in call centers exerted positive effects on job satisfaction and service orientation set as consequences of e-Learning performance.
Third, the hypothesis that the higher members perceived learning-oriented organizational atmosphere in their call centers, the stronger e-Learning performance exert effects on learning performance was not proved.
Therefore, this study indicates that call centers need to share recognition of the importance of e-Learning in that e-Learning performance affects call center members' job satisfaction or service orientation. Also it suggests that efforts should be made to improve system properties of e-Learning programs, improve e-Learning participants' learning motives, and reduce call center workers' job burnout in order to improve e-Learning performance in call centers.