Call Center Operational Performance Indicators and Customer Satisfaction: An Explanatory-Exploratory Investigation

This article purports to investigate the relationship – in an empirical way – between the various operational indicators currently used for the management of call centers in Brazil and customer satisfaction. In this context, a set of call centers rendering services to a telecommunications company will be analyzed in order to verify which of their indicators are positively associated with customer satisfaction. A methodological approach based on surveys as well as stepwise multiple linear regressions is developed and applied in order to achieve the objective of this paper. The “First-Contact Resolution Rate” and the “Average Handle Time After the Call” indicators present a statistically significant relationship with customer satisfaction. Some alternative call center operational performance indicators are proposed, in an exploratory way, so as to convey an enhanced relationship between call center performance and customer satisfaction.