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Knowledge Management in Call Centres
Pooya Rasooli and Amir Albadvi
Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
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Globalization and technology improvements have exposed companies to a situation with tough competition. In this new era companies are focusing on managing customer relationships in order to efficiently maximize revenues. In terms of customer relationship management, call centres are considered as one of the primary organizational channels for interacting with customers, but perhaps the greatest challenge of running a call centre, is to ensure that customers are provided with the right information in a timely fashion. In this regard knowledge management has a number of practical tools and strategies but to leverage the potential of these tools, organizations must understand how to implement knowledge management especially in their call centre department. Based on Tsoukas and Valdimirou’s (2001) theory there are some elements to be considered for knowledge management implementation in call centres. The primary goal of this research is to investigate how two large car manufacturing companies which are using their call centres as a main customer interaction channel have implemented these components. Five elements are identified: knowledge acquisition, utilization, adaptation, dissemination and generation.
The research strategy has been based on case studies and the comparisons are conducted within each case and the related theories as well as between the cases.
The study found more similarities than differences between the companies as regards to the theories provided. It was found that both cases that already have implemented a knowledge management system in their call centers, have mostly focused on the management of explicit knowledge (designing, organizing and providing access to a knowledge base) rather than creating an atmosphere for transforming tacit knowledge of experts to explicit knowledge. In addition the study revealed that in both companies, tendencies to focus on technology rather than people and process, has obscured the real benefits that knowledge management can bring into their call centre department and subsequently whole organization.
Keywords:
Knowledge management, customer relationship management, knowledge acquisition, knowledge adaptation, knowledge dissemination, knowledge generation, knowledge utilization.
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